I happened to read the dust jacket of McLaren's book "A New Kind of Christian" today and although I think I've probably read it before, I hadn't remembered it - or maybe it just struck me in a new way tonight.
Do you ever have that situation where you read something time after time, and then one time you read it it just stands out, as if you're reading it for the first time? Well that's how it was with this piece.
Here's what it says, and I'll let it speak for itself:
'This stirring fable captures a new spirit of Christianity - where personal, daily interaction with God is more important than institutional church structures, where faith is more about a way of life than a system of belief, where being authentically good is more important than being doctrinally "right," and where one's direction is more important than one's personal location.'
This sums up brilliantly how I feel...I think I may take this week to mull over each part of this paragraph and see what comes as I meditate on it.
More soon...
2 comments:
Yes, I do sometimes read something again and it's as if it's for the first time. Can't think of a specific example right now, but I like the one you gave. Actually, the definition of faith as a way of life rather than a belief system gels very well with what the theologian Marcus Borg writes in his book "Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time," where he says that faith is essentially about being in a relationship with God, not about adherence to any particular creeds or doctrines. Obviously, for Christians that relationship with God is modeled by Jesus, and we relate to God through him, but in the end it's about God, not about Jesus.
On another note, I just spent a few minutes browsing the emerging church website, and I came across the following quotation, used as part of a meditation by an emerging church in Norwich, UK:
"We are free, because at every moment in our lives we are both judged and pardoned, and are consequently placed in a new situation, free from fatalism, and from the bondage of sinful habits."
The quote is by Jacques Ellul, a French 20th-century philosopher, and when I saw his name I realized that I had come across it before, though I can't remember where. But I do remember that it was in the context of a thought or idea that at the time struck me as profound, which is why I remembered his name (I'd like to think that I've forgotten that quote because it's become a part of my life so I don't need to recall it. Probably wishful thinking!).
Anyway, I love this Ellul quote because it deals with the issue of judgment without minimizing it. If we're judged, pardoned and therefore free, there is some responsibility that comes with that: we can't fatalistically say that we can't do anything or that things must just continue the same, whether in our own lives or in the world at large.
As I may have written in an earlier post, I hate the idea of judgment that suggests there will be a celestial reckoning on some far-off (or not so far-off) day. If Jesus died for us 2000 years ago, then we're already saved, and in one sense there ain't nothing we can do about it! In another sense, our whole life should be a response to that fact. The question is not, "Are you saved?" but "Can anybody tell?"
I had the same experience this week. It was actually with the Bible. I was reading in Luke when Jesus is talking about prayer and says 'ask and it will be given you' etc. I could quote the passage off by heart. But it really struck me. I had been asking God about a situation for some months now for a friend to find a flat. And last week she moved into one. It was a situation where I felt unable to try and engineer it in anyway but was needed for both of us to be able to move on. So I'd been throwing it up at God and he has responded without me having to do any of the work.
Well that just suddenly struck me and gave me hope for other things to change like my kids getting really caught by the love of God just as I have or seeing church change beyond the institutional nightmare it is now - big things but...
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