Tim Keller’s The Prodigal God speaks to that too. You might enjoy it, if you haven’t read it. (If you have read it, then it’s too late – you either enjoyed it or you didn’t. ; - )
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(48) My Neighbor
A man must not choose his neighbour; he must take the neighbour that God sends him. In him, whoever he be, lies, hidden or revealed, a beautiful brother. The neighbour is just the man who is next to you at the moment, the man with whom any business has brought you in contact.
As found in MacDonald’s unspoken sermon “Love Thy Neighbor ”
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Again we may ask about Pharisees and Sadducees. See the brief discussion above (five shortish comments ; - ) starting here. I think it is not illegitimate to pray for such a one that they be ‘waylaid’ to be made aware of their need of God’s mercy and grace.
I’m not sure how you’re making this leap, Dale. How do you get from “giving badly needed help to a waylaid stranger” all the way to “endorsing and promoting all beliefs any such a stranger may have”?
The Good Samaritan parable is all about the former and has nothing whatsoever to do with the latter. So I’m not sure how you get that.
I do take it you’re all worried that we “endorse sets of beliefs” around here that we shouldn’t - which is a separate discussion I think.
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Actually, you pretty much followed in that same direction.
I love this parable. I’m still learning more about it from reading what you and @Dale are discussing. If I understand, it’ about how two peoples, who are perhaps more closely related to each other than to any other surrounding groups, dislike each other intensely because of ideology. It seems we in the same families tend to annoy each other even better than strangers, doesn’t it?
I had a Closed Brethren friend a few years ago who told me that at one point, he realized he was spending more time with complete nonbelievers than with Christians who were only slightly different from him–because his unit was so exclusive (honestly, that should lead us to realize all Christians should be as kind to non Christians, too).
It was really similar to the Good Samaritan story, because at a point that his wife needed support from him during his med school that he did not have time to give, an evangelical Christian (a Samaritan), took 2 weeks of call. He said at that time, he started being more open.
In spite of that, he did not leave the exclusiveness of his group. In fact, though our families were quite close, he could not even let us come to his daughter’s communion service, as we could violate the communion table.
Acting out Christ’s advice can break down barriers, though. It also illustrates that we don’t have to agree on all details, to care about each other. It may start the process, but it will take me eternity to see it from God’s point of view.
I’ve wondered sometimes how that could work out in modern warfare. Around here, we see a lot of ads for a foundation that helps disabled veterans. Do you think we should set up a similar rehabilitation foundation for disabled enemy vets, say in Russia, Libya, and Iraq?
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Thanks for continuing to share these, Merv, and for the great discussion I have (mostly) finally caught up on. Some will remain unsavored, I am afraid.
But now that the Christmas prep is done and past, I think I will be back on track. Or at least closer to on track.
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I wonder if the situation is similar to seeking compromises politically with fellow citizens with different priorities. I desire that everyone get enough of what matters to them to be satisfied within our political system. I don’t always endorse the ends they desire anymore than they do mine. But living together peacefully and productively requires putting compromise over getting everything my way.
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(49) The Same
This love of our neighbour is the only door out of the dungeon of self, where we mope and mow, striking sparks, and rubbing phosphorescences out of the walls, and blowing our own breath in our own nostrils, instead of issuing to the fair sunlight of God, the sweet winds of the universe.
As found in MacDonald’s unspoken sermon “Love Thy Neighbor ”
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I certainly have spent some time in the “dungeon of self.” Funny that we have to prodded to leave.
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(50) What Cannot Be Loved
But how can we love a man or a woman who is cruel and unjust to us?-- who sears with contempt, or cuts off with wrong every tendril we would put forth to embrace?–who is mean, unlovely, carping, uncertain, self-righteous, self-seeking, and self-admiring?–who can even sneer, the most inhuman of human faults, far worse in its essence than mere murder?
These things cannot be loved. The best man hates them most; the worst man cannot love them. But are these the man? Does a woman bear that form in virtue of these? Lies there not within the man and the woman a divine element of brotherhood, of sisterhood, a something lovely and lovable,–slowly fading, it may be,–dying away under the fierce heat of vile passions, or the yet more fearful cold of sepulchral selfishness–but there? Shall that divine something, which, once awakened to be its own holy self in the man, will loathe these unlovely things tenfold more than we loathe them now–shall this divine thing have no recognition from us? It is the very presence of this fading humanity that makes it possible for us to hate. If it were an animal only, and not a man or a woman that did us hurt, we should not hate: we should only kill.
As found in MacDonald’s unspoken sermon “Love Thine Enemy”
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I like this. In “Just Mercy,” the attorney Bryan Stevenson reportedly refers to people who have been convicted, not as “murderers,” but as “someone who has murdered.” And that must be the way our Father looks at us and them–else why would he try to redeem us?
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Reading through 2 Samuel 22 (David’s songs of valor and last words) is a riveting case-study on relationship to enemies. And what a contrast between this “man after God’s own heart” and his descendant: Christ.
David opens the chapter waxing eloquent about Adonai, his rock and his savior (who has kept me from violence … i.e. God has kept him from suffering under the violence from others). And later in the song we hear “I beat them as the dust of the earth, I stamped and crushed them like mud of the streets.” … “Children of foreigners cringe before me.” “He gives me vengeance and brings down peoples under me.” “You deliver me from the violent man. Therefore I praise You among the nations, Adonai, …”
Little did David know then, the extent to which his Seed would indeed be delivering all of us from violence by forcing us to recognize it first in ourselves. Christians today still want to model themselves more after David rather than the Son of David.
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(51) Love and Justice
Man is not made for justice from his fellow, but for love, which is greater than justice, and by including supersedes justice. Mere justice is an impossibility, a fiction of analysis… Justice to be justice must be much more than justice. Love is the law of our condition, without which we can no more render justice than a man can keep a straight line walking in the dark.
As found in MacDonald’s unspoken sermon “Love Thine Enemy”
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Well put, as expounding on Matthew:
Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy; but I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven; for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same? And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so? Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.–ST MATTHEW v. 43-48.
Thanks
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(52) The Body
It is by the body that we come into contact with Nature, with our fellow-men, with all their revelations of God to us. It is through the body that we receive all the lessons of passion, of suffering, of love, of beauty, of science. It is through the body that we are both trained outwards from ourselves, and driven inwards into our deepest selves to find God. There is glory and might in this vital evanescence, this slow glacier-like flow of clothing and revealing matter, this ever uptossed rainbow of tangible humanity. It is no less of God’s making than the spirit that is clothed therein.
As found in MacDonald’s unspoken sermon “God of the Living” (this is the only excerpt taken from that sermon.)
Wow scary convergence for sure … and I don’t think you even had a chance to read the third paragraph which I just posted.
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Indeed I had not! I was thinking it was already running in parallel with your prior post!
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MacDonald had three series of unspoken sermons. Todays (and the next nine: 53 - 62) are from the first sermon beginning his 2nd series of sermons.
(53) Goodness
The Father was all in all to the Son, and the Son no more thought of his own goodness than an honest man thinks of his honesty. When the good man sees goodness, he thinks of his own evil: Jesus had no evil to think of, but neither does he think of his goodness; he delights in his Father’s. ‘Why callest thou me good?’
As found in MacDonald’s unspoken sermon: “The Way”
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Another theme dovetailing with Hart’s idea that what does or should motivate by drawling us on is always something beyond the immediate. Nothing in itself is enough except that it serves to keep you focused on what is beyond and subsumes the particular object in an ideal conception.
But to my mind that is a recipe for misery. Nothing is ever enough. Should my wife only have value to me in that she reminds me of what more there could be? Should I always take note of my friend’s deficiencies and use that to draw me on toward better friends. Sounds like bait and switch consumerism. Rather than exalt the ideal I’d rather give thanks for each fellow imperfect creature who like me must find his way amid the insistent call to be and have more. I’d rather have less and accept myself as I am. Everything actual is so much more precious to me in its just so/ness than the hollow category label of ‘that which is defined as ‘more’.