Brian’s Reflection: Tuesday, July 21, 2009

All good books have one thing in common –
they are truer than if they had really happened.

- Ernest Hemingway, author, born on this
date, 1899


Fiction. That’s what I mostly read, and have read, for over four decades as the best source of solid theological reflection. I certainly have preached more sermons with illustrations from fiction than any other source. And my practical theology has been solidly based on fiction – where the most profound human issued are dealt with. In this, I include the Bible. The Bible is essentially fiction – stories told by great storytellers, confronting and interpreting the great human issues, as well as those issues that have created the stories of the Deities.

Human experience is the place where you will find the most solid basis for our understanding of “God”. And the Hebrew scriptures are a grand example of that truth. The image of God has always arisen out of human experience, out of the amazing human consciousness and human imagination.

And so, this point: if you are seeking “God”, look within. Ask yourself: What am I seeking that will shape, support, determine, the glory of being human, of being myself? We must be like the Hebrews, rejecting deities demanding human sacrifice. From there, we move on. Rejecting a “God” who is unfair, unloving, partial, vindictive, meanspirited, ungenerous, judgmental, tyrannical. In Jesus, as seen freed from all those limiting characteristics imposed by his early followers who sought to establish their power, we see an icon of the True God. For all people. That “Jesus” has been revealed in every age, by many cultures and religions.

Myth, i.e., the telling of the Truth, is the greatest treasure of our human history.

Treasure them. Plumb their depths. Be discriminatory. Enter into them. They offer freedom.

Brian+