The crucial word in there is punishment
Submitted by Forgiven on February 16 2001 03:02:39
In reply to I'd say you've missed quite a bit submitted by Ford Prefect on February 15 2001 19:13:27
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My reading of the bible goes like this: Hunamkind was created by God in a perfect environment. We were given a choice - to continue to live as God wanted, or to rebel. We chose to rebel. Once we had made that choice, all that we deserve is Hell - eternal seperation from God in a place where there is no hope. To the extent that we get anything better out of life, to that extent we are benefiting from grace. The central logic of creation is that you reap what you sow; not absolutely immediately, but in the long term. This means that children benefit from having good parents, and the community benefits from the efforts of individuals to better it. But it means that sin also has negative effects. The purpose of Jesus's death on the cross is that by an innocent person suffering, the negative consequences of sin can be 'drained' from the universe and people can enter a right relationship with God because the punishment - the otherwise inevitable consequence of going against the 'right' way of the universe - can be set aside. This of course occurred because of God's love for all of his creation,which he sought to bring back into right relationship with him. In this context, the role of the church is to proclaim the possibility of forgiveness, and help people to live as they should in the kingdom that God is bringing into being. But it is all predicated on a desire to live as God requires - because that is what makes possible God working in our lives to change us as he wants. But the timescale for the process is limited - it is not God's intention to allow the present suffering of this world to continue indefinitely, but rather to allow the maximum opportunity for people to find Him for themselves; for individuals the opportunity ends at death - and for the world it will end at the time of Jesus' return in glory. In that context, the implication in Nouwen's teaching that there is always a chance to repent is dangerous, because it will encourage some to reject the offer of grace that they have NOW - but one day will no longer have. Perhaps one of the problems that we have in modern society is failure to take either holiness or evil really seriously. Hollywood's evil characters are usually 'comic book' type, and either easily defeated, relatively painlessly shown the folly of their ways, and redeemed or merely portrayed as selfish. Meanwhile true holiness is extremely rare. As a result we have generally lost sight of what the extremes are really about, and are don't take them seriously. One of the responses to this is the commitment to being 'non-judgemental' - and as a result a lot that is wrong continues unchallenged unless it happens to be unfashionable (e.g. BL); adultery is a good example of something which hardly raises an eyebrow these days, despite the enormous damage that it does. I've wittered on for a long time, and hope I've said something that makes some sense.... |
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