Companion blog for the essay: "UNIFICATIONISM a critique & counterproposal"


"A religion does not need to be interpreted literally
in order to be valuable and taken seriously."
—Anonymous

Saturday, January 16, 2016

The Gospel According to Luke 1

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PAINTING: Leda and the Swan, Peter Paul Rubens, 1530. after a lost painting by Michelangelo

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Tuesday, January 12, 2016

Personal comments on the article; "What was God's Plan? ... 2,000 Years of Bearing the Cross"

Dear sister ... ,
Thank you again for this series. I like your comment; "show us a whole new lifestyle, a way of loving and connecting." Amen!
Nothing like the present moment, as they say.
You ask a very good question; "what was God's plan?"
I agree with Father Moon's notion that Christianity began later, after the life and death of Jesus. Jesus was Jew. A very good Jew. In the Jewish tradition boys become adults in the community at age thirteen. From what I've read, the average lifespan for a man in first century Judea was about thirty years old. Marriages were usually arranged by the parents beforehand.
I think it's safe to say there was something very unusual going on with Jesus' marital status in the gospels given the culture and times he lived in.
In one sense I think we can say he was married. He was married to his extended family of disciples and the women who supported him financially. That seems to be part of why he was so controversial at the time. They lived, traveled and slept together as itinerant preachers and teachers.
In the end, though, his whole "family" understood him less and less and abandoned him.
At the very end, God ("Heavenly Parents") abandoned him. What's up with that? (Something profound I think.)
My question is, would those same challenges have presented themselves, whether Jesus was thirty three and single, or ninety two and married with "five" (or fourteen) kids?
Respectfully
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BOOK: Christ Actually: The Son of God for the Secular Age by James Carroll

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Saturday, January 9, 2016

POEM: Hwang Jini c. 1506 – c. 1560

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Among the Flowering Reeds: Classic Korean Poems Written in Chinese (Korean Voices), Kim Jong-gil (Editor)

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Friday, January 8, 2016

Personal comments on the article: "2,000 Years of Bearing the Cross" posted January 6, 2016

Article link: http://dplife.info/blog/view/2000-years-of-bearing-the-cross/
Dear sister ... ,

 Thank you for your heartfelt comments about Jesus' passion. Thank you for creating this beautiful series. Great work! I hope you don't mind me throwing my two cents in by asking a few thought provoking questions to spark a conversation. Sorry if they seem rhetorical.
Wouldn't Jesus have died anyway, eventually?
Death is a big life event for everyone, right?
Wouldn't it be the responsibility of a messiah to be a model of how to die well, also?
Didn't almost all of God's children die a suffering and painful death (without the aid of modern medicine) in first century Judea? Hadn't they always?
Doesn't God grieve over all His/Her children's suffering and death?
Can a messiah really ever put an end to that kind of physical pain, suffering and death, that we all share in common?
In all four Gospel stories Jesus suffers, but doesn't quite die, right?
"Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him: but I will maintain mine own ways before him."—Job 13:15
Along with being aware of "God’s Historical Grief," can we also say that God may be very grateful, happy and proud of Jesus, for being a pioneer of dying well, and a victor over the death we all experience?
In the gospels didn't Jesus himself on the "cross" sing God a song?
"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? ... "—Psalm 22:1
The DP view of the messiah as a model for marriage makes sense and all, but when it comes to doing the heavy lifting for the sake of God's heart, isn't our suffering death the big one?

Marriages can come and go (even for prophets), but we only die once.
As Unificationists, can we "glorify" Jesus' courage to love and sing, in the face betrayal, abandonment (even by God), suffering, and death?
Respectfully
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