"Christ and the Apostles"You know, if we only paid attention to the controversial issues of the day, we could easily be forgiven for concluding that Christianity is all about rules and monitoring people's behavior. In the excerpt from an Advent sermon below, the preacher claims that Christianity, in fact, is about something altogether different:
In part we've got it wrong because we have misunderstood Christianity. We have failed to understand that we belong to a religion of relationship, not a religion of law. In a law religion it is our job to follow the rules, and, if a messiah is part of the package, it is also our job to wait for that messiah to come, following the rules in the meantime. In a religion of relationship, in Christianity, our job is to acknowledge our relationship with God and to engage in that relationship as living beings, just as God is a living being. That is our essential commitment as Christians: by becoming Christian we commit to a relationship with God, with Jesus -- not to a rule of law, but to life with another human being who is also God.
Living well with Jesus, thus living well in the kingdom of God, requires what all relationships that flourish require: presence -- listening, responding, listening again, responding and so on. It is hard to have a healthy relationship with someone if you never show up or only rarely acknowledge their existence. The relationship does exist no matter what you do, but it is simply an unhealthy or inactive relationship if you fail to participate as active partner. Those of us who have unhealthy and inactive relationships with Jesus have them more out of ignorance than out of ill will; but ignorance is easy enough to overcome, and a new church year is a good time to work on that overcoming.-- Jane Wolfe
Your "relationship" with god tells you to do one thing; Pat Robertson's tells him quite another.
ReplyDeleteWhich one should others believe? Why? How could you prove your case?