I’ve decided it was worth writing a single definitive statement about Christian activism in the broader context of what I teach. I reiterate that the answers were there in my teaching, but good solid questions bring out a certain clarity I might not otherwise be able to offer. So one of the highest compliments, and greatest blessings, are people who ask good questions.
Life Is Good (site closed)
A teaser:
Don’t place a high value this life, nor anything in it. Hold very loosely to this world and it’s things, because it’s all disposable. At some point, the entire universe will end; God has said in no uncertain terms it will be gone, totally wiped away. John says we overcome by not loving our lives, but eagerly looking forward to death in the hope of eternal redemption. For most Christians, I don’t need to say any more about it.
Unfortunately, most Christians I know suffer a serious moral schizophrenia when it comes to living out the implications of that teaching. We are so thoroughly pickled in our Western culture that we just cannot bring our minds to organize themselves on a different moral value system. The Bible holds for values completely different from our worldly Western culture. So it’s easy to be people to say this life isn’t worth much anxiety, but it’s another thing entirely to get them to live like, never mind tune their daily speech patterns to convey the biblical viewpoint.
That’s when it becomes necessary to drag out that discussion of Hebrew intellectual assumptions and Hebrew Mystical worldview and those heavy discussions of epistemology. People are still running their entire lives by Post-Enlightenment Western epistemology, and it is both alien and hostile to that of the Bible. So long as you remain a Westerner in your moral and intellectual assumptions, you are not following Jesus.
