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50e6dc7
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The point is not that Jesus was a good guy who accepted everybody, and thus we should do the same (though that would be good). Rather, his teachings and behavior reflect an alternative social vision. Jesus was not talking about how to be good and how to behave within the framework of a domination system. He was a critic of the domination system itself.
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social-justice
politics
systems
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Marcus J. Borg |
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89c14b6
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The Christian life is not about pleasing God the finger-shaker and judge. It is not about believing now or being good now for the sake of heaven later. It is about entering a relationship in the present that begins to change everything now. Spirituality is about this process: the opening of the heart to the God who is already here.
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relationship
spirituality
god
life
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Marcus J. Borg |
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5f2824f
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Christianity's goal is not escape from this world. It loves this world and seeks to change it for the better.
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christianity
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Marcus J. Borg |
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49c1156
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the Bible is a human product: it tells us how our religious ancestors saw things, not how God sees things.
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Marcus J. Borg |
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3b4246c
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So, is there an afterlife, and if so, what will it be like? I don't have a clue. But I am confident that the one who has buoyed us up in life will also buoy us up through death. We die into God. What more that means, I do not know. But that is all I need to know.
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heaven
christianity
death
bible
hell
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Marcus J. Borg |
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38c81c1
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But believing something to be true has nothing to do with whether it is true.
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Marcus J. Borg |
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37f96ca
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When we read Paul, we are reading somebody else's mail--and unless we know the situation being addressed, his letters can be quite opaque...It is wise to remember that when we are reading letters never intended for us, any problems of understanding are ours and not theirs.
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Marcus J. Borg |
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975bd79
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God wills our liberation, our exodus from Egypt. God wills our reconciliation, our return from exile. God wills our enlightenment, our seeing. God wills our forgiveness, our release from sin and guilt. God wills that we see ourselves as God's beloved. God wills our resurrection, our passage from death to life. God wills for us food and drink that satisfy our hunger and thirst. God wills, comprehensively, our well-being--not just my well-bei..
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relationship
god
reconciliation
healing
salvation
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Marcus J. Borg |
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f6090e4
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More than half described Christians as literalistic, anti-intellectual, judgmental, self-righteous, and bigoted.
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Marcus J. Borg |
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495e406
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Salvation Is More About This Life than an Afterlife
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Marcus J. Borg |
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65b2c8a
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The way of Jesus is thus not a set of beliefs about Jesus. That people ever thought it was is strange, when we think about it -- as if one entered new life by believing certain things to be true, or as if the only people who can be saved are those who know the word "Jesus". Thinking that way virtually amounts to salvation by syllables. Rather, the way of Jesus is the way of death and resurrection -- the path of transition and transformatio..
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Marcus J. Borg |
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27f5af6
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The spoken word has come to dominate many Protestant forms of worship: the words of prayers, responsive readings, Scripture, the sermon, and so forth. Yet the spoken word is perhaps the least effective way of reaching the heart; one must constantly pay attention with one's mind. The spoken word tends to go to our heads, not our hearts.
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words
faith
god
language
experience
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Marcus J. Borg |
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8dd980f
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How can women be in the image of God if God cannot be imaged in female form?
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women
images
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Marcus J. Borg |
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f90e198
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When tradition is thought to state the way things really are, it becomes the director and judge of our lives; we are, in effect, imprisoned by it. On the other hand, tradition can be understood as a pointer to that which is beyond tradition: the sacred. Then it functions not as a prison but as a lens.
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faith
perspective
tradition
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Marcus J. Borg |
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776098f
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The political vision of the religious right is for the most part an individualistic politics of righteousness, not a communal politics of compassion.
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righteousness
politics
religious-right
individualism
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Marcus J. Borg |
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2a71e8c
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When somebody says to me, "I don't believe in God," my first response is, "Tell me about the God you don't believe in." Almost always, it's the God of supernatural theism."
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Marcus J. Borg |
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08706a4
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Our images of God matter. Just as how we conceptualize God affects what we think the Christian life is about, so do our images of God.
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god
life
conceptualizing
image
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Marcus J. Borg |
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ba0e54f
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But Christian illiteracy is only the first part of the crisis. Even more seriously, even for those who think they speak "Christian" fluently, the faith itself is often misunderstood and distorted by many to whom it is seemingly very familiar. They think they are speaking the language as it has always been understood, but what they mean by the words and concepts is so different from what these things have meant historically, that they would ..
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Marcus J. Borg |
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94e1bce
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Our central problem is not sin and guilt, as it is within the monarchical model. For the Spirit model, our central problem is "estrangement," whose specific meaning of "separated from that to which one belongs" is most appropriate. ... For the monarchical model, sin is primarily disloyalty to the king, seen especially as disobedience to his laws. The metaphors used to express the Spirit model suggest something else. For the metaphor of God ..
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relationship
love
unfaithfulness
obedience
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Marcus J. Borg |
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40e7964
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Jesus was killed. This is one of those facts that everybody knows, but whose significance is often overlooked. He didn't simply die; he was executed. We as Christians participate in the only major religious tradition whose founder was executed by established authority. And if we ask the historical question, "Why was he killed?" the historical answer is because he was a social prophet and movement initiator, a passionate advocate of God's ju..
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Marcus J. Borg |
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d6fea7f
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A perception of empire is found in an early Christian acrostic. An acrostic is a word made up of the first letters of each word in a phrase or sentence. In this case, the phrase is an early Christian saying in Latin: radix omnium malorum avaritia. Radix means "root," omnium means "all," malorum means "evil," and avaritia means "avarice" (or "greed"). Putting it together, it says, "Avarice (or greed) is the root of all evil." And the first l..
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Marcus J. Borg |
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59758f8
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Jesus died for our sins" has been understood. Among some Christians, it is seen as an essential doctrinal element in the Christian belief system. Seen this way, it becomes a doctrinal requirement: we are made right with God by believing that Jesus is the sacrifice. The system of requirements remains, and believing in Jesus is the new requirement. Seeing it as a metaphorical proclamation of the radical grace of God leads to a very different ..
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Marcus J. Borg |
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c490bf3
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It is a way of being Christian in which beliefs are secondary, not primary. Christianity is a "way" to be followed more than it is about a set of beliefs to be believed. Practice is more important than "correct" beliefs. Beliefs are not irrelevant; they do matter. But they are not the object of faith. God is the "object" of commitment--and for Christians, God as known in Jesus."
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Marcus J. Borg |
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02273fc
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The book of Proverbs makes the same point: Those who oppress the poor insult their Maker, but those who are kind to the needy honor him. (14.31)
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Marcus J. Borg |
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38c6353
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As an epiphany of God, Jesus discloses that at the center of everything is a reality that is in love with us and wills our well-being, both as individuals and as individuals within society. As an image of God, Jesus challenges the most widespread image of reality in both the ancient and modern world, countering conventional wisdom's understanding of God as one with demands that must be met by the anxious self in search of its own security. ..
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Marcus J. Borg |
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13d7464
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How we think about God matters. It affects the credibility of religion in general and of Christianity in particular. Our concept of God can make God seem real or unreal, just as it can also make God seem remote or near.
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christianity
religion
god
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Marcus J. Borg |
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d236dbc
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I]n addition to being a Spirit person, healer, and wisdom teacher, Jesus was a social prophet. There was passion in his language. Many of his sayings (as well as actions) challenged the domination system of his day. They take on pointed meaning when we see them in the context of social criticism of a peasant society. His criticisms of the wealthy were an indictment of the social class at the top of the domination system. His prophetic threa..
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Marcus J. Borg |
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d96aeaf
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In a number of workshops, I have asked people whether they have had one or more experiences that they would identify as an experience of God and, if so, to share them in small groups. On average, 80 percent of the participants identify one or more and are eager to talk about them. They also frequently report that they had never before been asked that question in a church setting or given an opportunity to talk about it.
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faith
god
experience
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Marcus J. Borg |
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979d5fd
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This book might also be seen as "a Christian primer." A primer teaches us how to read. Reading is not just about learning to recognize and pronounce words, but also about how to hear and understand them. This book's purpose is to help us to read, hear, and inwardly digest Christian language without preconceived understandings getting in the way."
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Marcus J. Borg |
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4a0481c
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To see Paul positively does not mean endorsing everything he ever wrote.
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Marcus J. Borg |
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5e3cc1c
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But prior to about the year 1600, the verb "believe" had a very different meaning within Christianity as well as in popular usage. It did not mean believing statements to be true; the object of the verb "believe" was always a person, not a statement. This is the difference between believing that and believing in. To believe in a person is quite different from believing that a series of statements about the person are true. In premodern Engl..
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Marcus J. Borg |
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d2b0a62
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And to belove God, to center in God, has an additional crucial meaning. To belove God means to love what God loves. What does God love? The answer is in one of the most familiar Bible verses, John 3.16: "God so loved the world..."
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Marcus J. Borg |
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c1566d3
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But "having dominion over" meant something very different from what it has often been understood to mean. It refers to the relationship between shepherd and sheep."
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Marcus J. Borg |
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9678bc7
|
Other prophets, other messiahs, came and went in Jesus' day. Routinely, they died violently at the hands of the pagan enemy. Their movements either died with them, sometimes literally, or transformed themselves into a new movement around a new leader. Jesus' movement did neither. Within days of his execution it found a new lease of life; within weeks it was announcing that he was indeed the messiah; within a year or two it was proclaiming h..
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Marcus J. Borg |
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0ae024e
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Humanity's universal sin is far, far worse than those traditional vice lists cited for Greeks and Jews by Paul in Romans 1-3. It is this: we have accepted violence as civilization's drug of choice, and our addiction now threatens creation itself.
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Marcus J. Borg |
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10307b9
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For Jesus, compassion was more than a quality of God and an individual virtue: it was a social paradigm, the core value for life in community. To put it boldly: compassion for Jesus was political.
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Marcus J. Borg |
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a50f1af
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a worldwide flood destroyed all life on earth about five thousand years ago requires denying an immense amount of generally accepted knowledge--from astronomy, physics, geology, paleontology, anthropology, archaeology, biology, cave paintings, and more.
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Marcus J. Borg |
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a7d4d8c
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That Christian faith is about belief is a rather odd notion, when you think about it. It suggests that what God really cares about is the beliefs in our heads-- as if "believing the right things" is what God is most looking for, as if having "correct beliefs" is what will save us. And if you have "incorrect beliefs," you may be in trouble. It's remarkable to think that God cares so much about "beliefs." Moreover, when you think about it, fa..
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Marcus J. Borg |
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db18481
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I conclude this section with a possibly puzzling postscript on the meaning of the word "literal." What is the literal meaning of a parable? Its literal meaning is its parabolic meaning. What is the literal meaning of a poem? Its literal meaning is its poetic meaning. What is the literal meaning of a symbolic or metaphorical narrative? Its literal meaning is its symbolic or metaphorical meaning. But in modern Western culture over the last fe..
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Marcus J. Borg |
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e3014f0
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Being Christian doesn't mean being anti-American, but it does mean that Christian identity and loyalty matter more than national identity and loyalty. When there is a conflict, Jesus is Lord.
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Marcus J. Borg |
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d5359a2
|
S]in in popular Christianity is often understood individualistically, obscuring the reality of "social sin." An emphasis upon sin most often leads to introspection about what I have done wrong. Of course, such introspection can be helpful, but it clouds the fact that much of human suffering and misery is not because of our individual sins, but because of collective sin. For example, when it is emphasized that Jesus "died for our sins" (and ..
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Marcus J. Borg |
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ebb1ff5
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In the modern period, the alliance between Christianity and the political order continues to some extent. But even more so, the dream of God has been submerged by the individualism that characterizes much of modern Western culture. The dream of God is quite different from contemporary American dreams. The dream of God - a politics of compassion and justice, the kingdom of God, a domination-free order - is social, communal, and egalitarian. ..
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Marcus J. Borg |
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261c460
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By the time I began college, anxiety about hell had disappeared--not because I was confident that I was "saved," but because the whole package had become sufficiently uncertain that I didn't worry about it."
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Marcus J. Borg |
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7fc76ce
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The four-week period of Advent before Christmas--and the six-week period of Lent before Easter--are times of penance and life change for Christians. In our book The Last Week, we suggested that Lent was a penance time for having been in the wrong procession and a preparation time for moving over to the right one by Palm Sunday. That day's violent procession of the horse-mounted Pilate and his soldiers was contrasted with the nonviolent proc..
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Marcus J. Borg |