Apr 02 2024
1. Cole’s translation of John 12:25 is as follows:
“Anyone who maintains their life will lose it, while anyone who comes to the end of themselves in this world of violence and corruption will keep it for the eternal kind of life.”
What do you take away from this translated version? What does it mean - in concrete terms - to maintain your life in the sense of this passage as it was taught?
What does it mean to “come to the end of yourself?” What might that look and feel like? Have you had experiences that you see as coming to the end of yourself? How easy or hard is it believe that these experiences are gateways to an eternal kind of life?
2. Cole shared a quote from Dr. Cornel West: “What the cross is is unarmed truth.”
Spend a little time discussing as a group what is meant by the term “unarmed truth.” What is “unarmed truth?” How is it distinct from other things we might call truth? What are its identifying characteristics?
Does the West’s quote tally with the understanding of the term you’ve generated as a group? Looking at West’s quote as a whole, what is being communicated? What does this powerful statement mean?
3. Cole suggested that maybe the obsession Christians seem to have with determining who is “in” and who is “out” isn’t about theology, but, instead, is about privilege.
What’s your experience with that question, who’s in and who’s out? Have you spent time in a religious community that was particularly interested in it? If so, what do you see as the impact that a focus on that question may have had on that community and your experience of it?
To what extent is that a question you still wrestle with? How often does it surface in your mind, either in regards to someone else or to yourself?
What do you make of Cole’s suggestion that persistence in answering this question might be about privilege? What surfaces for you in response to that statement?
If this is a question that takes up significant space in your mind, how would you feel about surrendering it and ceasing to engage in the question? What comes up for you if you consider simply never trying to answer that question again?
4. Cole also shared an excerpt from Dr. Martin Luther King’s “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community.”
“We must see now that the evils of racism, economic exploitation and militarism are all tied together. And you can’t get rid of one without getting rid of the other.
“Jesus confronted this problem of the interrelatedness of evil one day, or rather it was one night. A big-shot came to him and he asked Jesus a question, what shall I do to be saved?
“Jesus didn’t get bogged down in a specific evil. He looked at Nicodemus, and he didn’t say now Nicodemus you must not drink liquor. He didn’t say, Nicodemus you must not commit adultery. He didn’t say Nicodemus you must not lie. He didn’t say Nicodemus you must not steal. He said, Nicodemus you must be born again. In other words Nicodemus, the whole structure of your life must be changed.
Now that is what we are dealing with in America. Somebody must say to America, America if you have contempt for life, if you exploit human beings by seeing them as less than human, if you will treat human beings as a means to an end, you thingafy those human beings.
And if you will thingafy persons, you will exploit them economically, and if you will exploit persons economically, you will abuse your military power to protect your economic investments and your economic exploitations. So what America must be told today is that she must be born again. The whole structure of American life must be changed.”
After reading the excerpt, Cole posed a rhetorical question: “Is this a call for every Christian to be a Civil Rights activist?”
Well, what do you think? Is it? Discuss as a group.