So Much To Think About

“I love mankind! It’s people I can’t stand!”A character in a Peanuts cartoon once declared.
The statement accurately describes our problems with the particular. It is easy to love almost anything in general – it is the particular that brings problems.
Nowhere could this be more true than with God. Speaking about God in the abstract is extremely common – after all – He is “everywhere present, filling all things.” He is all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good-  all, all, all. The very nature of such speech is generalized and generic.
However, it is impossible to experience anything in general. For the great scandal or stumbling block of particularity is not so much God but us. We are inescapably particular – it is an inherent part of being human. We are circumscribable; we are limited; we are local. And we chafe at such limits. We prefer that the ego of modern man become the measure of the world itself. That which does not interest me does not exist.
The abstract, generalized God is the god of modernity. The generalized God cannot offend – there is nothing offensive about Him. But just as He cannot offend, neither can He be known because there is nothing there to be known. We only know particulars.
Everything by which we know God is particular. The ultimate particularity is Christ Himself – the God who can be circumscribed, drawn, pictured, nailed, spat upon and crucified. 
Fr Stephen Freeman

Being honest with God
Ryan continued. “I just kept running faster and faster until I just couldn’t run anymore. Then all my anger exploded out of me. I began yelling at God—actually cussing at God.”
I involuntarily giggled—not good form as a listener, but Ryan laughed too. Cussing at God seemed so uncharacteristic of this ministry leader. “Did it feel healing?” I asked.
“It was! Suddenly I felt the presence of God and was deeply impressed that God was thanking me for finally being honest. Right there on the path, I began crying and collapsed to the ground. God wanted me to be honest. It was life-changing and the beginning of what has become a remarkable ongoing conversation with God. Now I understand there isn’t anything that can’t be expressed.”
From “Trauma in the Pews” by Janyne McConnaugehy

Crime
Hardly a day goes by without the media telling us that voters are concerned about crime, worries second only to inflation and the price of gas (which is going down). Just yesterday, NPR reported that former president Trump said “”Our country is now a cesspool of crime … We have blood, death and suffering on a scale once unthinkable because of the Democrat Party’s effort to destroy and dismantle law enforcement all throughout America.” These concerns regularly show up in opinion surveys as people worry about crime, whether rampant or not. In 2020, Gallup reported that more Americans thought crime was going up than have since the 1990s.
The FBI data always corrects incident reports (actual crimes) into crime rates. Basically, you divide the population figure by 100,000 and then divide the incident count by that figure. If a town of 200,000 people had 24 violent crimes, you’d divide the 24 by 2 and have a crime rate of 12.0
The US violent crime rate peaked in 1992 at just under 778 violent crimes per 100,000 population. The figure for 2020 (the last FBI data available) is 398.5, which is up from 380 in 2019.
The gap between these two charts is telling. From 2003 on, the majority of the public believed that crime was increasing year over year. While there is a minor increase between 2005 to 2007, it’s a steady story of general decline through 2014. Part of the answer for this mismatch is the constant stories (real and fictional) about crime across the country. The actual data tells a very different tale.
By the way, here is data relative to the subtitle above. It is common for politicians and law enforcement types to point at Chicago and say, “why doesn’t somebody do something?”. When you control for population size, you find that Chicago had a homicide rate of 18 per 100,000. That’s bad, for sure. But if you do the same analysis for all reporting municipalities in Illinois, Chicago comes in 21st. On aggravated assault, they finish 30th.
Scot McKnight

Reformation – Losing Weight
In America, with few exceptions, we all want to know what we need to do in order to lose weight. And everyone is eager to tell us. From Keto diets to intermittent fasting to the management of macro-nutrients to cross-fit training to the whole thirty to any number of pre-packaged food products and supplements, there is no end to the weight loss systems and solutions out there. Some will tell us to weigh every day. Others will tell us to throw away the scales. Some tell us to count calories. Others tell us to count points. Some tell us to lift weights. Others tell us to run faster. And frankly, there is no end to our willingness to buy into one or more or twenty of these schemes across the decades of our lives. The truth is all of them work. The truth is, also, none of them work. 
All of them are built around a highly functionalized model of behavior management. If you will do these things and not do these other things you will experience the change you seek, i.e. weight loss. Through one’s behavior they essentially transform themselves. It works to the extent you work. This functional model works but its working is 100 percent dependent on you sticking with the program. The minute you stop working the program everything reverts back. There is a term for this kind of program in all of its forms. The term is reformation. It is the endless agenda and effort to re-form something to what it was before. 
On so many fronts (weight loss among them), we have all been seduced by and caught in an endless cycle of reformation. The same can be said of our churches. 
Reformation is not a bad thing. I just don’t think it is really what Jesus is up to. In other words, Jesus does not work by a functional model of change. He works by a transcendent model of formation. Jesus is about transformation not reformation. We are not reforming ourselves with God’s help. God is transforming us with our participation. 
See what happens when the two words come together: trans-form. Jesus does not bring a program of re-formation to people or the church. He brings a process of trans-formation. Reformation is an external change program. Transformation is a process of the transfiguration of our inner person; of becoming that which is presently beyond our ability to comprehend. It is not the recovery of a past form but the receiving of a future form in the present state. 
Reformation works—if you will work it. It is a hard fought outcome. It will require unrelenting, often slavish, effort. And when you stop working, it will stop working, and you will immediately begin reverting back. Transformation is of another order entirely. Transformation is a gift. In fact, it is a glory. It comes not by functional activity but by transcendent receptivity. 
JD Walt

“People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome.”
George Orwell

Contemplation
The desert monastics are clear: Self-righteousness is cruelty done in the name of justice. It is conceivable, of course, that we might find a self-righteous religious. . . . It is probable that I might very well find myself dealing with a self-righteous friend or neighbor or even family member. But it is not possible to find a self-righteous contemplative. Not a real contemplative.
Contemplation breaks us open to ourselves. The fruit of contemplation is self-knowledge, not self-justification. “The nearer we draw to God,” Abba Mateos said, “the more we see ourselves as sinners.” We see ourselves as we really are, and knowing ourselves we cannot condemn the other. We remember with a blush the public sin that made us mortal. We recognize with dismay the private sin that curls within us in fear of exposure. Then the whole world changes when we know ourselves. We gentle it. The fruit of self-knowledge is kindness. Broken ourselves, we bind tenderly the wounds of the other. . .
Joan Chillister. 

STILL ON THE JOURNEY