This continues to be a very valuable life and death search for the true Jesus at her Blog: http://www.evangelicaloutpost.com/intellectuelle/archives/003610.html I suggest reading the whole thing. Our discussion of the last few days:
Dear Start,
I do thank you for this conversation. I have nothing new to add but would like to reiterate a few points:
1) You misunderstand love as it is referred to in the two new commandments. It is not a sentimental thing, done merely from passion for humanity. To love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength is to love Him in truth, meaning, for who He is and for the truth about Him, Jesus, ourselves, and the world.
2) The “greater love hath no man than to lay down his life for his friends” is from John 15. Earlier in that chapter Jesus says (paraphrased), “unless you remain in me you cannot bear fruit. Anyone who does not remain in me will be thrown out like a branch, wither, and be burned.” Then He says, “love one another as I love you. Greater love hath no man...”
The context is important for understanding these verses. I encourage you to read this entire passage as well as the other ones I have quoted.
Laying down one’s life for one’s friends is not the same as destroying one’s life for one’s friends. It means to lay aside one’s ambitions and comforts, and put one’s life on the line should that become necessary. To be willing to die to protect others or for the cause of Christ, as did Stephen (Acts 7:54-60), Joan of Arc, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, hundreds if not thousands of soldiers, and, recently, Professor Librescu at Virginia Tech.
There is no evidence that your efforts will effect help for Darfur. This is not to say that we should not love people unless they love us back, but that our help must be actual. If you have a sense that, by hunger-striking, you have power to help the cause, it is a false sense.
3) My statements about my own involvement in the Darfur crisis are not about how I feel, nor whether I grieve for those who are suffering (I do), but about what I can do. You acknowledge this yourself, that there are many different needs in the world and everyone has different callings.
If those suffering in Darfur are my friends and relatives, then the VVF sufferers in Africa are your sisters, and the people who come to our local soup kitchen are your family too. My own blood and legal relatives are also your relatives, and you and your wife and children and other relatives are mine.
If you are speaking of the entire human family, then the corporate CEOs in this country are your family as well as those who hurl rude words as you picket outside the embassy. As are the members of the Sudanese government and the Arab militia who perpetuated the horrific abuse in the first place.
In peace,
Bonnie
Posted by: Bonnie at May 10, 2007 2:09 PM
Dear Bonnie,
"There is no evidence that your efforts will effect help for Darfur. This is not to say that we should not love people unless they love us back, but that our help must be actual. If you have a sense that, by hunger-striking, you have power to help the cause, it is a false sense."
What a fantastic comment! On what wisdom, knowledge, and expertise do you base this? Have you stopped a genocide before? Me either. Have you repeatedly workes "miraculous" turn-arounds of major situations? I have. Are you quite an expert in nonviolent actions? I am. Are you quite intimate with the traffic patterns, location, my actions, my daily routine, the recent NPR piece... to do with my specific actions and impact regarding Darfur on the people of DC and the nation? Hmmmm.
Also, yes of course I mean all people on the planet are my family. What do you know of me that would suggest anything other than this?
Start Loving
Posted by: Start Loving at May 12, 2007 10:40 PM
Dear Bonnie,
I find honesty and an attempt at truth in what you write. You are blunt with me but with what is at stake this is right. I pray that the same is true of me. I am upset, and I think you are too. I certainly am because I believe the beliefs, the interpretation you help to proliferate bars us from Heaven in this lifetime and the next. And, I suspect you have similar concerns about mine.
I too feel the need to summarize or restate points:
* I believe that your legalistic view of Jesus and His teachings, the 99.99% prevailing view among self proclaimed "Christians" has reduced His teachings to precisely what He died to eliminate. This does not require malice and I make no accusation of any. It requires incredible blindness - that of the Mind ungoverned by a barely functioning Heart.
* What kind of a god would rig this cosmic sweepstakes you seem to believe in? If you draw the lucky circumstances of a sufficiently dogmatic "Christian" family or experience that you profess properly; no matter how much one "does unto the least of these" under your legalistic "Christianity," or some other belief system, the "proper professors" go to Heaven!!!! What kind of "Father" would do such cruel nonsense? NOT A LOVING GOD. Gandhi for example - one of the few followers in history of Jesus ethic of love? One of the few Hearts that Loved all people, as Jesus Loved? Someone for whom Teresa of Calcutta had boundless respect and admiration? HELL FOR THAT MAN!!! He does not profess me as his lord and savior! Do you really want to be in league with such a petty gamester God? I do not. I AM not. Nor was Jesus.
* This legalism (sorry, I don't know a better way to express how I see your beliefs) of your system, you really think a Loving Son of God, a carpenter teaching "fishermen," would come up with such convoluted phrasing and structures? "Well yes, I said, "Love God...," and "Love your neighbor..." and "These are the two commandments." "Hmmm, yes, these sound simple and straightforward but they are not! Be sure to read the context (written 10's or 100's of years later NOT by Jesus!) How cruel! And, He didn't set the real "professing" rule did he? Wasn't that one of the Apostles? Hmm. The real rule for getting into Heaven and the Son of God forgets to mention it, or to make it clear? Odd.
* Are you not the least bit disturbed that your legalistic "Christianity" has produced the most non-Loving ("They will know you by how you Love one another," and from 1 John, "Whoever claims to abide in [Jesus] aught to live just like He lived"), the most un-Jesus-like culture known to man? Consumer Capitalism - "do unto others before they can do unto you" is our true Religion, we U.S. Christians; I implore you to see more about we legalistic "Christians" in a speech by Dom Helder Camara, Archbishop of Recif Brazil at peaceandnonviolence [[dot]]blogspot [[dot]] com/2007/03/fetters-of-injustice-dom-helder-camara. A quote that gives a flavor: "Our responsibility as Christians makes us tremble. The northern hemisphere, the developed area of the world, the 20% who possess 80% of the world’s resources, are of Christian origin. What impression can our African and Asian brethren and the masses in Latin America have of Christianity, if the tree is to be judged by its fruits? For we Christians are largely responsible for the unjust world in which we live... [a social "order"] that consists in leaving millions of God’s children in miserable poverty, should rather be called social disorder, systematized injustice. Private ownership? Is it not evident to everyone that on this point we Christians have abandoned the Fathers of the Church, and that we have ended by attributing divine right to private ownership, whereas God’s law says that the wealth of the world should be shared by all, and should never form odious, oppressive monopolies?"
* Does it not interest you at all that when people, the one in a billion that finds the courage and responds to Jesus not a legalistic entity but as a brilliant, most Loving man in history, people like Gandhi, Bhave, Teresa, Francis of Assisi, ML King you get people that briefly at least, transform the world clearly in the direction of Heaven on Earth? Not so for the Legalists. But they don't really believe in Heaven on Earth do they? Heaven AFTER earth is their interest.
* I could go on, and on. But the above is enough.
I am not trying to argue, or to win an argument; nor that you have been for which I convey my respect. I do think you and I are dialoging on the entirety of matters in life - on the entirety of what we need to get right. And we've been warned that it is extremely difficult to do so. "The will kill you and think they are doing God's will."
Your Loving brother, Start
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