tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7667563.post8830312765417659513..comments2023-06-04T08:05:00.907-05:00Comments on Sans Contexte: Systems and structuretheologienhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05999449636939375428noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7667563.post-27602416131027350742007-11-23T11:26:00.000-06:002007-11-23T11:26:00.000-06:00Howard - Your email sparked me to investigate your...Howard - Your email sparked me to investigate your blog for the first time. I think I get the sense of what you are asking. Here are my thoughts.<BR/><BR/>I agree fully with where you ended up: That concentrating on people -helping others follow Christ in their daily lives - is a better focus than changing the structural aspects of a church. However, why the structure/systems of the church have gotten to a point different from this is something the leadership of the church should be looking at with much prayer and self examination.<BR/><BR/>But I think the implementation of the next step - a focus on spiritual development of people, is something that has several obstacles. I think the very largest is that we have no agreement on what God really wants for his people, because we do not have a clear idea of God.<BR/><BR/>For my entire spiritual life my inadequate or just plain incorrect ideas about God have hindered my spiritual development.<BR/><BR/>These inadequate ideas come from varied places, but rather than go over the inadequacies I would like to share the ideas that have made a difference to me at this point in time.<BR/><BR/>1) The love of God for humanity is at the heart of Reality. 'It was his right to create, but it was out of his love he created'. 'There is no way we can conceive of his wondrous goodness; he will not disappoint us, he will far exceed our wildest thoughts of goodness'<BR/><BR/>2) Sin in individual men and women has corrupted and defiled our minds, our relationships, our culture and our world. '... we must get rid of this misery of ours. It is slaying us. It is turning our fair earth into a hell, and our hearts into its' fuel'.<BR/><BR/>3) God's love for us has compelled him to effect a rescue. 'No evil can be cured in mankind except by being cured in individual men and women. Rightness alone is a cure. And the health at the root of a man's being is to be free from sin. I do not mean set free from the sins he has done - that will follow. I mean the sin in his being, which spoils his nature - the wrongness in him, the sin he is, which makes him do the sin he does. To save a man from both his sin and his sins is to say to him in a perfect and eternal sense 'Rise up and walk, be at liberty in your essential being. To do this for us, Jesus was born'.<BR/><BR/>4) Our rescuer Jesus makes one over-arching demand on our lives: Turn, and follow me. 'No man is a beleiver, no matter what else he may do, except he give his will, his life, to the Master'. 'He came to do more than take the puishment for our sins. He came as well to set us free from our sin.' 'It may cost God suffering that man can never know to bring the man to a point when he wills His will. But when he has been brought to that point... the man becomes one with God, and the end for which Jesus was born and died [and lives] is gained.'<BR/><BR/>5)The life our Savior opens to us is many faceted. 'If we will but let our God and father work his will with us, there can be no limit to his enlargement of our existence, to the flood of life with which he will overflow our consciousness. We have no conception of what life might be. There lies before me the fullness of life, sufficient to content a perfect Father, and the part of the child is to yield all and see that he does not himself stand in the way of the might design.'<BR/><BR/>6) A warning. 'If a man refuses to come out os sin, he must suffer the vengeance of a love that would be no love if it left him there.' 'The terrible thing is to be bad, and all puishment is to help deliver us from it...God will have us good.<BR/><BR/>The sum of these is to understand a Father of Love with an agenda for us of goodness, and understand I have a will he created and a share of my own making. The result is a real interest in spiritual/moral development. <BR/><BR/>All quotes above are from George MacDonald, in whom I have found a view of God and salvation that motivates me toward him.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com