Cultural Christianity
There is a certain way the gospel is heard when one’s stomach is empty and a very different way it is heard when people are satisfied. The gospel is first heard by people who were longing and thirsty, those who were poor and oppressed in one sense or another. They know their need and emptiness.
Religious education has for years given people answers to the questions they are not asking. The people accept the answers quickly and easily. And very often they spout the answers for the rest of their lives. For example, “God allow suffering to test us” and stuff like that. I call them canned answers. People apply the answers they learnt to questions without thinking as if they were as simple as some mix and match thing. People change but the answers (not implying content but method) do not and that is where the problem begin. Try saying that to someone who is going through intense grief, the answer, however true, will fall flat.
Such knowledge can pass away as quickly as it came because of the basic reason that we never thirsted for it in the first place. Until we make space inside, what comes is not an answer but an excuse not to face the question, an excuse to stop searching, to avoid the journey and sadly many people are no longer on that journey. We have easy Christian answers before we struggled with the questions.
If we wished to know more about the heart and mind of God, we will have to ask Him to allow us to feel what it means to be empty, to be abandoned and to be uncared for. We must go inside and find the rejected and fearful parts within each of us and try to live there if life has not placed us there yet. That should allow us a deeper communion with the oppressed of the world and at the same time a deeper understanding of the heart and mind of God. And most importantly His desire to reach out to them.
We have to face our fears and doubts. An awful lot of religion is an excuse for not facing our fears and doubts. True religion is not of denial but of transformation by God (Romans 4:17) “who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were.” God walks us into our fears, to feel them, to own them and to let them teach us.
God’s heart is love and His love is for the people, lets not give answers and quote scriptures as if the answers and scriptures are more important than the people.
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Speaking of scriptures, nothing in the New Testament says that the primary authority is the scriptures themselves. Scriptural authority points itself to God. And since the scripture is the word of God for the people, then the direct authority of Godly/Christian living should be based on the word of God. This is the concept! When we make an idol of the book, when we make an end to the words themselves, we get into trouble. The point of scripture is to do the very thing that that writers of scripture did, that Moses and Abraham did, to go out on a journey and there meet the Lord. And then continually come back to the word of God for confirmation and consolation.
Jesus told his religious leaders that they “know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times (generation).” (Matthew 16:3 emphasis mine) What Jesus is saying is that if we are not a listening people, a discerning people, a humble and open people, we are not going to find much truth. We are simply going to have our scripture passages and instead of them being an avenue to God, the scripture themselves becomes a barrier.
God’s heart is love and His love is for the people, lets not give answers and quote scriptures as if the answers and scriptures are more important than the people.
Religious education has for years given people answers to the questions they are not asking. The people accept the answers quickly and easily. And very often they spout the answers for the rest of their lives. For example, “God allow suffering to test us” and stuff like that. I call them canned answers. People apply the answers they learnt to questions without thinking as if they were as simple as some mix and match thing. People change but the answers (not implying content but method) do not and that is where the problem begin. Try saying that to someone who is going through intense grief, the answer, however true, will fall flat.
Such knowledge can pass away as quickly as it came because of the basic reason that we never thirsted for it in the first place. Until we make space inside, what comes is not an answer but an excuse not to face the question, an excuse to stop searching, to avoid the journey and sadly many people are no longer on that journey. We have easy Christian answers before we struggled with the questions.
If we wished to know more about the heart and mind of God, we will have to ask Him to allow us to feel what it means to be empty, to be abandoned and to be uncared for. We must go inside and find the rejected and fearful parts within each of us and try to live there if life has not placed us there yet. That should allow us a deeper communion with the oppressed of the world and at the same time a deeper understanding of the heart and mind of God. And most importantly His desire to reach out to them.
We have to face our fears and doubts. An awful lot of religion is an excuse for not facing our fears and doubts. True religion is not of denial but of transformation by God (Romans 4:17) “who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were.” God walks us into our fears, to feel them, to own them and to let them teach us.
God’s heart is love and His love is for the people, lets not give answers and quote scriptures as if the answers and scriptures are more important than the people.
-
Speaking of scriptures, nothing in the New Testament says that the primary authority is the scriptures themselves. Scriptural authority points itself to God. And since the scripture is the word of God for the people, then the direct authority of Godly/Christian living should be based on the word of God. This is the concept! When we make an idol of the book, when we make an end to the words themselves, we get into trouble. The point of scripture is to do the very thing that that writers of scripture did, that Moses and Abraham did, to go out on a journey and there meet the Lord. And then continually come back to the word of God for confirmation and consolation.
Jesus told his religious leaders that they “know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times (generation).” (Matthew 16:3 emphasis mine) What Jesus is saying is that if we are not a listening people, a discerning people, a humble and open people, we are not going to find much truth. We are simply going to have our scripture passages and instead of them being an avenue to God, the scripture themselves becomes a barrier.
God’s heart is love and His love is for the people, lets not give answers and quote scriptures as if the answers and scriptures are more important than the people.
posted by matt at 11:24 AM
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