Welcome to Gaza

Please don't follow this link if you want to keep enjoying your comfortable and blessed little world, because it is starkly grotesque. You are a blessed people, and if that's all you want to know, you shouldn't even be on this blog let alone following this link. On the other hand if you want your eyes to be opened to those who suffer at the hands of democracy, empire, and power.....Welcome to Gaza.

Absolute...Relational???

Kyle,

I have enjoyed reading your blogs from time to time. I just got done reading your latest one on love broken down in the hearts of people. The idea of Jesus being Truth and Love is not foreign to me, but with reading some from Claiborne, Donald Miller, and William Young (The Shack) my idea has morphed into a primary emphasis on Jesus out of which truth flows instead of Jesus deriving his truth from an objective standard of truth. As I have come to more concretely view Jesus as Truth and Love about whom true statements are made, a tension has developed first in myself and in has leaked out to included those around me who view truth more as an objective set of standards. What I am wondering is how we should go about engaging this tension. I think that I can see some of the objection of primary relational truth (that is truth as understood in relationship to Jesus). Some have run away with the concept and have practically justified any sin in the process. If you have the time and can decipher my thoughts as presented in the above writing, I would love hear your response.

Thanks, Joel Butikofer


Thanks for the question Joel; a good one at that. I would like to begin with a disclaimer. I cannot REALLY answer your question, since I am asking the same question myself. I can interact with it; however, and by the grace of God, be not led astray.
The gulf between practice and ideology can be disheartening at times. Unfortunately much sin has been justified under the auspices of relational truth. I would like to credit this fact to another fact; as you said, truth, including relational truth, has been used, abused, and raped.
I think we must be careful to avoid setting relational truth over against objective truth, or vice versa. We often define relational truth as being free from all absolutes. This is not so. Relational and absolute truth are not enemies. Truth understood in relationship to Jesus is absolute. I think we need a new category that does not set truth against itself (objective vs. relational/subjective). We could call this new category Jesus Christ. Those who would rape truth to justify a sinful lifestyle have raped Jesus Christ. These people have used the objective and subjective categories to their benefit. This is why I don’t like the present categories. Our categories should not allow us to rape Truth so effectively. This is why I am not okay with us using our definition of truth to point our finger at something other than ourselves, when we encounter a perverted society. In short, making truth relational, does not free us to abandon all absolutes as many have assumed.

Love Broken Down in the Hearts of the People

Valentines day has apparently inspired someone, somewhere to step out in faith and attempt a pitiful shot at a sort of counterintuitive love. The love was simply oozing from the virus that my secret lover unloaded on my computer several days ago. The time I spent rooting the infection out of my system is now written deeply upon the tablets of my heart, and I am now entering a holy war against perverted love.

May I first deconstruct a common yet unconscious assumption concerning love?
(continue reading)

"23 Minutes in Hell"

Oh the horrors….a grim kind of horror that causes one to bear down and launch out with new resolve…a kind of urgent resolve to regain that which can never be regained. I’m speaking of those books that lure you in with their gripping titles. You know what I’m talking about; they’re usually short, pointed yet pointless, and eye catching. Titles like: “Cheese Problems Solved,” “The Encounter,” “God Has Feelings,” “Adams and Atoms,” “The Killing Gift,” and “Mucho Ado about Nothing.” Unlike these titles, which I have either never cracked or simply made up on the spur of the moment, there is another real, “on the shelf,” title that ought to be included in such a list……“23 Minutes in Hell”….oh the horrors. (Continue reading here)

Response to "I know that I don't Know"

One of the things I've come to enjoy more than anything else about blogging is the responses I get from some of my readers. Sometimes its a link to another blog that is relevant, or a news article, or even a reference to a historical event(redundant huh :))I also get personal responses sometimes; its amazing what people read! Only those who know who they are, have the courage to respond usually, and since they are so courageous they often respond directly to me...so I just took my comments off my page. I may post some or part of these responses at times, with permission of course. Here is part of a recent response to, "I know that I don't know."

Again and again I come more and more to realize that knowledge doesn't satisfy the requirements for becoming a son of God in the likeness of the Son of God. Knowledge doesn't redeem me. However, knowing God, living in relationship with Him works redemption in us. Hmm.. this sounds too good in writing. What does knowing God mean for me when I wake up tomorrow and talk with God and then go for breakfast and then work all day? Is this some mystical state of "Knowing God" without regard to the rest of life or does this involve all of what I do? I "know" the answer by way of memory and thought, but I wonder what my experience says. Maybe another way of saying it is that good ideas or desires don't produce a saint, it involves more than that. May Christ continue to work in me, not letting me rest until know him more fully than before.