A Sound of Sheer Silence

1. There are many radical ideas and claims in Christianity.  But if I had to pick one, it would be what Christianity, or more specifically Jesus, has to say about power.  There are probably other religious or wisdom traditions have a similar take on power, but I am not aware of any that present it so clearly and so forcefully. Here is what Jesus, in essence, teaches us about power:  We think that power and having power (in all of its normal forms--authority, money, sex, fame, social or other kinds of status, etc.) makes us powerful.  In fact, phrased this way, it sound like a self-evident truism.  But, and here is the truly radical part, it's not true.  And not just not true--having power and acquiring power and protecting power actually is a trap, a prison that disempowers us in the end.  In fact, the only way to obtain something like "power," if that's the right word, is to voluntarily and self-consciously give up all of our power. As I s...

David Bentley Hart, a well-regarded classics scholar and provocateur, has published his own translation of the New Testament that is a fascinating read.  Hart's goal with this new translation is to try to capture what it would have been like for a 1st Century reader to encounter these texts for the first time, as opposed to the more staid and committee-driven versions to which we are now accustomed.  My Greek is no where near good enough to judge whether Hart has succeeded in capturing these subtle nuances of the original, but his text has a striking quality to it, far different than any other translation I have encountered. In particular, one thing that Hart conveys very effectively is a frantic, almost manic, quality to many of the texts of the New Testament.  This can be seen most clearly in the earliest texts--Paul's letters and the Gospel of Mark.  Everything is in a hurry, everything is coming soon, events are moving quickly toward their conclusion.  Pa...