Incarnation and Imagination with Darby Ray: Homebrewed Christianity 71

Good one fellas! Is Parker going to be doing more reviews? He should. Glad to hear your thoughts Dr. Ray. Just orderd your book.

This podcast was so interesting and so inspiring. Using our God given imagination is a subject that I have been very interested in for many years now. It started with me when I began reading scripture first very literally, then searching for the meaning I gleamed from the verse or verses and then using my imagination to place myself in or onto the scene. Putting myself in the place of a character and trying to imagine what it must have been like from their perspective. That brought reading my bible alive for me as well as Lectio Divano reading of the bible. Several years ago I was asked to write something to use for our Easter devotional booklet at church. With imagination I became in my devotion the character of Joanna, as my name is Jo Ann. Using this character the way that I did was not biblically acurate. However, it did get my message across. My character, Joanna, was writing a letter to one of her friends trying to tell her of this extrodinary person she had met, namely Jesus and how she had fallen in love with him. She followed him to Gethsemane and hid behind a tree. From that space she could see Jesus and his disciples. I wrote of the agony of Jesus' praying. She felt his pain as he cried out to God. In my story she told other instances of what she witnessed as she followed Jesus around. In the end she tells her friend that she must come and meet this man she so dearly loved. That's one way for me to use my imagination. It led me to think of how this story affected my life. Another is similar to Darby Ray's examples as she told of looking around to find how she could as "the incarnated Jesus" find a ministry to involve herself with. One was, she chose the education of our children. I too have chosen that path and now work with our local CHANGE organization in a small action group to work with city officials and non-profits to find ways to better educate and graduate our students. We are also working on dropouts, suspensions and bullying gathering data and statistics and reporting what we learn. We brought together all non-profits that are currently doing anything with our schools for a summit meeting. We plan another summit for this spring. With Christ like lens, we hope to make a difference by using our God given imaginations to come up with ways to help. Thanks for this outstanding podcast and tell Darby she now has another fan.

I enjoyed the podcast and appreciated Darby's enthusiasm. I found her description of Augustine's devil as symbolism for human evil was very helpful. I'm looking forward to reading her book. If I could follow up with a few questions, I'd love to know why she understands "the devil" in Augustine's work (and the tradition of the church) as a metaphor for human evil and systemic powers, but her viewpoint shifts toward a more literal interpretation of God and Jesus. I might have missed something or just not been able to follow the back and forth of her metaphors, so please let me know if I imagined this shift. It doesn't appear that she is using a consistent lens for all the characters and events in the story. Why not view Paul's Christ (and the Gospels) through the same literary lens that you read Augustine's devil? Why not read God as a symbol for our communal values, which works to save us from our own evil? Why not read Christ as a symbol for the manifestation of those values that comes from our choice to turn from (die to) our imperialistic nature (pride) and be resurrected as new creatures (changing our moral character) and incarnating these values (God) into the world? Wouldn't that give your theology more integrity and consistency? Props to Ryan Parker for the movie reviews! My concern about Avatar is that it would be too much like watching 10000 flying jar jar binks characters flying around the screen. CGI has not done much to help make movies better.