The God I connect to is not the God who has a wise, perfect reason for every stage 4 cancer diagnosis but the God who is crucified with us as the world continuously blows up in God’s face.
The crucified God is a lot scarier to believe in than the God who is in absolute control of everything all the time. But the paradox is that crucifixion is more powerful than control. A crucified God compels a crucified people to rise up and become his body.
The universe is a state of continuous crucifixion and rebirth. That’s how life moves. Watch natural processes. The violence in the universe is not that of a puppetmaster orchestrating with surgical precision but that of a self-combusting supernova giving birth to new stars.
Control is not in the nature of the divine. Control is the constipation of divinity, a blockage that temporarily stops up the natural process until the divine bursts through in rebellion. What happens in the universe is that everything ultimately falls into rhythm.
But the rhythm of the universe is always evolving and it doesn’t need to be understood as purposeful in a narrow, anthropocentric, rationalistic sense. When we speak of God, we are metaphorically describing the rhythm that makes the universe happen.
So to me, crucifixion works better than control as a metaphorical depiction of what I see happening in the rhythm of galaxies and molecules, at least if you want to draw your God more like Jesus than Jupiter (the Roman god whom most American Christians actually worship).

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Morgan Guyton

Morgan Guyton Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @MAGuyton

21 Jul
I don’t need to come up with a speculative explanation for why the apostle Paul wrote in some places that women need to be quiet. Inerrancy be damned. The fruit is plain: silencing women has been a disaster for the church. I don’t care what Paul says in those passages or why.
The reason I don’t need to do exegetical acrobatics with Paul’s words is that I read Paul the way he tells me to read him and I’m emulating his playful, creative engagement with his theological tradition. Paul is an irreverent poet, not a high-strung lawyer like John Calvin.
I actually believe what Paul says about God, that he has “imprisoned all to disobedience so that he might have mercy on all” (Romans 11:32). In other words, God sabotages our attempts to feel “obedient” and give ourselves authority in order to crush us with his mercy.
Read 19 tweets
20 Jul
The greatest obstacle to our ability to hear the voice that anoints us with belovedness is our desperate need for validation. As long as I am seeking validation, I will invalidate every offer of belonging God sends me.
When I was severely depressed, I remember thinking it doesn’t “count” that my mother loves me because it's her job to love me. But every day she anointed me a little more with her patient refusal to give up on me. And it planted a seed by giving me a taste of belovedness.
It’s taken a long time for belovedness to “count” for me. I’ve needed to fail a lot and feel worthless and self-disgusted. I am still learning how to give up on trying to matter to the world. Because giving up on trying to matter seems to be the ego death that is required.
Read 6 tweets
9 Jul
I want to propose a vocation for white men: becoming fools. That is, learning how to engage in the opposite of disembodied rationalism, which is the cultural disease our ancestors bequeathed us and everyone else they tried to colonize.
Now when I talk about white men, I have to first of all specify that I’m talking about a specific kind of white man: those of us who use the word “we” presumptuously because we know ourselves to be the protagonists of history.
The empire consists in the collective agency of those who consider ourselves to be the protagonists of history and the generic melting pot of humanity. “White man” is short hand for European-descended titans of industry and anyone else who embodies the global market.
Read 26 tweets
31 Jul 20
And of course #CalvinistTwitter is mad because a preacher yesterday used the suffering servant passage to talk about John Lewis instead of Jesus. So let’s talk about that. #thread
Was John Lewis wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities? Did his stripes cause us healing as a people? I don’t think any white person should ever say anything close to that. It would be terribly presumptuous. But can a black preacher?
One of the most important theologians I’ve read is Jon Sobrino who talks about the pueblo crucificado who are crucified with Jesus. James Cone similarly makes an analogy between the lynching tree and Jesus’ cross. For me, Cone and Sobrino rescue the cross from irrelevance.
Read 13 tweets
20 Dec 19
Authoritarianism is the heresy of American evangelical Christianity. Thankfully Trump has revealed that it's about worshiping authority, not Jesus, the Bible, or anything else. Jesus and the Bible were only tools in the service of authority.
I honestly believe that American evangelicalism today is a manifestation of what Romans 1:18 looks like in action. The wrath of God is revealed as heresy is handed over to the full nakedness of its blasphemy.
What is glorious is how many are being awakened. It is as I prophesied in 2012. The herd of swine are racing for the Lake of Fire and the demon-possessed church is waking up in the graveyard fully clothed and in its right mind.
Read 6 tweets
7 Jun 19
Lately as the abortion bans have picked up steam, I’ve seen more and more social conservatives circulating the idea that extramarital sex can be regulated naturally by the threat of pregnancy.
This has always been at the core of Roman Catholic “natural law”: that if sex has “consequences,” people will do it the “right” way. But now it’s being mainstreamed in evangelical circles as well.
In other words, evangelicals want to say on the one hand that humans are depraved, selfish, and irrational, but that these selfish, irrational creatures will suddenly temper the strongest natural urge that we have because of a rational consideration of practical consequences.
Read 12 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

:(