Ethnicity and Discipleship
A Commentary on the Sabbath School Lesson for February 2-8, 2008
God called Abraham to step out of his worldview
The Antioch story of how we got our name marked a milestone in the growth of Christianity (Acts 11:19). Our spiritual forefathers believed they had been given the task to "tell the message only to the Jews" (v. 19), to people who shared the same sacred text, same history, same diet, and same culture. To do otherwise would threaten their group identity. However, some of the younger believers became restless and, like unruly students in a Christian college dorm, left the compound to do something forbidden.
"Let's preach the gospel to non-Jews!"
"No way! This is against the rules."
"But these rules are self-serving. Nobody can be in charge of God! Remember how Christ broke such rules?"
"OK, but, man, the rabbis in Jerusalem will have a cow."
And off to Antioch they went. As the capital of Syria, Antioch, the third largest city in the Roman world, like Chicago in the United States, was fifteen to twenty times the size of Jerusalem—an urban, pluralistic, multi-ethnic center. Seleucus, one of the four generals of Alexander the Great and the founder of the city, not only built a wall around the city, he also built walls within the city. He reasoned that every culture, every race, every nation, any group with any identity at all feels superior to the other. In the markets and on the streets, violence could occur at the slightest provocation. So Seleucus built fortresses inside the fortress with at least eighteen quarters for major ethnic groups.
Stepping into this social setting, the uninhibited adventurers of the gospel were not prepared to deal with what they put in motion. They had no idea of the impact the life and message of Christ would have in a city such as Antioch. Barnabas came to intervene, followed by more brethren from Jerusalem, and finally Paul arrived. What was the trouble? Vastly different people were crossing the boundaries to be with each other. Although Jews, Greeks, Chinese, Africans, Indians, barbarians, and others used to be all for and by themselves—each in their own quarters looking out for their own interests—when they heard the sweet and radically inclusivist teachings of Christ, they began climbing over the walls, making friends, becoming one body.
But most puzzling for the observers, no riots were reported! When asked, "Who are you?" members of this new community did not know how to answer. Their new identity went deeper than being Greek, Jew, Chinese or African. They became an enigma in the empire, a new kind of people, what Peter later called "a holy nation." They became a winsome community without walls, but since that was too long to say, and since they talked about Christ's life and teachings as their greatest mutual treasure, people began calling them "Christ-ians."
The fact that we got our name as a result of this collision of identities places the issue of conflicting identities firmly in the center of what it means to be a follower of Christ in any era. Among Christians, respect for diversity is commonly understood as nothing more than a virtue—a desirable value—but it was not so for early followers of Christ. The issue of how Christian identity related to other identities was not an appendix to the gospel, but the heart of it. Here are some of the related dynamics:
- We divide the world in a way that gives value to us. Without the experience of being wanted and loved into this world, we live with a fundamentally insecure sense of self-worth and look for something larger than ourselves to give us meaning. As a result, we construct belief systems that affix special value to a group we belong to. We create justifications as to why it is better to be part of our ethnic group, race, gender, culture, political party, and sexual orientation. But Christ tore down the wall between God and us by demonstrating how deeply God loves us and how our identity does not depend either on the accidents of birth or performance. He removed our need to justify and recommend our group over others and thus tore down the walls between us. (Eph. 2:14, 1 Pet. 2:9–10).
- The gospel gives us critical distance from our own culture. Following Christ expands our identity and somewhat lifts us from our original cultures, uniting us with people very different from us. Every culture has norms, values, and commanding truths that are not religiously neutral. From a critical distance provided by our larger identity of God’s beloved, we can identify the idols of our groups. For example, Christians from Eastern cultures can help Western Christians identify their idols of unbridled consumption, rugged individualism, and complacency within the empire, thus helping them learn the values of simplicity, connectedness, and mindfulness. Christians from Eastern cultures can learn about a need to dethrone the idols of authoritarianism and intolerance and learn the values of freedom and individuality. That is why, in the Hebrew Bible, we often see God sending strangers with answers, solutions, and deliverance to God's people. In the New Testament, Christ consistently used people from other ethnic groups to teach the meaning of the gospel (Matt. 15:21–28; Luke 7:1–11, 17:11–16; John 4:39–42)
- Over the centuries, we have trapped Christ in a Christian subculture. Western Christians have created their own subculture—their own ethnic group, so to speak—with norms, values, and commanding truths that resemble its Western cultural cradle, colonial past, and courtroom theology. To the Westerners, Christ has become defined by Western Christians who have "captured" Christ in Christian teachings. Christian identity has settled and the interpretation of Christ has halted. This explains the reaction of some Western Christians attracted to the fresh expressions of Christianity discovered in the Eastern religions in general and Eastern Orthodox teachings in particular.
Today, we are called to acknowledge that God is among "the other" outside our Christian subculture, Christ who is "all and in all" (Col 3:11, compare John 1:3, Acts 17: 26–28). If we cannot find God there, among "the other," we will have a God confined by us and therefore hardly a God worth worshipping. Missiologist Vincent Donovan writes, "The area in which the church must now find its meaning and live out its life is indeed, for the first time, the entire world. We can no longer think of anything less than the world."1 He reflects further:
[Over the centuries] Western theologians looked for no more revelation, and expected none, from outside the [Christian] culture. They began to think like the Judeo-Christians of the first century. What possible revelation could there be outside of the pale of Christendom?…The growth and development of Christ grew thinner and fainter until it stopped completely. Christianity and Christendom had completely monopolized Christ.…The church should have realized that no single group has monopoly on Christ or on the truth.2
- Abraham's blessing for “all peoples” goes much, much further than we thought. God called Abraham to step out of his town, out of his nation, and out of his worldview—to be an outsider. But not in order to create a new inner ring. Instead, God said: "Leave your country, your people, and your father's household … and I will bless you…and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you" (Gen. 12:1–3). In other words, "Your religion will be measured by the blessings it brings to outsiders." But there is more.
Monotheism at its best is even better than this. We are not only called to be a blessing to others. We are also called to love others the way God loved us and therefore allow them to be a blessing. The value of one's religion should be measured not only by how much it gives outsiders. "Us" must learn not only how to bless "Them" but also how "Us" can be blessed by "Them!" Our job is not merely to do good, but also allow other nations, cultures, and religions to be the carriers of God's blessing as well. To only bless the Other puts us in a position of control of both God and the Other. To receive the blessing from the Other acknowledges God and the sacred in the Other and makes us interdependent with God and humanity. That’s why God has been sending strangers such as priest Melchisedek and Wise Men who followed a star to bless us. Monotheism that will matter in the future will be a humble one, one that does not pretend to contain God, one that can acknowledge one’s own creaturehood, and thus one that expects the limitations of one’s own perspectives.
In the twenty-first century, the winsome community of God will be the one that crosses not only ethnic barriers but also religious ones. It will have generosity of spirit to locate one's own God, good, and grace in the Other, and learn to receive with gratitude as a creature.
Contemporary globalization is shifting the issues of ethnic, racial, tribal, national, cultural, and religious identity to center stage again. Our planet is becoming smaller and our lives are being woven together with the Other ever more closely. The tension between the identity of being followers of Jesus Christ and the identities we have been given by virtue of being born into a specific ethnic or religious community will either diminish or deepen our spirituality. Like the early church, we now have a new opportunity to be surprised by God. The rules we have created have established us as the brokers of God to the world, confined the gospel into Christian language, and transformed the mystery of God into a theological straitjacket. Maybe we should break the rules again? Maybe we should declare our God as “the one who we cannot be in charge of”?
Notes and Reference
1. Vincent Donovan, The Church in the Midst of Creation (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1989), 128.
2. Ibid., 52, 53.
Samir Selmanovic is a founding clergy member of Faith House Manhattan, in New York City.
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Do we limit "God's children" to monotheism? Is it possible for everyone to be a child of God? Must one's faith be rooted in one of the three monotheistic beliefs or can we find good and welcome all who want the good?
I have read some articles of Sabbath School they are very good in designing articles and blogs as well as keeping them reaching to all, and even now I encountered with a one on Ethnicity and Discipleship, thank you for this.
I think Phyllis McGinley said it best: Tom
In Praise of Diversity
by Phyllis McGinley
Since the ingenious earth began
To shape itself from fire and rubble;
Since God invented man, and man
At once fell to, inventing trouble,
One virtue, one subversive grace
Has chiefly vexed the human race.
One whimsical beatitude,
Concocted for his gain and glory,
Has man most stoutly misconstrued
Of all the primal category --
Counting no blessing, but a flaw,
That Difference is the mortal law.
Adam, perhaps, while toiling late,
With life a book still strange to read in,
Saw his new world, how variegate,
And mourned, “It was not so in Eden,”
Confusing thus from the beginning
Unlikeness with original sinning.
And still the sons of Adam’s clay
Labor in person or by proxy
At altering to a common way
The planet’s holy heterodoxy.
Till now, so dogged is the breed,
Almost it seems that they succeed.
One shrill, monotonous, level note
The human orchestra’s reduced to.
Man casts his ballot, turns his coat,
Gets born, gets buried as he used to,
Makes war, makes love -- but with a kind
Of masked and universal mind.
His good has no nuances. He
Doubts or believes with total passion.
Heretics choose for heresy
Whatever’s the prevailing fashion.
Those wearing Tolerance for a label
Call other views intolerable.
“For or Against” ’s the only rule.
Damned are the unconvinced, the floaters.
Now all must go to public school,
March with the League of Women Voters,
Or else for safety get allied
With a unanimous Other Side.
There’s white, there’s black; no tint between.
Truth is a plane that was a prism.
All’s Blanshard that’s not Bishop Sheen.
All’s treason that’s not patriotism.
Faith, charity, hope -- now all must fit
One pattern or its opposite.
Or so it seems. Yet who would dare
Deny that nature planned it other,
When every freckled thrush can wear
A dapple various from his brother,
When each pale snowflake in the storm
Is false to some imagined norm?
Recalling then what surely was
The earliest bounty of Creation:
That not a blade among the grass
But flaunts its difference with elation,
Let us devoutly take no blame
If similar does not mean the same.
And grateful for the wit to see
Prospects through doors we cannot enter,
Ah! Let us praise Diversity
Which holds the world upon its center.
Praise con amor’ or furioso
The large, the little, and the soso.
Rejoice that under cloud and star
The planet’s more than Maine or Texas.
Bless the delighful fact there are
Twelve months, nine muses, and two sexes;
And infinite in earth’s dominions
Arts, climates, and opinions.
Praise ice and ember, sand and rock,
Tiger and dove and ends and sources;
Space travelers, and who only walk
Like mailmen round familiar courses;
Praise vintage grapes and tavern Grappas,
And bankers and Phi Beta Kappas;
Each in its moment justified,
Praise knowledge, theory, second guesses;
That which must wither or abide;
Prim men, and men like wildernesses;
And men of peace and men of mayhem
And pipers and the ones who pay ’em.
Praise the disheveled, praise the sleek;
Austerity and hearts-and-flowers;
People who turn the other cheek
And extroverts who take cold showers;
Saints we can name a holy day for
And infidels the saints can pray for.
Praise youth for pulling things apart,
Toppling the idols, breaking leases;
Then from the upset apple-cart
Praise oldsters picking up the pieces.
Praise wisdom, hard to be a friend to,
And folly one can condescend to.
Praise what conforms and what is odd,
Remembering, if the weather worsens
Along the way, that even God
Is said to be three separate Persons.
Then upright or upon the knee
Praise Him that by His courtesy,
For all our prejudice and pains,
Diverse His Creature still remains.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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"The tension between the identity of being followers of Jesus Christ and the identities we have been given by virtue of being born into a specific ethnic or religious community will either diminish or deepen our spirituality."
What this says to me is western traditional Christianity in its various expressions (e.g. Adventism) should beware of the tendency to exclusivism/imperialism. The opposite of this may not necessarily be inclusivism and consequent syncretism but isolationism. I believe we need to parse this out further in both particular and global terms: "Christian/Adventist discipleship in a multi-faith world".
PS: About a week ago on Sunday, January 27, I was invited to join an Asian/Pacific NAD Advisory Council meeting. My second time. It was supposedly NAD; however, the group's composition was predominantly representatives of the Pacific Union where they have organized Asian/Pacific regions in the local conferences. What can I say? Truth of the matter is I'm a reluctant participant in this kind of regional initiatives.
I recently purchased a book entitled, "Four Views on Salvation In A Pluralistic World." by Zondervan, 1995.
Contributors:
Hick, Pinnock, McGrath, Geivett & Phillips
This book might add to the understanding of the subject.
For me...Jn.14:6 and Jn.6:45 seem rather explicit until language is deconstructed.
regards
If as I think ethnicity is often a part of a given culture, the following alternatives H. Richard Niebuhr described from Christian history in his book "Christ and Culture" may be of some interest:
Two Opposite Extremes:
1. Christ AGAINST Culture (Extreme Conservatives)
2. Christ OF Culture (Extreme Liberals)
Three Middle Positions:
3. Christ ABOVE Culture (Roman Catholicism)
4. Christ and Culture IN PARADOX (Lutheranism)
5. Christ TRANSFORMER of Culture (Calvinism)
In one of his books Charles Scrivens argues against thinking of the Ananbaptist tradition as being against culture.
Dave
Tom, thank you so much for introdoucing Phyllis McGinley's poem. Poetry is a much subtler, yet deeper explanation of nascent ideas.
Thanks Samir. I really enjoyed this commentary.
Thanks for your commentary Samir: and by the way, a general "thank you" to you and all the others who write these weekly Sabbath Study commentaries. I find them to be about the best feature this site offers.
But as to your point about looking for Christ elsewhere, what's a Christian to do? My biggest challenge and joy as His follower is to sincerely confess His name with kindness and clarity, at the right time and place to anyone I might think will listen. What do I do now, apoligize and join the Unitarians?
Calvinist do say "Christ transformer of culture" and NOT culture the transformer of the meaning of Christ as the only savior.
I think this "cultural transformation" took place in America and created a "christian fabric" that Tocqueville spoke of.I think Maecham "may" be having this meaning...but it should not be called the "American Gospel."
Imperfect as America is, Perhaps EGW was correct on this, "Republicanism and Protestantism became the fundamental principles of the nation. These principles are the secret of its power and prosperity. The oppressed and down-trodden throughout Christendom have turned to this land with interest and hope. Millions have sought its shores, and the United States has risen to a place among the most powerful nations of the earth. {GC88 441.1}
The value of one's religion should be measured not only by how much it gives outsiders. "Us" must learn not only how to bless "Them" but also how "Us" can be blessed by "Them!"
Samir,
You're probably aware that the author of Acts tended to portray an idealized picture of multiethnic harmony among early Christians. It's in stark contrast to what we learn from Paul's letters. The collision of ethnic identities, as far as Paul is concerned, was real. See 1 Cor 8, for example, regarding dietary concerns and the exhortation to peaceful co-existence.
While the distribution/reception of blessings must be a mutual give and take, the fact remains we're all outsiders who have joined the community of faith. Do we not all constitute the "Other" as far as the promised blessing is concerned?
Ephesians 2:12-14 (New International Version)
12remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. 13But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.
Yes Joselito...we are just those "other" gentiles who become partakers of the promises in Christ.
MT.22:1-14."Jesus spoke to them again in parables, saying: 2 “The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son. 3 He sent his servants to those who had been invited to the banquet to tell them to come, but they refused to come.
4 “Then he sent some more servants and said, ‘Tell those who have been invited that I have prepared my dinner: My oxen and fattened cattle have been butchered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding banquet.’
5 “But they paid no attention and went off—one to his field, another to his business. 6 The rest seized his servants, mistreated them and killed them. 7 The king was enraged. He sent his army and destroyed those murderers and burned their city.
8 “Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding banquet is ready, but those I invited did not deserve to come. 9 Go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find.’ 10 So the servants went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find, both good and bad, and the wedding hall was filled with guests.
11 “But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing wedding clothes. 12 ‘Friend,’ he asked, ‘how did you get in here without wedding clothes?’ The man was speechless.
13 “Then the king told the attendants, ‘Tie him hand and foot, and throw him outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’
14 “For many are invited, but few are chosen.
I suggest the visitor without the wedding clothes was told IT DID NOT MATTER. They were not told THAT HEARERS could only receive the wedding garment by accepting Christ as their righteousness.Gal.3:27
The issue is not the "strawman" of who has not heard (God will take care of that) BUT what do YOU do with Christ when you hear? Just another acceptable way to the Father?
Pat,
There's a similar story to the one you cited; this one's in Luke. Note that later, finding there was still room, the master commanded his servant: "Whoever you find, drag them in." Where did you get the idea of the "wedding clothes" equals "Christ's righteousness"?
Luke 14(The Message)
12-14Then he turned to the host. "The next time you put on a dinner, don't just invite your friends and family and rich neighbors, the kind of people who will return the favor. Invite some people who never get invited out, the misfits from the wrong side of the tracks. You'll be—and experience—a blessing. They won't be able to return the favor, but the favor will be returned—oh, how it will be returned!—at the resurrection of God's people."
The Story of the Dinner Party
15That triggered a response from one of the guests: "How fortunate the one who gets to eat dinner in God's kingdom!"
>snip<
22"The servant reported back, 'Master, I did what you commanded— and there's still room.'
23-24"The master said, 'Then go to the country roads. Whoever you find, drag them in. I want my house full! Let me tell you, not one of those originally invited is going to get so much as a bite at my dinner party.'"
Hi Joselito,
Granted it is not explicit. However, I think there is a motif that is found in such places as Isa.61:10; Zech.3:4,5; Rev.3:18; Rev19:8 to make the implicit statement that the garment is Christ Righteousness as we who believe "put on Christ." Gal.3:27.The NICNT notes this similiarity. The King often makes provision for a change of garments for a guest.This guest chose not to take advantage of the provision made by the king.
Thanks, Tom, for the poetry and for sharing your war experience in my part of the world. Would you happen to know a certain Dr Glenn Murphy of Spokane, WA? We met in Feb 2000 as he was completing a brief term of volunteer service as a dentist at the Adventist Health Centre in Lilongwe, Malawi. He, too, was a SDA medic with the US Army in Manila; he was 19 years old in 1945.
This one's for you and Elaine. You were both born in the same year as my mother. My mom converted to Adventism shortly before she met my father. My dad, who was foreign born, was connected with a Chinese news daily in Manila when war broke out in the Pacific. Although he read the Bible in his own language, he never became a Christian.
"We and the ancients share a common human nature and hence certain common human experiences and problems.
The poets bear witness that ancient man, too, saw the sun rise and set, felt the wind on his cheek, was possessed by love and desire, experienced ecstasy and elation as well as frustration and disillusion, and knew good and evil. The ancient poets speak across the centuries to us, sometimes more directly and vividly than our contemporary writers. And the ancient prophets and philosophers, in dealing with the basic problems of men living together in society, still have some thing to say to us...
"Exclusive preference for either the past or the present is a foolish and wasteful form of snobbishness and provinciality. We must seek what is most worthy in the works of both the past and the present. When we do that, we find that ancient poets, prophets, and philosophers are as much our contemporaries in the world of the mind as the most discerning of present-day writers."
- Why Read Great Books? by Mortimer Adler, Ph.D.
http://radicalacademy.com/adlergreatbooks1.htm
PS: Pat, interestingly enough, Luke says nothing about the required attire for guests, whether or not we think that was important.
Joselito
No I didn't know Dr.Glenn Murphy. I was 20 in 1945. I was 19 during the assault of Luzon, and Panay. Tom The 40Th Infantry made the initial landing and drove South as Far as
Clark Field. Then the Ist. Cal passed through our lines and took Manila. I got to Manila just after the fight for the inner city was over. That was one of the three or four worst struggles in the South Pacific. Tom
Samir, thanks again for your valuable thoughts.
I pray, God might help us more and more to understand the difference between biblical truth and cultural truth. So much conflict in my church comes from the inablity to differ between these two parts of our life with Christ.
Tom,
thanks a big lot for the poem! Had to read it out loud. What a contribution.
Samir,
just last week our (small) church enjoyed one of your sermons on DVD that you held in Germany's G'Camp in 2006. (Question #5: What if I have the feeling I don't want to be saved?)
Part of its argument was that our church can only be relevant if it agrees to be a blessing to its surrounding. This commentary then, for me, was the continuation of this thought, e.g. allowing the others to be a blessing to us. Challenging thought it is, which needs a little moving it around in my mind in the next days. But for the moment: Break the rules again? Which way to Antioch, please?
---
P.S. und grüße an Karsten Stank!
Here's a post by Elaine from another thread ("Gender...") that I believe is better taken up here under "Ethnicity..." or religions. Also see her comment re: children of God and the 3 monotheistic faiths. Wish Samir would respond; but I suspect this is going to be a conversation among ourselves. I hope we don't talk past each other but genuinely engage in informed conversation.
"As to my uncertainty about a god, it is beyond empirical evidence, which leaves anyone to adopt whatever he wishes as attributes of a god to worship. If one relies totally on the Bible, there are hundreds of descriptions: just choose which one you prefer. Beginning with the first book of the Hebrew Bible there is a definite evolutionary description of God; indicating that man came to a gradual understanding that is still developing: he cannot be captured; he is beyond our understanding."
Posted by: Elaine | 09 February 2008 at 4:21
What she says is not new but has been posited by believers and unbelievers alike. Here's one by a favorite author who writes: "God's existence is not as known to us or as knowable to us as all the things in the world that are experienced."
- THE GREAT IDEA OF GOD by Mortimer J. Adler, Ph.D.
http://radicalacademy.com/adlerongod.htm
If God exists, and God is beyond the empirical experience of finite beings, how can humans know what God is like? Is God knowable or not?
Joselito, I remember listening to Mortimer Adler quite a few years ago on a regular show he had, speaking on the influence of the Greek classicists.
Rephrasing your question: HOW can anyone KNOW God? And how will he know it isn't a figment of his imagination?
To good to use just on one strand.......
By Chesterton:
Food for thought from Chesterton-
"There are those who hate Christianity and call their hatred an all-embracing love for all religions." - ILN, 1/13/06
Writes Adler: "Can we know God's existence and nature by the natural processes of our minds? There is the answer first of all given by the agnostic who denies not that God exists but who denies that we can know that God exists or what God is like."
http://radicalacademy.com/adlerongod.htm
Can humans reason God into existence? Absolutely not. What we can do at the very least is entertain the possibility that "the object of our conception really actually exists outside our minds and independently of our thinking." Clear thinking is what we must do, as a precautionary measure, says Adler, so we don't create our own gods in our minds.
The Message, 1 Cor 8:4, 5
"Some people say, quite rightly, that idols have no actual existence, that there's nothing to them, that there is no God other than our one God, that no matter how many of these so-called gods are named and worshiped they still don't add up to anything but a tall story."
For me, in all honesty, I can only say "I do not know."
Elaine,
There are very few self-evident truths we can know with absolute certitude. For the most part, are we not all expressing only a personal opinion which may be true or false? Fact of the matter is we may question even our perception of common everyday experiences. As a corrective, we need to depend on others to verify our own experience. But this is not all. Imagination is important, too, in order to advance knowledge and to make scientific progress possible. Don't we do this by first constructing mental images or theoretical constructs in our heads?
It's only the absolute sceptic who won't allow the possibility of an external reality, such as God. All the three monotheistic faiths that have influenced the west, as well as the rest of the world, don't seek to prove God's existence but presuppose God's presence. Are they all mistaken? If so, how do you know or not?
Since your answer is you don't really know if there's a transcendent, self-existent Being as the 3 great monotheistic faiths have conceived of God because that concept is beyond our sense perception, how is it possible for us (you and me) to express any opinion at all on the subject of God? and morality? How do you know your opinion about abortion, gender, ethnicity/race, and the environment, for example, is true or not? Your answers are a puzzle to me, as well as to others on this site, because you often seem to be absolutely certain when in your mind you're right while someone else is wrong.
Hello Friends,
Thank you for your thoughtful comments. I would love to engage in this conversation in person, rather than here, so I hope our paths will cross.
I don't know about Adventists in general, but for people that I know Spectrum and Adventist Today are becoming precious sources of information and inspiration.
With gratitude, Samir Selmanovic, New York City
I must add that when Peter answers Jesus by saying, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God," Jesus' responce speaks volumes:
Blessed are you Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven." Mt. 16:13 IOW, Jesus is saying that the only way to know him and who he is, is not through human reasoning, but through divine revelation.
While divine revelation appeals to our human reason, Jesus' statement implies that it also transcends our human reasoning. This is exactly what Paul is saying when he tells the Corinthians:
"For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God...as it is written, 'No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has concieved what God has prepared for those who love him.'- but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit." 1
Cor. 1:18, 2:9-10.
Paul is not speaking of streets of gold, but of a crucified Christ. No human being could ever deduce, reason or even desire this. It ran against the Jewish biblical expectations and all their greatest teaching, it ran against Greek philosophy and wisdom and the thinking and reasoning of their greatest minds, and it still does so today in our culture.
The cross still makes no sense to our human reasoning; God as creator ex-nihilo makes no sense to our human reasoning; miracles make no sense to our human reasoning; heaven and an after-life makes no sense to our human reasoning; prayer makes no sense to our human reasoning...etc.
It all makes no sense, until divine revelation cracks through the deification of our human reasoning, engages our reasoning, and shows us that we must bow before one who is far greater than the greatest of our thinking, and far wiser than the wisest among us.
We can resist, or we can open ourselves to that power greater than ourselves that restores us to sanity. That power, whether we know it or not, like it or not, is Christ.
Frank
Hi Samir,
Good to hear from you again. This is Frank Merendino. Hope to hear more from you.
Joselito,
Your premise would suggest that unless one believes in a god she is unable to make decisions on the moral issues you suggest: abortion, gender, ethnicity/race and the environment. Atheists, as well as agnostics, plus Deists have made, and will continue to make profound decisions on these and similar questions. The Supremes make very important decisions and it is not definitively known what their religious beliefs might be, nor should we ask.
Our reason is all that we have; call it logic (and some few use it effectively, while there are those who don't even understand it), or conscience to decide the truly important decisions of life: whether to be a parent, whether to marry or remain single, what career choice to make, etc. These are made by hundreds every day, and to imply that believing in a god is required to do so, is (pardon me) preposterous. For those who are true believers, they will consult their god, but others do not expect some other being to make such decisions. Besides, how would they know who decided, if not the individual?
Don't forget my one remark: "I don't know." I don't deny either the existence or non-existence of God.
Frank,
I agree and appreciate your above post.
Separately, it is my belief that the pluralism and inclusivism push is but part of the globalism reality of building a household of faith. Those who sincerely believe that Christ is The Way, Truth and Light are definately out of step with "Nebuchadnezzar's" developing Neo-image of today.
Elaine,
It's your empiricism rather than theism, atheism, or deism that's under scrutiny. Consider one who believes only in what is perceived by the senses who is either a theist, atheist, or deist. S/he may accurately and correctly describe what is. But how does an empiricist go from description to prescription? From what is to what ought? First one imagines, presumes, what's good because s/he thinks it's desirable. Good and desirable from whose point of view? I believe this is the place where one's theism, atheism, or deism matters. Agnosticism is self defeating, IMV, so we won't go there.
Thanks, Samir, for checking in. Our paths might cross someday.
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