The challenge of Insight!
It’s already Jan
18th in 2026! Time does not fly, but it passes steadily! Move with
it!
Scripture says a lot about insight, but sometimes I think it
requires insight in the first place to get into the sayings on insight! Like
confidence, too many sayings are wrapped up in what scripture calls ‘the
mystery of Christ’ which does not help us much. Let’s try and break it down a
little.
insight has several sources. It is often referred to as
intuitive sense, and that seems to be difficult to pin down. Why? Because you
have to develop it; it cannot be acquired. Each one of us must be dedicated to
truth in our lives, for in truth there is goodness. And God will lead and
encourage all of us. Hence the ‘seek, and ye shall find’. Consider the daily amount
of information we have before us and ask, how do we figure out what we should
read? And in what we choose to read, how to figure out what is true and what’s
an embellishment, an exaggeration, an overstatement/understatement, and an
outright lie? This year has been bad for the truth and good for lies. This is
where interactive and intuitive insight already begins to function! We have to evaluate our findings as we go and
figure out the right from the wrong in a self-teaching process because there is
no other way to develop insight as a skill. It cannot be learned from a book.
Easy when you only have 2 sources to deal with. Difficult and time consuming
when you get bombarded with a whole bunch of them!
We have been brought up to believe that unless the mind is trained
in an academic fashion it cannot think clearly for itself, but this is not so. There
is some truth in it, but it refers to a specialized aspect of knowledge that
only becomes relevant when it can be shown to be applicable and improve human
well-being! Every person grows, and everyone who seeks to think about everything
will grow. This is why the folk Jesus
called were not Pharisees, Sadducees, priests, or others of the same brand;
they were ordinary folk, like you and me. Fishermen. They learned by following
Jesus that the Spirit of God would teach them, and this is what happened. The
results showed that they were on the right track. They did not know about the
terms, ideas and concepts that the religious teachers spoke about, but they
knew how to make a real difference in the lives of those in need, here and now.
Like Peter in Acts 3:6 saying to one in need, gold and silver have I none, but
in the name of Jesus, walk! What has happened to the church since? Mostly, all
talk and a lot of sociology! We will pursue this as we go, for it is the one
true constant that the Bible says to all who follow Jesus. How to make a
difference in life! Without money.
Keeping that in mind, where are we now? Is academic insight
just an intellectual thing? Just of the mind, and while it might sound great it
does not make much difference in the end?
No, it is an important aspect in our world because of the way things
have developed, so that the academic tradition has had a lot of say in what is
right or correct and should be pursued. We just need to be clear that we do not
have to accept what it says. New words, new terms, ad infinitum, ad nauseum.
Our question must be simply what has made a real difference to the human
condition?
Walter Brueggeman - pastor, writer, theologian par
excellence, worked hard to make a difference for years. His ‘In Man We Trust’1 text should have been a best seller
forever - it was subtitled ‘the neglected side of biblical faith’; and never
was a truer phrase uttered. But it did not make much of a dent, because neither
church nor world was listening. In other words, insight is not always
appreciated. Seems unbelievable, but it does pose a good case for keeping
observations to yourself and sharing them only with like-minded folk!
Bruggemann noticed some time back that traditional
interpretive styles had shifted as the years passed, and they had become not so
much what the Bible says but more of what the interpreters of the Bible said.
So his response was to say, you know, we don’t need your interpretation as much
as we need to listen and hear the words of those who witnessed to the words
that are in the canon of scripture. All of the stories were shared, remembered,
and finally accepted and recorded. You cannot come along now and say, well,
we’ll use this one, it sounds good; don’t like that one, we’ll leave it aside,
and so on. I am summarizing here, but there is an entire text on Canon and
testimony and witness on which Walter snd Brevard Childs shared the work.2
And what about all that was left out, so that after seeming
to get lost, Jesus is found in the temple talking with Scribes and Pharisees.
He is 12. Then he ‘disappears’ for umpteen years and suddenly resurfaces when
John starts baptizing and talking about him. Where was he, and what had he been
doing? Did he go to seek the wise men from the East, and did the West decide
that they had the right of interpretation of what is relevant data and what is
not? Palestine is not a very large place and everyone knew for the most part
where their relatives and friends were. Questions, before us.
Then, think of Jim Wallis’s latest work, entitled The False
White Gospel.3 Written after
years of experience, struggling with being a witness to the socio-political
order in the US, he speaks of a battle between a growing false religion and the
true faith of the Gospels. The sub-title? ‘rejecting Christian nationalism,
reclaiming true faith, refounding democracy.’ He says that false religion has
privatized faith, so it is never public. It stays personal and does not
interact with anyone for any reason. It is a statement that a person makes i.e.
I am a Christian. What does that mean? Not known. It’s private. And because of
that, we have encountered gross contradictions between what people say and what
they do! It reminds me of folk who go to church when they baptize, marry or
bury and not otherwise. Why bother? The result of Christian identity, whatever
may be said or not said, lies in our everyday behavior and interactions with
others! We could go to church every week and it might make no real difference
in our life whatsoever.
Further, as Jim points out, it has worked to continue the
wickedness of cultural and ethnic supremacy. It’s like the old stories told in
James Michener’s Hawaii, where missionaries brought the faith to newbies, but always
ensured that they had the interpretive upper hand, or leg, whichever! It was never
the reality that all persons are created equal and will be treated as equal. There were always firsts among equals. And
there was always a racial and social hierarchy. Right down to stuff like the 'Slaves Bible' where all of the words on freedom were first taken out.
Jim says he has spent his life developing a theology of public discipleship. Why, for example, would Reagan’s one time Chaplain Falwell call African Bishop Tutu a fraud? Any real facts to back that? Nope. But thus the religious right began and thus lies are stated and spread. And when they are perpetrated and then perpetuated by the rich and the powerful, they are often believed by the poor and the less fortunate. As I have pointed out, even in the scriptures, male domination is very clear, from the very beginning. Men decide. But it was Palestinian then. Over the years, as the gospel spread, it became so that the chief spreaders, the white folk, presented themselves as the ‘white men decide’ folk.
I once caused a walk out on a ‘Homiletics’ (preaching)
Divinity School class because the guy ‘teaching’, nice missionary from Texas, made
no sense. That was hard for him. Never expected to be called out by a 3rd
world student. It got really interesting when I ended up, in my first Methodist
pastoral appointment, after Div. Sch, as his Asst Pastor, for a bit. When he
left he said to me ’now you can have it all’. But it wasn’t mine, and in a year
the church’s numbers had doubled. I left when I got invited to Duke by its then
Provost. Gave me some firsthand experience in the contradictions of faith and
reality.
A long time ago it was said that the ideas of the dominant
clan become the dominant ideas. If they control institutions, they get to influence
the behavior of those who are taught there. Let me keep chipping away at this –
for the longest time, in books, movies etc, Jesus has almost always been
portrayed as a fair skinned (white? beige?) man. Why? Because the guy telling
the story often uses his story telling opportunity to tell it the way he likes
it, so that it favors him and where he comes from. We all know how stories
change every time they are told. I have too many instances of listening to a
tale told where the loser even becomes a winner in the end. Sometimes, it is
true. It just takes time to self-correct. But Jesus the historical figure, was
Palestinian. A Jew. Not necessarily fair skinned at all. Like God would care? God
is Spirit. As I’ve said also, ‘the image of God’ does not refer to a physical image
but a spiritual one.
A lot of theology has been shaped by German academic work. German
academics kept good research standards, and so greatly influenced biblical
interpretation. But it was often a professional exercise, and the dimension of
the Spirit of God was often left out. You pick up professionals who do not
believe. And they will lead you. And where does that get you? You have to work
on that one.
When I was working on John Wesley’s 'Social Holiness' notion at
Duke Univ, they wanted me to take the work of one particular German scholar
seriously, but he was an academic non-believer and so I just skirted around his
work and used my own Singaporean context and an awful lot of Wesley’s works,
all made possible through the immense effort of Al Outler, who was in residence
at Duke at the time even! It helped. Brueggemann
thought it was a good approach. And John Wesley was much much more than a
professional academic when it came down to living his Christian life. He
created both the itinerant ministry and the rule of pastoral visiting from
house to house, which few have kept. I might have been one of the few
exceptions.
When we accept that this is how it has been for a long time,
we realize that it is high time to change the scales. With the exception of the
new Pope, most Christian leadership is lost, and is pretty much a blur case,
controlled by power and money i.e. by the ‘wealth of the world’. There are
exceptions, here and there. Good pastors, wonderful people I have been
fortunate to meet and work with in my lifetime. From a brother pastor now in
Australia, to 1 more in Malaysia, to 2
Methodist pastors now retired in Singapore and some sweet ones in North
Carolina and in Mass state. Few and far between.
What are we talking about? It’s about managing and
responding to the monopoly of interpretation. Western hegemonic or controlling,
interpretive modes. Where what is said to be true and correct is in the hands
of the interpreters i.e. church leaders, politicians, et al. No, It has to be
more than that. This is why in the Gospels Jesus takes such a stand against
Pharisees and their folk who laughed and mocked at his disciples as uneducated
men. The power of the Holy Spirit is not academic. It results in real time
change for the better. Such power is of God’s Spirit, and it will bless those
who are humble and seek to learn and grow. God bless us all. We will continue
with more on insight in personal and social holiness next week.
May The Lord God comfort you, guide you, protect you and
strengthen you, in all things; through Christ Jesus our Lord, G.
1 Brueggemann,
Walter; In Man We Trust; Eugene, Wipf, 2009; originally published by John Knox
Press, 1972.
2 Brueggemann,
Walter & Childs, Brevard; Canon & Testimony; Minneapolis, Fortress
Press, 1979,
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