Dave Brisbin | 3.18.18
The central question for any who calls themselves Christian or a follower of Jesus has to be the one Jesus asks his followers–and by extension all of us–in Mark 8, “Who do you say that I am?” The question has as many answers as there are followers most likely, but how do we come to the best answer that we can muster as a group? Leonard Sweet comes to our rescue with the term EPIC, which for him is an acronym standing for Experiential, Participatory, Image-based, and Communal. He has said that this is the way the youngest generations among us process information as opposed the older generations of the Modern world who are Propositional, Representational, Word-based, and Individualistic. The differences are profound in terms of worldview and attitude toward life, but the immense relevance really hits home, when we realize that the ancient peoples who wrote our scriptures were EPIC too.
The central question for any who calls themselves Christian or a follower of Jesus has to be the one Jesus asks his followers–and by extension all of us–in Mark 8, “Who do you say that I am?” The question has as many answers as there are followers most likely, but how do we come to the best answer that we can muster as a group? Leonard Sweet comes to our rescue with the term EPIC, which for him is an acronym standing for Experiential, Participatory, Image-based, and Communal. He has said that this is the way the youngest generations among us process information as opposed the older generations of the Modern world who are Propositional, Representational, Word-based, and Individualistic. The differences are profound in terms of worldview and attitude toward life, but the immense relevance really hits home, when we realize that the ancient peoples who wrote our scriptures were EPIC too.
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Our interpretation of ancient, EPIC scripture has been arrived at through anti-EPIC glasses and has been colored by attitudes and beliefs alien to the writing. If we are going to answer the central question of Jesus’ identity, we first have to tackle how it is we are asking and the means by which we ask.
