Fringe Benefits of Frailty...

Over the past year, I've discovered that i can't do all-nighters anymore, a bit of a shock, considering that i regularly pulled them through college and into seminary, where the Madison trio could be expected to pull stereophonic all-nighters during exam week. No longer.

On the plus side, working late now means 12:30, and i am going to call it a night, with further comments on John 6 to come in the morning. In the interim, a few words from John Howard Yoder will suffice, commemorating my first full read of The Politics of Jesus. (brief impression: he wrote this thirty-plus years ago...whoa. yeah, i may soon become a yoder groupie)

Regarding Paul's statement about social pressure:

What he says is not, as some conservative religious groups would say, that the gospel deals only with personal ethics and not with social structures. Nor does he say that the only way to change structures is to change the heart of an individual, preferably the one in power, and then see that he or she exercises control of society with more humility and better standards. What needs to be seen is rather that the primary social structure through which the gospel works to change other structures is that of the Christian community. Here, within this community, people are rendered humble and changed in the way they behave not simply by a proclamation directed to their sense of guilt but also by genuine social relationships with other people who ask them about their obedience; who (in the words of Jesus) 'bind and loose.' (153-4)