Thoughts?

I know it’s been a while since I posted, but the conversation has been great.

Some thoughts on the “secret” and why there might be a disconnect between Jesus’ manner of life and what we see today. For that matter, why there might be a disconnect between the piety (in the sense of right living) of the Apostles and the weak christianity (b/c what we see does not merrit a captial “C”) we live in now.

Paul says in his letter to the Romans (chapters 6-8)that our union with Christ frees us from our bondage to sin. Therefore we are called to live lives that reflect that freedom. That does not mean that there will be no struggle with sin (ch 7). In fact, before we died to sin through Christ, we did not struggle with sin. We sinned and we liked it. Now we do struggle with sin because for the first time we can struggle with it.

The “gospel” I was always given growing up was that “Chrstians sin everyday and in every way.” Furthermore, that is supposed to be a good thing because it means that we are not God. Salvation means that we get to go to heaven… that’s it.

That is sooooooo far from Paul’s teaching in I Corinthians 15 that it could be called blasphamous. Pauls says, in response to those who claim that there is no ressurection of the dead (semi-Gnostic), that the proof of the ressurection is found in the fact that Christians DO NOT sin everyday and in every way. He says that sin gave us our death sentance and our freedom from it is proof that death will not hold us. In the same chapter he tell us to live sober (or alert) lives and to “stop sinning.” In Galatians he tells us that we are free from both sin and the Law and then commands us not to return to bondage. Jesus Himself said, “If the son sets you free you shall be free indeed.”

My thought is that we do not see Christians living holy (in the seperate or distinct sense of the word) lives because we have become convinced that the Kingdom is only to come instead of realizing that we are Kingdom citizens both now and forever.

So my fellow country-men (in the truest sense) in the words of the Beatles (not so great theologians but sufficient for now) “Live for today!”

For His Kingdom
Your brother and fellow citizen
-Jon

literature major here too…it hurts my head to talk maths. really new to this so no blog. Kicking off a church planting initiative here in Australia and will have a website up soon.

Alex, I’m looking forward to your thoughts as well.

c

you got a blog on here, btw?

alex, we’d love to hear your thoughts, of course! i wondered where you were… thought it was a little quiet ’round here…

I’ve enjoyed following your conversation. I have some thoughts for you but I’m trying to decide whether or not to comment here or to make a new post. I’m in Brazil right now. In fact, I leave for the States today. I’ll jump in later.

I can’t wait to hear it either. I’ll need to think it through, although as a starting point I found the lead up to the wedding a little unbearable - can you have degrees of unbearableness? More n this later I think.

there is a guy over hear who used mathematical set theory to explain the faith journey that people experience. He used the idea of bounded and centred sets to explain two modes of faith experience. the first draws boundaries and explains people’s relationship to the set on the basis of where they are in relationship to the boundary. The centred set explains whether people are “in or out” on the basis of relationship to the centre. The application is that Jesus is the centre so in-ness or outness is explained in terms of trajectory toards or away from Jesus. Interesting eh?

C

i was serious about your wording — i love it!

that’s a great point about the a delineation between once being not being married and then being married. i absoultely agree that there’s always choice involved in who/what we love/follow.

although, just for the sake of discussion, sometimes i think it could be more like the difference between what it’s like before and after you fall in love — much harder to tell EXACTLY when the transition actually took place. i think that’s much more akin to my experience, personally.

can’t wait to hear what you think of “searching”!

Happy monday”??????

the wording comes from being a bureacrat - a curse for some but who knows…. You might be on to something in that there is no such thing as Biblical faith without actions of somekind, I guess though it hinges on the nuances of what gives rise to what. Paul for eg talks abut obedience that is the product of faith (Rom 1:5 amd 16:26) which gives the idea that obedience springs from faith whiel James places works (actions) as the hallmark of faith.

I did by Donald Millers book while I was in canada recently but have yet to read it so I’ll drag it off the shelf. And the idea of realtionship - living and ongoing as opposed to a retrospective on a crisis event is right on the money, although there was a point when I wasn’t married to my wife and then I was, and the journey began. Similarly there is a point at which Jesus becomes lord and all else folws from that initiation of relationship.

Great chatting with you about this stuff.

C

absolutely love your terminology about “rebuilding a cumulative picture of the whole” — that’s simply fantastic.

here’s a thought: what if a lifestyle patterned after jesus IS the redemption? like, what if the “working out of our salvation” (sanctifcation, whatever you’d want to call it) is actually the salvation itself?

that might sound like a strange concept… let me see if i can describe it a bit better.

there’s a book called “searching for God knows what” by donald miler (maybe you’ve already read it); if not, here’s an interesting couple paragraphs:

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“I recently heard a man, while explaining how a person could convert to Christianity, say the experience was not unlike a person who sits in a chair. He said that while a person can have faith that a chair will hold him, it’s not until he sits in the chair that he has acted on his faith.

I wondered as I heard this if the chair was a kind of a symbol for Jesus, and how irritated Jesus might be if a lot of people kept trying to sit on Him.

And then I wondered at how Jesus could say He was a Shepherd and we were sheep, and that the Father in heaven was our Father and we were His children, and that He Himself was a Bridegroom and we were His bride, and yet we somehow missed His meaning and thought becoming a Christian was like sitting in a chair.”

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point being that the writers of the bible rarely talk about following jesus apart from a relational metaphor of some kind. (the book explains it in much more detail, and i highly recommend it.)

likewise, perhaps the process of growing in our faith is more like a lifelong relationship with a spouse than praying a certain prayer at a singular point in time, or deciding one time when you were 6 to sit in a chair — maybe the process of learning how to live like jesus IS our redemption.

hope this doesn’t get to you twice something wnet awry (love that word) with my IT here. There’s no doubt that we’re missing something, the disconnect between what we see of Jesus and His church in the New Testament and what we see around us. the good news for me is that God hasn’t left us to work it out, and the fact of denominations - even so many - signals to me that we can grow in our understanding of Christianity, and for our part we get to look back over a couple fo thousand years of God wroking things out in history. The challenge as I see it is not to make a camp aorund a particular truth, but allow God to build - or perhaps rebuild a cumulative picture of the whole.

I think the writer of Hebrews points us in a helpful direction when he talks about all things being in submission to Jesus and notes that while this is not totally the case we do see Jesus.

it seems to me that you might be unfairly characterising all “christians” as being far removed from Jesus example? Maybe this is true, but I know many people who love God and are fine examples of what it means to follow Jesus.

The other issue for me is that I easily fall into what is a doctrinal issue and that is trying to work out an approach to Christian lifestyle (the pedagogical issue) - kind of “here’s how I want you to live” - separate from the redemptive issues - ie the redemptive nature of Jesus life, death and resurrection - that empowers us to live out the life. Liek the difference between Romans 7 and Romans 8 eh?

Sorry if this is a bit random its Monday morning here!