Book Content
The Prophetic Imagination reveals a mistakenly overlooked reality in the Bible, tracing from Israel’s beginning and continuing through to Jesus’ resurrection. Bruggemann refers to this reality as the alternative consciousness. His purpose in writing this book is based on his belief that we as believers should strive to live in the alternative consciousness, a reality that is hard to identify and maintain. Every people that has ever emerged from their surrounding society and into the alternative consciousness in Biblical history has failed. According to Bruggemann, our American church has lost their identity by abandoning faith tradition. Today we live in a society deprived of memory, and ridiculed for hope. I think Bruggemann’s purpose in writing this book is to challenge today’s forgetful and numbed society to remember and feel. (pg. 1-2) This book needed to be written because Jesus’ death and resurrection has brought newness to our previously failed states of consciousness and opportunity to the alternative consciousness.
My …show more content…
I also had an assumption that the prophets were just as confused by God’s wrath as I was. I thought they must have also questioned God’s justice and righteousness in the extreme destruction we see in the Old Testament. But I had a realized in chapter three when Bruggemann talks about the grief Jeremiah felt for the people fate, and the grief he felt for himself as no one would listen to his warnings. Bruggemann writes, it was a “genuine grief because he cared about this people and he knew that God cared about this people.” (pg. 47) God cares. He would not grieve death if there was a way to prevent the death in the first place. Bruggemann claims that God isn’t “an enemy who must punish or destroy, but the hopeless parent who must stand alongside death.”
The Prophetic Imagination reveals a mistakenly overlooked reality in the Bible, tracing from Israel’s beginning and continuing through to Jesus’ resurrection. Bruggemann refers to this reality as the alternative consciousness. His purpose in writing this book is based on his belief that we as believers should strive to live in the alternative consciousness, a reality that is hard to identify and maintain. Every people that has ever emerged from their surrounding society and into the alternative consciousness in Biblical history has failed. According to Bruggemann, our American church has lost their identity by abandoning faith tradition. Today we live in a society deprived of memory, and ridiculed for hope. I think Bruggemann’s purpose in writing this book is to challenge today’s forgetful and numbed society to remember and feel. (pg. 1-2) This book needed to be written because Jesus’ death and resurrection has brought newness to our previously failed states of consciousness and opportunity to the alternative consciousness.
My …show more content…
I also had an assumption that the prophets were just as confused by God’s wrath as I was. I thought they must have also questioned God’s justice and righteousness in the extreme destruction we see in the Old Testament. But I had a realized in chapter three when Bruggemann talks about the grief Jeremiah felt for the people fate, and the grief he felt for himself as no one would listen to his warnings. Bruggemann writes, it was a “genuine grief because he cared about this people and he knew that God cared about this people.” (pg. 47) God cares. He would not grieve death if there was a way to prevent the death in the first place. Bruggemann claims that God isn’t “an enemy who must punish or destroy, but the hopeless parent who must stand alongside death.”