Revelation, a movie and culture (Nijay Gupta, Richard Bauckham)

Nijay Gupta has written a great blog post concerning worldview and counter-reality. Here I will cite part of his post (which includes a great quote from Bauckham's book cited by Gupta).

Richard Bauckham, discussing the way Revelation approaches this, writes thusly

…one of the functions of Revelation was to purge and to refurbish the Christian imagination. It tackles people’s imaginative response to the world, which is at least as deep and influential as their intellectual convictions. It recognizes the way a dominant culture, with its images and ideals, constructs the world for us, so that we perceive and respond to the world in its terms… In its place, Revelation offers a different way of perceiving the world which leads people to resist and to challenge the effects of the dominant ideology. (p. 159 of The Theology of the Book of Revelation)

Let me give two movies as examples of how to think about worldview. The first example, tired and overused as it may be, is still poignant – The Matrix. The Matrix is its own world, but, more importantly, it proposes its own worldview where people inhabit an environment with rules, reality, values, etc… Alternatively, there is the “real world” outside of the matrix. That alternative place has an alternative set of rules, values, reality, etc… When Neo is awakened to the real world, he must keep everything he learned in mind when he goes back into the other world (the Matrix). Hence, he has to repeat to himself, “there is no spoon,” because the matrix “reality” would naturally force him into the limits of its ostensible rules. Cypher, on the other hand, knows about the “real world” and lives in it, but much prefers the world of the Matrix (“ignorance is bliss”).

Click here for the entire blog post by Nijay Gupta.

On prayer: Some good points by Nijay Gupta

Nijay Gupta has posted some good stuff on his blog. It's in response to Daniel Kirk. I haven't read Kirk's posts on this matter. But in and of themselves Nijay Gupta's points are worth reading.

Click here for the post.

Nijay Gupta's review on Love Wins

Nijay K Gupta has written a review on Rob Bell's Love Wins.

Here is part of his introduction:

"Before we get started, I wanted to quickly comment on how Christians, and evangelicals in particular, should approach a controversial book. Because so many things were said to condemn Bell and his book even before it was released, we can see a dangerous trend among conservatives of a shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later technique. This raises the question: are we (Christians, and I am talking to my fellow evangelicals in particular) a teachable people? Sure, we have convinctions [sic]. We can draw a line and say: this is what I believe and what is outside of that I don’t believe. However, I think we (evangelicals) often cross over into the dangerous realm of only accepting inside scholars and, when we do happen to engage in dialogue with outsiders (be they Catholics, agnostics, Orthodox, etc.), we only do so trying to gain more converts to our perspective. The danger in this framework is that we lose a sense of humility and shared recognition that while we have convictions, we still have much to learn, and especially from each other. 

That does not mean that you accept any and every teaching that comes your way, but you say to yourself: maybe I have something (even if something very small) to learn from a fellow human being who has worked hard (presumably) to comment in a fruitful way on an important subject..."

 

Gupta discusses the book under the headings of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.

Click here for the post in his blog.

Click here for the full script.

An article about Ephesians, the empire and resistance (Nijay Gupta and Fredrick Long)

Nijay Gupta and Fredrick Long have written a good article about Ephesians, the empire and resistance. (Follow the link here to get to the article.) Here is an excerpt.

"In the course of this article, we have engaged passages in Ephesians that have been problematic insofar as they have been interpreted to support an accommodationist reading of the letter. Specifically, we have investigated those passages concerned with rulers and authorities (1.15-23; 2.1-3; 3.10; 6.10-13) and the Household Code (5.15–6.9). Certainly other texts could have been included in our analysis. Our conclusion is that far from supporting the status quo, Ephesians often confronts and trumps imperial prerogatives and titles while also subverting conventional wisdom about household relations. This is achieved by featuring as the head of the church body a political leader and ruler, Jesus Messiah Lord, who himself modeled sacrificial love (1.4-8; 3.15-19; 5.2, 25, 29) and expects such from his followers (4.20-24; 4.32–5.2; 5.25-29)." (Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity and Judaism, 7 (2010) 112-36, page 135)

I tend to think that as we follow Jesus' self-giving way of life and seek to embody his sacrificial love, we will find ourselves living a life that is counter-cultural. We do not live counter-culturally for the sake of being counter-cultural. But Christ's sacrificial love is in itself counter-cultural, and if we follow him we learn to do what he did (even though only in small measures). There are many powers (political, social, economical, religious) that seek to dehumanise God's image-bearers, and it is through Christ's love, his death and resurrection that people can find hope.