God’s not in the business of sticking around only to cover up for your stupidity or hubris, though I am sure there are provisions sent that can account for that. To a certain extent God honors what a church body corporately focuses on—their “mission,” if you will—at least insofar that the body adheres to God’s character and not a cheap, passing cultural type. Paradoxically, with mass communication as a norm, signals will get distorted: is a church’s goal something God put under their dominion or is it the sweep of culture and that’s driving action?
There’s an issue when we fulfill a role or conform to an image set for us by a church culture that holds no accountability to the outcome of adhering to the role. With very few exceptions, if someone else isn’t vested, personally and materially, into the outcome your mission, you’d better be gosh darn sure it’s really your mission. A random person on Facebook doesn’t count as accountability, and neither does the glom of “likes” you can secure get for unlocking the right cultural achievements, to borrow a RPG gaming term.
Consider something pastors don’t really mention when in sermonizing mode, if they acknowledge it at all. There’s a danger in patterning your life after Biblical characters. The people who were written about in those 66 books were quite literally one in a million, and those Old Testament prophets that acted as God’s mouthpiece lead strange and often miserable earthly existences. You, however, aren’t so special. There were countless people who lived from Adam to John who lead very holy but very ordinary lives—lives that many of us would dismiss as not “radically transformed” enough for us to consider exemplary of Christian life. By nature we can’t all achieve fame. We should remember that this response is this fallen world’s sentiment, amplified by the boredom that comes with safe living and affluence: that the worst hell is an unremarkable life.
6 Comments
By the same token, not everything a biblical character said or did was worth recording. Some of the most important things we do in pursuing our calling would hardly gain notice, yet is truly acceptable in God’s eyes. I’d much rather people be touched by my work than have them remember me specifically.
Never considered that, though I personally wouldn’t know what’s important or not. Most of the time.
There was the instance Jesus wrote in the sand during the adulteress narrative. It seems pretty superfluous to mention that, unless there’s some historical context I’m missing. I read some scholars that said that narrative wasn’t included in earlier versions because it seemed out of character for Jesus to do that, but I would assume it’s a quirk of John to mention something insignificant.
Yeah, that passage in John 8 has been the subject of significant debate. It doesn’t sound like John’s early writing style, but I think it does sound like Jesus. I submit that it didn’t matter what He scratched in the dirt, but that He seemed unconcerned with their officious demands. It was pointedly dismissive for a very good reason.
Lately I’ve thinking it had the stink of a setup…where was the guy? By law he was supposed to he stoned as well. That Jesus didn’t ask kind of hints that He kinda was onto them. Plus, if they weren’t trying to catch Him, I’d think they’d just stone her…no need to ask what He thought.
All of this could be my biases speaking to me, though.
On the contrary, everything you suggest is what scholars have long asserted.
I had a follow up comment, but I think I will just do another post.