At Pam’s suggestion I have begun reading Marilynne Robinson’s book “Gilead”, which is written from the perspective of a dying pastor. It is good thus far and according to Pam it gets amazing at the end. Her suggestions a usually spot on so i look forward to the end of the book.
Just read the portion and really liked it.
I was sitting there listening to old Boughton ramble along (he uses the expression himself) about a trip he and his wife made once to Minneapolis, when Jack broke in and said to me, “So, Reverend, I would like to hear your views on the doctrine of predestination.”
Now, that is probably my least favorite topic of conversation in the entire world. I have spent a great part of my life hearing that doctrine talked up and down, and no one’s understanding ever advanced one iota. I’ve seen grown men, God-fearing men, come to blows over that doctrine.
I like the passage because I understand the feeling. Predestination is an oft spoke about doctrine that very rarely seems to help either the speaker or the listener follow God. I believe it can help the follower of Christ but I just haven’t experienced many conversations where that has been the end result.
But, in general, take my advice, when you meet anything that’s going to be human and isn’t yet, or used to be human once and isn’t now, or ought to be human and isn’t, you keep your eyes on it and feel for your hatchet.
Mr. Beaver, Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, p. 147
I’m presently reading “Resident Aliens” by Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon and just read the following quote which goes along well with my thoughts from yesterday.
… the fundamental issue, when it comes to Christian ethics, is not whether we shall be conservative or liberal, left or right, but whether we shall be faithful to the church’s peculiar vision of what it means to live and act as disciples. p. 69
“Friend” is not an official title, or a role we have to play, or a function in society. We have our brothers and sisters in the nature of things, and have to live with them. But friendships grow up out of free encounter. Friendship is a personal relationship between people who like one another. Friendship combines affection with respect.
Combining affection with respect does not mean wanting to serve the other person, or having to help him, or making use of him. It means simply liking someone for themselves, just as they are. The affection has to do with the being of other people, the respect has to do with their freedom. Friendship is the opposite of appropriation or the desire to possess. If we become aware of any such intention, we are put off, and the friendship withers. In friendship we sense that there is a wide space of freedom in which we can expand, because we are trusted and can lay aside the protective mechanism of mistrust.
I am finishing reading “The Spirit of Life” and loved this quote. I love his description of friendship. All the more interesting when you consider that apparently Jesus’s enemies said the following concerning Him.
The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’ But wisdom is proved right by her deeds. (Matthew 11:19)
I think that is consistent with the picture of Jesus presented in the New Testament. He loved people. He loved being around people, no matter their state of being. This doesn’t mean that He didn’t call everyone to repentance, He just also respected people’s freedom of will (sorry my Calvinist friends).
Just me and my bud Miroslav hanging out with each other. 🙂
A while back I read “Free of Charge” by Miroslav Volf. I believe I have mentioned in the past that I love Volf’s writing and speaking. He is wonderful. Here’s a quote from “Free of Charge” that I really enjoy.
God is an inexhaustibly fertile source of everything. But is it true that God demands nothing? If it were true, how could Jesus urge us, as he does in the Sermon on the Mount, to be perfect as God is? Here is what we do as worshipers of a Santa Claus God: We embrace the conviction that God is an infinitely generous source of all good, but conveniently forget that we were created in God’s image to be in some significant sense like God – not like God in God’s divinity, for we are human and not divine, but like God “in true righteousness and holiness” (Ephesians 4:24), like God in loving enemies (Matthew 5:44). To live well as a human being is to live in sync with who God is and how God acts.
“Free of Charge”, p. 26.
I bear the image of God. Therefore, I need to be like Him in His holiness yes, but also in His justice, His mercy, His grace, His generosity, His sacrifice, His suffering, His love. To bear the Imago Dei is a powerful demand and a powerful thing. To believe in a generous God should lead to us understanding and acting on the truth that we were created in the image of that generous God. The image we are created bearing is supposed to shape who we are and how we act.
That’s the problem with a Santa Claus god. Santa Claus doesn’t serve as a challenge to us to live in generosity and sacrifice (though the story of the real St. Nick should do just that). Nope Santa is culturally someone who just gives to us, supposedly when we are nice and not naughty, but usually no matter what. But a truly generous God Whose image we are created bearing, well that’s another thing all together. Being created in the image of that generous God calls us to live that image out. It calls us to give as God gives, to all who were created in His image.
In addition since there are traces of the Imago Dei (these traces are known as the vestigia Dei) all around us, we, as image bearers, should be drawn to and respond to those traces. While the saying may be that “Opposites attract” the reality is that we are drawn to things and people with which we have similarities. For an odd example consider the report that has been recently released by the Federal Reserve Board suggesting that people with similar credit scores tend to have more successful committed relationships. We connect more strongly with people and things with which we have a common resonance. Like attracts like.
Jürgen Moltmann writes that early Christians often preferred eros to the word agape when referring to our response to God’s love, because eros is a surrendering to attraction and desire, while agape reflects a self’s decision. Eros has God as the initiator and us as those who respond out of desire. If (and when I say “if” I mean “since”) there are traces of God’s image in the people (and creation) all around us, no matter how distorted those traces are, we should still be driven to love them because of the attraction we have to the traces of God’s image in them. The Imago Dei in us can’t help but be attracted to the Imago Dei we see in others. We are driven by the desire of “like attracting like” to love our neighbor because of the desire we have been created with to love God. Like a teenager who can’t stand to be away from her first crush, our desire for God should pull us.
Courage is not something that you already have that makes you brave when the tough times start. Courage is what you earn when you’ve been through the tough times and you discover they aren’t so tough after all.
“As total man, as ideal man, as the man of possibilities or the man of decision, man must himself accomplish things which he cannot accomplish. The divinization of man makes him not more human, but rather more inhuman. An anthropology which, in the modern post-Christian sense, intends to be the heir of theology, loses sight not only of the real God but also of real man.” p. 107.
The messianic hope was never the hope of the victors and the rulers. It was always the hope of the defeated and the ground down. The hope of the poor is nothing other than the messianic hope.
