Wednesday, June 26, 2013

[you will know them by their fruit...]

One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’  This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
Matthew 22:35-40, NIV.

It seems that a lot of us Christians missed this particular saying of Jesus, as our gay and lesbian neighbours sure haven't been feeling the love. A just-released survey of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans found that a high percentage of LGBT adults say that the evangelical church is unfriendly to them.


Friday, June 07, 2013

[what and Whom]

E. Stanley Jones writes about the centrality of Jesus, and about division and unity. While he is speaking in the context of India in the early 1900's, his words are very relevant today:

This Christian spirit scattered here and there in many hearts in India must express itself in some kind of corporate relationships. Some kind of a church will be the final outcome. We will put our Western corporate experience at the disposal of the forming church in India and we will say to her, “Take as much as you may find useful for your purposes, but be first-hand and creative and express Christ through your own genius.



While we cannot tell what may be the final outcome of this expression of the Christ of the Indian Road on the part of his followers in India, we can see at this distance certain things that will be avoided and certain things gained if they center everything upon Christ.

If India keeps this vision clear, she will be saved from many of the petty divisions that have paralyzed us in great measure. For at the central place of our experience of Jesus we are one. It is Christ who unites us; it is doctrines that divide. As someone has suggested, if you ask a congregation of Christians, “What do you believe?” there will be a chorus of conflicting beliefs, for no two persons believe exactly alike. But if the question is asked, “Whom do you trust?” then we are together. If the emphasis in our approach to Christianity is “What?” then it is divisive, but if the emphasis is “Whom?” then we are drawn together at the place of this Central Magnet. One has the tendency of the centrifugal and the other the tendency of the centripetal. He is the hub that holds together in himself the divided spokes.

Tuesday, June 04, 2013

dogma

dogma cartoon by rob g




Our dogma – what we believe about God and faith – is important. Yet depending on how we believe it and how we prioritize it vis-à-vis our relationships, our dogma can also be violent. Think of religious wars, church splits, conservative Christian parents rejecting their gay teenagers....

Miroslav Volf writes the following:
"...This brings us to the second implication of the encounter between Jesus, Caiaphas, and Pilate ...: the self of the other matters more than my truth. Though I must be ready to deny myself for the sake of the truth, I may not sacrifice the other at the altar of my truth. Jesus, who claimed to be the Truth, refused to use violence to “persuade” those who did not recognize his truth. The kingdom of truth he came to proclaim was the kingdom of freedom and therefore cannot rest on pillars of violence. Commitment to nonviolence must accompany commitment to truth otherwise commitment to truth will generate violence." (Exclusion and Embrace, p. 272. Emphasis added.)
From my perspective as well, relationships trump dogma. That doesn't mean I have to give up my beliefs; it does mean that I don't force them on others, I don't judge their faith or actions by their compliance (or not) to my dogma. I hold my dogma loosely. I believe in brutal unity.

How about you? Have you seen or experienced the effects of people holding their dogma tightly and valuing it above their relationships?

In Brian's words,
Is it so important to be right that alienation is an acceptable price?