Images of the Church and the Christians' Imagination in Java

Abstract

We have reams of ideas about the church. We like to talk about
them, amazed by their resourcefullness. But these are ideas. When it
is the ideas that are touched upon, the actors on the stage are not the
ordinary people. They are intellectuals; indeed, theologians. It is a
church-talk. However, when it comes down to the faithful, the
church becomes churches. The ideas become images. The talk
becomes imagining. For Christians in Java, togetherness in the
circles of friends and families has always been an everydayness.
And in this togetherness, what is spoken about is not the idea, but
first of all the 'image' of a familial community. These people have a
lot of time to share how they can live their lives at each moment.
They are not very much 'systematic' in their way of sharing
experiences, and they do not want to complicate things, for they
already think that things have always been complicated enough in
life. Their simple hopes and concerns are always oriented towards
the harmony of their community life. They imagine, interpret and
evaluate many things, so as to find the relatedness of realities in
their togetherness. In this sense, this paper wants to capture those
marvelous moments driven by the believers' imagination on the epistemological level of the believers' experience.