Sunday, October 16, 2005

Sorry to those eager for the honeymoon update - had another thought I wanted to capture, but I will get back to that eventually.

Really interesting sermon this morning at Grace Covenant Church (will try to add a link to it later). Bear with this, and substitute any omni-entity you believe in, or just life, for God if you wish. Preacher-man said bad attitudes come from bad theology. Basically, if I believe in a god who does things for me but doesn't have to and maybe doesn't want to (since I surely would rather not serve others without compensation), I'm not going to trust God, so I'm going to push for more while He feels like giving and live in fear of what happens if/when that stops. I'm also going to make plans to make sure I'm covered whatever He decides. This is what Israel was doing immediately after it left Egypt when it grumbled that there wasn't enough food and water, and that they were better off under the Egyptians where their physical needs were better met. It cost them access to Canaan, which was better suited to their needs. He went through several examples of people making decisions to supplicate their own fear rather than God's will, but that might be more than is needed here.

So the flip-side - what about a god who has already given more to each of us than any of us can return? As a Christian, this is eternal grace, his Spirit and Word, and sending a piece of divinity to die a painful, humiliating physical death. Nothing against our efforts - He just has more to give and has done so. In this case, there is no reason to doubt his continued love and generosity given such ample evidence, which frees us to learn and choose to obey his will because there is no cause for fear. That's freedom.

Not trying to convert anyone, but I've been asked before why I would participate in what is frequently a fear-based religion. I believe the fear is instituted more by human components of the religion than the divine, and have a confident faith that God will forgive me if I'm wrong about this, as I'm probably wrong about so many things. Whatever you believe, I hope you have a similar freedom in the choices in your life.

Once again, the preacher said it much better than I did (although I could probably store it in a database and retrieve it much more efficiently), so I'll try to find a link if anyone's interested.
posted by Unknown 7:39 PM | 0 comments