Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
1
No, not s…acred. A four letter profanity that the monkey in me wants to throw through the cage bars and daub on the wall. But out of a residual rankle of disgust at profaning the sacred, two evolved genetic opposed moral taste receptors in one, I won’t. Even though I’m not profaning the Resurrection of The Saviour Elect, that Christ is Risen, the only warrant we have for the transcendent, for purpose, for life after death. I’m profaning the inadequate second rate imagining of that. Any version of the Resurrection that is not fully inclusive of all humanity having died and been raised to glory, elect for salvation in the Elect Saviour.
I watched The Mauritanian last night and was in tears for most of it it felt like. Just weeping silently trying not to let my wife see. Following on from my envy at Outside The City.
Disconnected? Not in the slightest.
My wife wants the Resurrection to be true, but cannot stand the excluding hubris of Easter.
Will even Francis [I not Collins!] include all humanity today? Without caveat? Without an implicit ‘Yeah but…’? The Anglican communion won’t, along with the vast majority of the Reformed here, who struggle to reach let alone grasp universal salvation, eternal life for all. Who cannot see it in Paul let alone Jesus.
This day should be the best day of the year with Christianity reaching out to every Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Confucianist, Jew, atheist, other, neighbour at every level and saying ‘Happy to be risen with you in Christ friend. God bless you, is there anything we can do together, do you need any help, any help at all? Can we start again? Can we deconstruct and reconstruct together?’
Well though I disagree with the universal element I agree that easter is not a special day. Easter means nothing to me as well. I’m having breakfast with my mom, going hiking, and then watching a horror film, “ Night of the Lepus “. Then this evening I’m going to church like most Sundays. I don’t believe in any holidays being anything more than a commercialized secular day. Which is fine. Always a good day to celebrate something.
Christians should be worshipping God everyday, in weekly fellowship with their brothers and sisters in Christ, and they should be reaching out to the lost daily carrying out the great commission.
On my hike, I’m still going to leave a few Easter eggs near geocaching sites with like $50 in each one. I’ll place them in hollowed out stumps and check it again next week to collect any not gathered. Some easter magic for adults lol.
Seems to me there is more than one kind of exclusion here just as there is more than one kind of inclusion.
There is also this sort of exclusion:
Either you believe God forces His way upon everyone shoving Christian salvation and His Christian presence down everyone’s throat regardless of what they may want or you are an evil dirty [BLEEP].
And there is also this sort of inclusion:
The offer of salvation in Christ is open to all but that doesn’t mean the work of God is restricted to this one religion alone, for God is free and capable of reaching out to people in an infinite number of ways to offer eternal life to all according to whatever they may know and understand. This does not mean there are many ways to God or that I know there is salvation in other religions – there is no way to God, for men this is impossible, there is only grace of God. And I simply do not know what role God may have had in other religions. It also does not mean that the cross has no importance for those of other religions – even when much of the teachings of Christianity are rejected, it still has an impact, and you can see the influence of Christian thought in every religion on the planet.
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
5
That’s your false dichotomy. Love doesn’t use force. Not in this life or the next. Love heals. Love fixes everything. Salvation and God aren’t Christian.
Please clarify. What is force? We need someone greater than us to correct and guide us, just like any good parent. If I didn’t prevent my kids from hitting each other, they’d be unfit for civilized society when they grow up (sometimes I still wonder…).
One wise faculty member in my residency program explained that children are terrified without any boundaries. It’s often abuse that makes us reject the concept of any boundaries. That, perhaps, is a good reason for clarification of what we mean. Thanks.
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
8
Force: violence, compulsion in this context. Including verbal. Brainwashing. Against our will. So, what of our will, in the transcendent? No one will be able to hurt anyone in the resurrection. And self harm won’t work either. Whether they, we want to harm or not, in hate, vengeance or sadism or self-hate or masochism. What’s the easiest way to ensure that? Isolation. In my Father’s House are many mansions. Isolation wards. Asylum wards. Whatever goes down to death, even if it’s lost in dementia, will come back. What little we have, we are, will come back up. In a perfect healing, deconstructing, reconstructing, therapying growth medium from the glorified brain on out in to an environment with, at last, personal God in it. Immediately, personally present. Whatever sick, broken, bent, inadequate, warped, ignorant, hurt, hurting, nasty, stunted, twisted, crippled, unlovable, wrong thinking, feeling creature that we are to whatever degree will have all that talked out, until we’re safe for company. It may take many years. But every kink will be ironed out, talked out, grown out. Loved out. A vast proportion of the formerly dead will be infants, young children, those with learning difficulties. And the miscarried. And the aborted. They’ll be the easiest to fix. The quickest. I’ll take a while. Jesus can’t fail anyone.
For those churches that use a liturgy it is helpful to follow the tradition that we focus on certain aspects of the whole history of God and Christ throughout the year, with a cycle of readings and prayers own each Sunday and weekdays too and special days related to the Crucifixion and Resurrection, to hear and read again the whole story and even to act it out in drama (as we do in my Anglian church with a dramatised reading on the Sunday before Easter and again on Good Friday).
We must reckon also that with the best will in the world the Church will be unable to present that gospel to every man woman and child on the planet. Yet if we believe that the Eternal Word addresses all humanity in His love then He will find a way of covering those sins of people who cannot belong to the church but who may be responsive in other ways. That is not to say all will be saved because there will be those who reject the inner promptings of the Word as well as an actual rejection of the preached word if they hear it.
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Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
10
They won’t need inner promptings when the Word is walking with them in paradise.