The Divine Magician: The Disappearance of Religion and the Discovery of Faith by Peter Rollins
Book Jacket
In an effort to unearth the power of Christianity, Rollins uses a magicians framework to explain the mystery of faith that has been lost on the church. In the same vein as Rob Bell's bestseller Love Wins, this book pushes the boundaries of theology, presenting a stirring vision at the forefront of re-imagined modern Christianity.
At the heart of Rollins' message is a life lived through profound love. That's all a person can really ask for from others these days, that at the base of decisions great or small, is a respect for, appreciation of and simple care for the other. Like most other words of the English language, 'love' has been hijacked and desensitized, but whatever remains that is not ought to be enough to lean on for a decent code of conduct for living a good life. Of course, the danger of loving your neighbor, friend or family is that these persons will at some point cause you pain--intentionally and unintentionally--but, as the apostle Paul puts it so eloquently in his first letter to the church of Corinth: "...if I do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal." In other words, Love anyway.
"The focus of correcting a religious belief that we think is incorrect thus obscures the more important and difficult task of discovering why a particular belief is held in the first place and how it functions in our lives. When we situate the question of faith at the level of the how rather than the what, the question regarding what it means to believe in God is transformed... If we move away from the importance of what we believe to questions concerning how our belief functions, then its easier for us to acknowledge that there might be some of the theist, the atheist and the agnostic in each of us, even though one might take precedence over the others." pg. 171
I'm no longer interested in what a person believes if their behavior doesn't reflect the basic code of conduct outlined above. Life can be absolutely brutal on a person as I have learned time and again, and while I once leaned on a faith that gave me strength to persevere because of what I would become on the other side of death and suffering, I do so no longer--faith must be something that strengthens for today's troubles, for the here and now. Because, as my dear friend Carl reminded me before his death to ALS at 39 reminded me, "tomorrow is not promised."
Believe what you want and need to believe in order to live a life worthy of the gift we've been given--the gift that of life you did nothing to put into being. I just hope you strive to live faith vs having it or owning it, as if it were something you can acquire along the way like an iPhone or Netflix subscription. May you learn to join the fray that a life of undeconstructable faith offers and courageously put it into action, as a 'believer' or otherwise.
"To borrow from a term from philosopher Jacques Derrida, faith can be described as undeconstructable. What this means is that faith is a type of ethereal call that invites us into a loving and passionate commitment to the world. In response to this call, we create beliefs and systems that attempt to embody this commitment and put it into action...the lived certainty of faith has no regard for carefully constructed worldviews but instead describes a lived protest against forms of life that treat existence as worthless." pg. 118
Book Jacket
In an effort to unearth the power of Christianity, Rollins uses a magicians framework to explain the mystery of faith that has been lost on the church. In the same vein as Rob Bell's bestseller Love Wins, this book pushes the boundaries of theology, presenting a stirring vision at the forefront of re-imagined modern Christianity.
At the heart of Rollins' message is a life lived through profound love. That's all a person can really ask for from others these days, that at the base of decisions great or small, is a respect for, appreciation of and simple care for the other. Like most other words of the English language, 'love' has been hijacked and desensitized, but whatever remains that is not ought to be enough to lean on for a decent code of conduct for living a good life. Of course, the danger of loving your neighbor, friend or family is that these persons will at some point cause you pain--intentionally and unintentionally--but, as the apostle Paul puts it so eloquently in his first letter to the church of Corinth: "...if I do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal." In other words, Love anyway.
"The focus of correcting a religious belief that we think is incorrect thus obscures the more important and difficult task of discovering why a particular belief is held in the first place and how it functions in our lives. When we situate the question of faith at the level of the how rather than the what, the question regarding what it means to believe in God is transformed... If we move away from the importance of what we believe to questions concerning how our belief functions, then its easier for us to acknowledge that there might be some of the theist, the atheist and the agnostic in each of us, even though one might take precedence over the others." pg. 171
I'm no longer interested in what a person believes if their behavior doesn't reflect the basic code of conduct outlined above. Life can be absolutely brutal on a person as I have learned time and again, and while I once leaned on a faith that gave me strength to persevere because of what I would become on the other side of death and suffering, I do so no longer--faith must be something that strengthens for today's troubles, for the here and now. Because, as my dear friend Carl reminded me before his death to ALS at 39 reminded me, "tomorrow is not promised."
Believe what you want and need to believe in order to live a life worthy of the gift we've been given--the gift that of life you did nothing to put into being. I just hope you strive to live faith vs having it or owning it, as if it were something you can acquire along the way like an iPhone or Netflix subscription. May you learn to join the fray that a life of undeconstructable faith offers and courageously put it into action, as a 'believer' or otherwise.
"To borrow from a term from philosopher Jacques Derrida, faith can be described as undeconstructable. What this means is that faith is a type of ethereal call that invites us into a loving and passionate commitment to the world. In response to this call, we create beliefs and systems that attempt to embody this commitment and put it into action...the lived certainty of faith has no regard for carefully constructed worldviews but instead describes a lived protest against forms of life that treat existence as worthless." pg. 118
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