the interconnectedness of all actions and finally a time to use the word interconnectedness
After several conversations with friends, I've come to this conclusion: our actions do not exist in a vacuum. That is to say, everything we do is connected to something or someone else. This eliminates the notion of a "personal" decision, because ultimately, no decision affects only one person. Whether we acknowledge it or not, our actions have consequences, not just in our lives, but in the lives of those around us. The consequences of our actions extend even beyond the human race, as we are seeing with global warming and the daily addition of endangered species around the globe. We have so bought into the myth of individualism and "freedom" that we believe our actions are ours and ours alone. This simply is not true.
This is not true in a spiritual context, either. As Christians, we are a part of a Body, or family if you will. The myth of a "personal" faith is detrimental to the world. It creates a faith that is only inward and not outward. There is no better example of how the church has taught this than the question so many of us have heard; "Do you know Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior?" Jesus as our personal Savior places the emphasis on us.
As Brian McLaren notes, "In a self-centered and hell-centered salvation, doesn't Jesus- like every company and political party- appeal to me on the basis of self-interest so that I can have it all eternally and can do so cheaply, conveniently, easily, and quickly?"
McLaren goes on to say "I still believe that Jesus is vitally interested in saving me and you by individually judging us, by forgiving us of our wrongs, and teaching us to live in a better way. But I fear that for too many Christians, "personal salvation" has become another personal consumer product (like personal computers, a personal journal, personal time, etc.), and Christianity has become its marketing program."
I think McLaren is on to something. We as Christians have fallen into the trap of individualism, and have forgotten John 3:16; "For God so loved the world..." We tend to forget that Jesus' death and resurrection were for the entire earth and all that is in it. Saying that Jesus died "for me" places far too much emphasis on myself and blinds me from seeing that the salvation of the world has already taken place. Our role as Christians isn't to "save" others; it is to awaken them to the reality that they have already been saved, and to call them to follow the One who saved them. I'm not calling for universalism; I am simply saying that if we are to claim to have Good News, we have to understand that generally speaking, "news" refers to something that has happened or is happening. Salvation isn't something that's waiting around to happen in each person "individually" as they accept Jesus as their "personal Savior"; rather, it is something that has happened already, and the next step is to be awakened to that salvation within us. I really believe if we started seeing salvation for what it really is, we'd stop fighting over the few lifeboats and concern ourselves with saving the entire ship.
Our actions do not exist in a vacuum. And neither does our salvation.
This is not true in a spiritual context, either. As Christians, we are a part of a Body, or family if you will. The myth of a "personal" faith is detrimental to the world. It creates a faith that is only inward and not outward. There is no better example of how the church has taught this than the question so many of us have heard; "Do you know Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior?" Jesus as our personal Savior places the emphasis on us.
As Brian McLaren notes, "In a self-centered and hell-centered salvation, doesn't Jesus- like every company and political party- appeal to me on the basis of self-interest so that I can have it all eternally and can do so cheaply, conveniently, easily, and quickly?"
McLaren goes on to say "I still believe that Jesus is vitally interested in saving me and you by individually judging us, by forgiving us of our wrongs, and teaching us to live in a better way. But I fear that for too many Christians, "personal salvation" has become another personal consumer product (like personal computers, a personal journal, personal time, etc.), and Christianity has become its marketing program."
I think McLaren is on to something. We as Christians have fallen into the trap of individualism, and have forgotten John 3:16; "For God so loved the world..." We tend to forget that Jesus' death and resurrection were for the entire earth and all that is in it. Saying that Jesus died "for me" places far too much emphasis on myself and blinds me from seeing that the salvation of the world has already taken place. Our role as Christians isn't to "save" others; it is to awaken them to the reality that they have already been saved, and to call them to follow the One who saved them. I'm not calling for universalism; I am simply saying that if we are to claim to have Good News, we have to understand that generally speaking, "news" refers to something that has happened or is happening. Salvation isn't something that's waiting around to happen in each person "individually" as they accept Jesus as their "personal Savior"; rather, it is something that has happened already, and the next step is to be awakened to that salvation within us. I really believe if we started seeing salvation for what it really is, we'd stop fighting over the few lifeboats and concern ourselves with saving the entire ship.
Our actions do not exist in a vacuum. And neither does our salvation.
posted by justin at 11:12 PM
1 Comments:
Excellent post. Very well said.
The issue of how the culture we live in affects how we view God and religion really strikes a chord in me. It's obvious to me that we are light years away from a garden, with simple communion with God, contentment, and simplicity. As adanced as we are tecnologically, and as easy it is to communicate, it's frightening how deficient we have become relationally.
Our three-and-a-half month old son has recently begun to try to talk to us (keyword: try). Granted, he's far away from being able to form words, much less sentences, but lately he has started grunting and vocalizing in such a way that it's obvious he's trying to communicate, or at least imitate. As we've experienced this, I've often wondered if I could make the same noises that he makes. I don't just mean generic grunts and coos and murmurs, I mean truly unlearned, unpracticed, and unpurposed noises. I realized that I know so much about how to speak, what to say, how to say it, and that my tongue has been conditioned so completely with a limited language of appropriate, "English-sounding" sounds that even if I tried, I couldn't make a purely untaught, undisciplined, or unintentional sound.
I bring this up only because it seems the same in the area of spirituality. We have been so thoroughly conditioned by the world we live in, we have lost a great deal of the spontenaity, poverty, and simplicity that is required to really approach God in a meaningful way. But should we really be surprised? This idea is directly consistent with the fall of man and the by-product is the broken world in which we live.
My hope and belief is that we are not beyond recovery. God created us with an inifinite capacity to think and advance and I would wager that He knew exactly what He was doing. It's such a challenge, though, to try and put aside these ingrained habits and inclinations, especially when our culture and world puts so much emphasis on them.
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