My latest blog dwells of John narrative of the crucifixion. It is John alone who adds the detail of the seamless tunic (or undergarment) woven in one piece to his narrative. It is the symbol of what God is revealing and doing. Jesus, in John’s understanding, is saying, “In the new order there shall be no schism, but you shall be one and you shall love one another and be woven together from above.
In the modern West, in Christianity, faith is still primarily about what people believe and how they behave. A person is in a right standing with God when they acknowledge the validity of certain conceptual truths and by living as God wants. The evolution of Christianity from the first to the third centuries and the triumph of Christianity in the fourth century has now become an existential crisis for Christianity. We have endured thirteen centuries of a new kind of religiosity, Nicene orthodoxy. It is at an end, this doctrinaire belief in theological niceties and certainties, the inherited orthodoxy and traditionalism.
This is the blog it has taken me nearly three weeks to write because I knew that engaging with the hostile energy of the Peter Ould’s blog was futile. Our wisdom, attention, time, and creative energy needs to be focused not on engaging with those defending abusive, hierarchical, dogmatic ways of thinking and acting based on Scripture and an anthropomorphic idea of God but on the divine energy which is always evolving and flowing through creation and inspires people, despite the unfortunate endeavours of the church, to trust their feelings and intuition, marry the person they love, live with the person they choose, and share uninhibitedly the glorious liberty and freedom of creation in which the poor and disenfranchised are tenderly blessed by God, “the internal, the infinite, and unnameable”, to quote my young, wise South African friend Zinana.
