1) This is an alarming reading. It seems to say that the state of a nation's level of right relations with its citizens has an impact on relationship with God. By vv.8-9 it seems to say that fix up social life and then God will hear prayers.
2) God seems to say that religious ritual is sullied by poor social behavior "outside the stained glass."
3) Please note: This is yet another reading that casts down the common Christian reading of Judaism as a ritualistic, formalistic religion. The easy formula of many Christians is a religion of the heart. Here even sincere religious activity is called into question when it does not have corresponding social behavior.
4) Instead God desires a "social fast" to release the bonds of injustice.
5) It then moves into what Catholics called, or still call, corporal works of mercy. In our time, ti would be fast during the Super Bowl, but then have a Souper Bowl of Caring. Purely individual spiritual action and reflection is called into question here, a powerful question for a culture that speaks of spiritual seeking that may well be meditation on the glories of oneself or aesthetic pleasures of nature.
6) Consider the pointing of the finger as our blaming the victim, especially the poor, for their plight. Our insistence on using individual levels of analysis when social categories are called for blinds us to the reality of social condones as impinging on individual life.
7) Social restoration points toward the image of a watered garden, made all the more powerful as this is desert land. Where would social life appear as a watered garden. Where should it appear as a watered garden: schools, retirement homes?
8) I think Robert Schuller pointed Clinton to the line of repairer of the breach.
9) What does it say about us when we castigate those who seek to repair social breaches and celebrate those who seek to widen the breaches?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment