AKMA has figured out that, amidst speculation that Jesus might have been married, the real dirty secret of early Christianity was that Jesus was half man, half dolphin.
But notice — he associated with fishermen, and he had an inexplicable knowledge of where to catch the most fish even though he wasn’t a fisherman himself!
Yet another mystery solved by the Clue Kids.
The preacher today talked about Huck Finn. He built the sermon around Huck’s moral dilemma–whether or not turn in his friend, the escaping slave Jim. For Twain, he argued, the shore of the Mississippi represents society and everything wrong with it. The raft they travel on, on the other hand, represents the individual and freedom from society. Unfortunately, he reasoned, we cannot stay on the raft forever; eventually we must return to shore. The trick, then, is to return to the raft whenever we are able.
Huck’s redemption, he argued, came when he stopped to think about his friendship with Jim, tearing up the letter he had written turning him in. The individual alone in thought thus represents the epitome of human goodness. But, as the preacher noted, Twain had no more illusions about the individual and his conscience than he did about civilization and society. Even for Huck, it was his conscience that encouraged him to turn in Jim, a conscience that spoke on behalf of society, that spoke with a voice not Huck’s own. As the preacher noted, Twain believed the conscience could be trained to advocate any “awful sacredness” if just enough time and effort were applied, a belief Twain seems to share with Foucault.
Since it was his friendship with Jim that brought him away from his wrongdoing conscience, wouldn’t it be relationship–not thinking–that is primary? Wouldn’t the raft–inhabited by both Huck and Jim–symbolize that relationship? The constructed–or torn–self is too closely related to society to be held up as the epitome of human goodness. It is society’s creature. And it’s too busy, too harried, besides. Couldn’t it be that what Henry Nelson Wieman called the “original self”–that is, the untorn self–is what engages in deep relationships? Couldn’t it be that unadulterated friendship is what we must return to whenever we are able?
We can partake in the “creative interchange,” that is, an appreciative understanding of the other that leads to an appreciative understanding of ourselves. This occurs in four ways:
Thus, the good news is that we can know others as they really are, know their “original selves,” that is, the self before it is torn, or the untorn self. Through that, we can become more ourselves and reconnect with our own “original self.”
We can be free. We can be good, for no reward at all. We can be both rational and spiritual. We can follow our own path. We can draw from many wells.
Real Live Preacher defines “denomination.”
Let us take care of things for you, sweethearts. Don’t worry your pretty little heads, but do keep sending your money because we did 125,247 good things for Jesus last year, the highlights of which can be seen on our 16 minute video promo. With your help, next year will be even better, praise the Lord. Next year we might do over 150,000 good things for Jesus.
Later he writes:
The goal is a magical balance. You want the lay people to be impressed enough to send money, but you want them intimidated enough to stay out of the way. It’s good if you can flash a lot of Ph.Ds and some unthinkably complex flow-charts.
His solution?
If we quit managing thousands of good things and did one good thing, I think we would know the joy of work and the pleasure of rest. We would know the rhythm of week and Sabbath, of work and play, of night and day.And if all of us were doing one good thing, wouldn’t that add up to millions of good things?
And isn’t that what we said we wanted all along?
Amen and amen. Now if we could just talk about committee meetings…
