Sunshiny Day Finally!

Bob and I are going to Joplin this morning so I am leaving soon but want to post this interesting analysis. I have been reading a book by Marcus Borg and he has some interesting comments I found helpful. This is another way of looking at the gospels as well as the stories we were often taught as children about Santa Claus and the tooth fairy.

Precritical naivete:: A childlike acceptance of metaphorical narratives such as Santa Claus and the tooth fairy as “true”.

(the next stage happens naturally and automatically as we mature and grow up.)

Critical thinking: a stage involving evaluating things we believe and were taught in childhood.

Postcritical naivete: the ability to hear the central stories of childhood as metaphorically “true” again. One knows the stories may not be historically factual but one also knows that their truth does not depend upon their historical factuality. This is sometimes known as “narrative theology”.

Postcritical naivete provides a way of hearing the gospel stories of Jesus as deeply true. The gospels and the Bible generally are full of stories whose truth is known in Christian experience.

As a Native American storyteller once said, “I don’t know if it actually happened this way or not, but I know this story is true”.

Bob and I went to Joplin this afternoon. We walked the mall and then went to Olive Garden for lunch. We had a good lunch there of salad and soup. I had my favorite, Zoopa Toscana. We got home about 4:45 and he evidently took a nap. I got the Reader's Digest and read it and then took it over to him. He had fallen asleep while watching TV.

Tomorrow we will go to church.