Mark 10:42-45 (NIV2011)
42 Jesus called them together and said, “You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them.
43 Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant,
44 and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all.
45
For even the Son of Man did NOT come to be SERVED, but to SERVE and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
The choice is not God centered or human centered. The Church, God’s Kingdom, is both God centered and human centered. Jesus Christ demonstrated that He is God because He gave His life for us. Humans demonstrate that we are God centered because we care about others.
The Church is not an Absolute monarchy because God is not absolute. God could be absolute. but God gives us freedom and wants us to use it for the good of ourselves and others.
Democracy is not based on individualism, but cooperation. Western civilization has gone past Christianity to capitalism and libertarianism, so many will suffer a shock when they get to the Pearly Gates.
No, the Kingdom of God does not make worldly sense, but it does make divine sense and human sense, because it is True, Right, and Good for both God and God’s Creation.
It seems quite ironic, then, that God as King is a binding motif in the Bible. So I would call God’s necessary nature as the absolute being to be in tension with humans’ moral responsibility. It’s not a devastating tension, but an intriguing one nevertheless. I think @Christy was actually well on the mark with what she said.
So I find myself coming back to my previous questions on this issue: Does this “theocentrism” mar the seeming autonomy and personal goals of any person? How is this reconciled with the force with which life pursues the satisfaction of selfish interests, which are perfectly natural?
While I agree with your comments, I think we need to add another dimension, especially as it may (tangentially) related to the comments by @Gavin_Doughty.
God is also revealed as the Heavenly Father, and Christ the Son of God who would bring many sons and daughters to God. This means that human beings are (any word seems to come with some baggage) ‘transformed, reborn, rejuvenated, etc. etc.,’ into these sons and daughters of the Almighty, and Christ is the first born. In practical terms, such people would live with a sense of purpose, would grown in the attributes of the Holy Spirit, and become Christ like.
All the terms I have used show a (living) purpose and a goal - this is usually summarised as salvation of humanity. While acknowledging God as the Father is intrinsic to this goal, I think the creation (Universe) is a stage for this epic drama, and God is no in need of anything from anyone.
I sometimes think the doctrine of grace may not be fully articulated.
God is King, but Jesus was crucified because He was not the King that either the Jews or the Romans expected as the Biblical quote indicates.
God is not only King, God is also Redeemer, and God is also Sustainer. God is Love.
God has no necessary nature except GOD IS WHO GOD IS and God is not Absolute Being. See my paper on Academia.edu on God and Freedom to see how God solves the problem of God’s power and human freedom. We must not confuse human philosophy and God’s revelation of Godself.
Also the satisfaction of selfish interests might be common, but it is not perfectly natural, except in the minds of Darwin & Co.
I never meant to imply that the Church is an absolute monarchy. Just that Jesus is an absolute monarch. All authority on heaven and earth having been given to him…
To partially agree with you, there are aspects of selfishness in humans that I believe are quite carnal and I think part of our evolution was having learned to forfeit these certain aspects in order to realize a greater purpose, a more transcendent one.
But I can’t imagine a biosphere in which evolution is not driven by selfish behavior. I will say again more emphatically: the drive to satisfy the selfish interests of all forms of life is perfectly natural, and therefore “common.”
Every person is free to be a god to themselves and follow their natural inclinations to their heart’s content (or more likely discontent) because God grants that freedom. But when you recognize Jesus’ lordship, it involves a voluntary submission of your free will and autonomy.
As @GJDS brought up above, those who are redeemed and spiritually regenerated by their union with Christ and their adoption as God’s own children will have their priorities and desires reordered as a necessary fruit of their new identity and the work of the Holy Spirit in their minds and hearts. It is through the Holy Spirit transforming his people that God brings about his purposes until the full culmination of his New Creation. I don’t know how you work in “autonomy and personal goals” with Romans 6 and the whole “slaves to Christ” deal.
It may be better then not to use the word selfish. It makes the practice of gene selection sound more passionate, but it’s misleading. In that case, I think we could agree in saying that humans are the only animals who practice selfishness, because such a thing isn’t blind as we observe similar actions in nature.
Galatians 4:2-7 (NIV2011)
2 The heir is subject to guardians and trustees until the time set by his father.
3 So also, when we were underage, we were in slavery under the elemental spiritual forces of the world.
4 But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law,
5 to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship.
6 Because you are His sons, God sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, the Spirit Who calls out, “Abba, Father.”
7 So you are no longer a slave, but God’s child; and since you are His child, God has made you also an heir.
@Christy
In Romans Paul used a dualistic model to portray salvation, we are a slave to sin or we are a slave to God. In Galatians Paul uses a non-dualistic model of the son and heir. The son is a potential heir, but he has no more rights than a slave under the law, until he comes into his inheritance. Under this scenario we are adopted into God’s family though Jesus Christ Who makes us a son of God and heir of the Kingdom. Through this process we go from slavery to sin to freedom in God so we are no longer slaves but children and joint heirs with Jesus Christ.
It is clear that humans are free to say No to God. It is also clear to Paul that humans cannot say Yes to God by doing good works. However it seems to me that we can say Yes to God by saying not my will, but Yours. As Paul says in Galatians, this is not slavery, but freedom.
I would say that question is purpose. Dawkins, following Darwin, wants to say that genes are selfish because they have no purpose other than self propagation. This is meaningless circular thinking. If the purpose of living is to live, it is meaningless. Thus according to Darwinism life is meaningless. That is untrue according to Christianity, but not to Dawkins and the New Atheism.
The challenge for Christians as I see it is to develop a theory of evolution that does Not say that life is meaningless. Sadly other Christians do not see it that way. They are willing to accept Darwinian evolution even if it supports the claim that Life is meaningless and therefore logically God does not exist. Of course just because they accept this thought does not mean that they think that God does not exist…
I agree. But my point above was that in saying yes, to God, you deny yourself. You can’t say yes to God but still be committed to pursuing your personal goals and maintaining your personal autonomy as your first priority. Your life is not “your own” anymore. We have free will to choose or reject Christ. But once we choose Christs, there are limits to what we are are “allowed” to choose and what we are “allowed” to pursue.
Christy,
I disagree that the only way pursue a purposeful and meaningful life is through Christ. A large percentage of people living today are living purposeful and meaningful lives as “nones”, other religions and other types of spirituality.
Patrick, much of our discussion has centered around the brute fact that purpose and meaning are impotent words without a secure grounding in truth. The question should not be, “Does my life feel purposeful?” Rather, “Am I fulfilling the purpose?”
It’s ironic that you said the nones pursue purpose in life. I’m sorry, but that shouldn’t make sense to anyone.
Various religious traditions all over the world seek to satisfy certain subjectively induced purposes, and as sentimentally satisfying as some of them are, the question is what is the truth?
We haven’t been trying to diminish the value of human longing; we’ve just been establishing what are the proper questions to ask.
I will add that much of what you’ve said left much thought-food for me recently, and it’s really the topic that I commencingly raised.
Yes and No. When we say yes to God, we die to our old natural self and are raised to our new born again self.
We are still us, but we are an improved version of us, which is where fulfillment comes in. It is an improved version of us, because we are changed from the inside out, not the outside in.
Since we decided to change and take a chance with God through faith, we did not like the old version of us. If we really wanted to be selfish and decided to follow Jesus so we would be on the winning side, we would be very disappointed, because it would not work. We would not achieve our selfish goals and we would not be on the winning side.
“But once we choose Christ, there are limits to what we are “allowed” to choose and what we are “allowed” to pursue.”
If you are thinking this way you are thinking legalistically, which is against all the theology and ethics of Paul. Paul says that all things are permitted for the converted, but not all things are helpful.
I was purposely being somewhat reductionistic, that’s what the quotes were for.
It’s not being legalistic to acknowledge that following Christ involves submitting to a different set of ethics and priorities, and that there are definite expectations that God has of his followers. You are legalistic when you think that your success or failure at living in line with those expectations somehow earns you additional favor with God or somehow contributes to your right standing with God.
That’s a pretty bold proof text of Paul there. Not to mention that most people who write commentaries on Corinthians think that the “all things are permissible for me” part was Paul sarcastically quoting a common saying to make his point that the opposite was true. Your body is the temple of the holy spirit, it’s not permissible to hook up with prostitutes. Newer translations reflect this. (NIV 1“I have the right to do anything,” you say—but not everything is beneficial.)
Nope, some things are out of line for God’s holy people. Paul’s letters are also full of lists of actions, attitudes, and character traits Christians need to avoid and display.