I wrote this on or around Monday, April 14, 2014, 3:30 PM. I believe it was an email, but I don't remember to whom.
I'm sending it here because it seems relevant to last week's discussion. I actually forgot I wrote this
until I found it today while cleaning up old files.
Your question was, "How do You view God and his expectations of you?" This was headed with the title, "What does it mean to be Christian?"
First, we have at least two very succinct answers from the Bible itself on what is asked of us:
1. Micah 6:8 (old testament): ... what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?
2. Luke 10:27 (new testament, but also there are versions at Mark 12:30-31 and of the first half in Deuteronomy 6:5): And he answering said, "`Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind, and thy neighbor as thyself.'"
Then we have my thoughts on your question, what does it mean to be Christian:
- To do what is required of us above.
- To live lives that translate Jesus' request, "Do you love me? Feed my sheep." (John 21:15-17) into examples of how to live. (I believe "feed" here means first to teach by example, then the more basic/material meanings that can include.)
But all this is to living as a mathematical theorem like associativity is to the problem of shopping for groceries: Great on paper, but rather abstract for clear application.
And therein lies the big problem I see in Christianity today: Translating the above into practice is being done in myriad ways, by myriad divisions of church. To answer more specifically the question "How should we live" invites more discord than unity in many cases.
I personally try to make choices in my life by the following means, and I submit that this is the best answer to your compound question I can provide at all quickly:
1. Pray for guidance and strength. The lines we have come to know as the Serenity Prayer might sum this part up best: " God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference."
2. Ask of an option before me, does it show love, kindness, mercy, justice - or something else?
3. Consider the things Jesus did, according to the testimonies we have; and see if any of them appear to be examples of what I should do. I find here, incidentally, that many of Jesus' responses to the challenges of His day broke free of the bounds laid out by his questioners: witness the discussion of marriage and what happens to that after death (Matthew 22:23-33, Mark 12:18-27, Luke 20:27-40). I take this as encouragement to think outside the confines of how the world thinks.
4. And finally, perhaps unfortunately, pray for forgiveness and help when I yet fail to choose wisely before I act. :-)
In conclusion, I will mention a comment I made many years ago in a Sunday school class: In a discussion of God and how much larger His perspective is than ours, I remarked, "People trying to understand God is like me trying to teach an ant why it can't live in my kitchen." The size of the difference is clear. None of us will get it all right. Knowing that, we have no place from which to say with authority, "I am more right than you." I think this takes from us most effectively the task of judgment of one another, leaving us the task only of showing love, kindness, mercy, and justice, as already said.
--
Doug Lee dgl@...
"The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do
what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with
them while they do it."--Theodore Roosevelt
