Now I'm digesting Ms. Tickle's introductory essay in which she describes how the two-year project affected her. One of her discoveries was that she moved from seeing Jesus' words as objects to be studied and analyzed to letting them reach out and take her into to them.
The power of Jesus' words in real. They are not usually "inspirational," but something much more intense, uncomfortable and exhilarating. Phyllis Tickle attributes that to Jesus' burning concern, his consuming divine love for each of us.
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So, will this be the next Wednesday night book study after we finish N.T. Wright? I was reading an intersting interview of Ms. Tickle where she said, "Every one of us has the need and the obligation and, as Christians, the vocation to enter into the words of Jesus for what they are. Then, we may come back to the intellectual overlay we place over our faith...But there’s more to the experience of entering into the scriptures than all of the intellectual deconstruction that we’ve been taught to do these days in Bible study. The mind is important, but ultimately I’ve come to believe that the heart is the seat of the soul.
"In faith, it’s the function of the mind to inform the heart and to give the heart pieces to work with –- but it’s not the function of the mind to take over the whole role of the heart."
If we take this book on as a study source it could wind up being a more challenging study than N.T.'s "The Last Word" has been.
You may have the gift of discernment, Rick! I am indeed considering proposing this for our fall Bible study, but I have considered another book as well, Peter Scazzero's Emotionally Healthy Spirituality. And there may be yet others to consider, too.
Yes, I think The Words of Jesus could well be more challenging, but on a different level. It wouldn't be us studying his words so much as his words studying us. Squirm, squirm!
I really like Wright's comment. Speaking of Richard Hooker, Wright states, “Part of the legacy of Hooker…was precisely that holistic worldview which insists, not that scripture should be judged at the bar of “reason” and found wanting, but that in reading and interpreting scripture we must do so not arbitrarily, but with clear thinking and historical judgment” (p. 80).
It seems both mind and heart are integral parts of the Christian experience for God is the creator of both. Must one live under or over the other?
Anon, you are absolutely right. Didn't mean to be either/or rather than both/and. Well...
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