Tuesday, April 14, 2009
~ A Thought ~
It seems to me that making a person believe that they will get what they want if only they try to have a little more faith, to pray a little harder, or more often, is a thoughtless and cruel burden to place on them when they are already bowed down by pain. To use a picturesque expression, it is really kicking them when they are down.
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Excerpt from "Meeting Jesus again for the first time: The historical Jesus and the heart of contemporary faith" by Marcus Borg
p. 79
...I grew up as a Lutheran, in a tradition that emphasized salvation by grace and not by "works of the law." Indeed, "justification by grace" was the battle cry of the Lutheran Reformation; Luther's own personal and theological struggle had been against "salvation by works." As Lutherans, we all knew that we weren't saved by "works." Rather, we were saved by "grace through faith."
Yet this strong emphasis on grace got transformed into a new system of conventional wisdom, not only in my own mind but, I think, in the minds of many Lutherans, and many Christians generally. The emphasis was placed upon faith rather than grace, and faith insidiously became the new requirement. Faith (most often understood as belief) is what God required, and by a lack of faith/belief one risked the peril of eternal punishment. The requirement of faith brought with it all of the anxiety and self-preoccupation that mark life in the world of conventional wisdom. Was one's faith/belief real enough, strong enough? Thus, for many of us latter-day Lutherans, the system of conventional wisdom remained. Only the content of the requirement had changed - from good works to faith.
p. 88
The gospel of Jesus - the good news of Jesus' own message - is that there is a way of being that moves beyond both secular and religious conventional wisdom. The path of transformation of which Jesus spoke leads from a life of requirements and measuring up (whether to culture or to God) to a life of relationship with God. It leads from a life of anxiety to a life of peace and trust. It leads from the bondage of self-preoccupation to the freedom of self-forgetfulness. It leads from life centred in culture to life centered in God.
jO
Yeah, the employment section of the Bible mentions three guys just like that - kicking a guy when he's down. They get a good ticking off from God for it.
But anyway shouldn't we be asking God what HE wants for us?
Sounds like a clever question, but taken seriously it is seriously scary.
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