Month: March 2013

Innocence and Community Don: From start to finish, Matthew chapter 18 is really all about community. Using parable and declarative statements, Jesus makes the pillars of community come alive. Matthew 18 is a kind of a handbook addressing those pillars. In coming weeks, we will examine them one by one. In the beginning of the…

There will be a sort-of life after death, initially for a select few but eventually for just about everyone, thanks to the digitization of everything. This fascinating BBC video clip (just 2 or 3 minutes long) starts by talking about how good we are getting at making digital actors for movies, but ends with a…

Robin led the meeting in Don’s absence on vacation. [Editor’s note: I have taken the liberty of expanding and clarifying my remarks here. Droit d’éditeur!—David]   Robin: The Greek word koinonia is commonly used to mean “community” but it is really a specialized form of community that involves intimacy and identifies the idealized state of…

Don: Last week we began to note the “terrifying” type of love as described in 1 Corinthians 13. It is a “fear-full” love, because it is so demanding, so radical. It demands a release of our ideas and prejudices, of supposed truths and knowledge and expectations. It seems as if love is being contrasted with…

I wanted to share a post I copied from Bart D Erhman daily blog that I follow. He is one of my favorite authors on the New Testament. What motivated me to copy this blog and share was his last statement in the end of the blog. True community needs to be able to accommodate views that are…

Don: Beginning with the parable of the lost sheep, over the past few months we have discussed the concept of community, and the stages through which it grows. The first phase, “pseudo” community, is based on fear. How do we get beyond this and into the next phase, Chaos? We can see God himself introducing…

I thought this article from the BBC might help inform our discussion of community. Magazine 7 March 2013 Last updated at 03:05 ET Getting away from ‘the world’ Hutterite-style By Chris Summers BBC News North America is home to many religious communities, one of which – the Hutterites – believe that living communally and separately…

Don: Last week’s discussion led us to conclude that what was most responsible for the chaos we experience individually and communally is fear.  It seems to be related to the loss of something important, something critical to our self-esteem. The state of not fearing loss seems to be at the root of emptiness. Fear is…