This is just the second post in the faith journey series during which I hope to convey some adjustments I’m making after examining the apparent cracks in my spiritual formation. It should be obvious that our spiritual formation shapes our understanding of our faith and how we live it out.
In recent years I have been rather dissatisfied with my spiritual formation (“fundamentalist” upbringing and long-time “evangelical” approach to beliefs). I realized that my views in many cases were not consistent with what I had been recognizing they should be for a follower of Christ. The inconsistencies became too perceptible to ignore.
A short time ago, we acquired a wonderful little dog. He’s a very smart Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. Buddy constantly follows my wife or me around the house – virtually everywhere. He just wants to be with us, and he is totally focused on us.
He even ignores his food just to be around us until we finally sit down to eat. Then, and only then, will he go over and consume the food in his dish. He is modeling us as closely as a dog can.
If I’ve gotten anything at all from the recent books I’ve read, I’ve grasped one thing. If we as Christians want to be true followers of Christ and actually help fashion the Kingdom, we, too, must model his teachings and his behavior.
I realize that most Christians, including evangelicals, would agree. However, it's important to me to do so in a manner that is consistent with understanding the contextual implications of Christ's imperatives and how that might affect today's applications. How does historical and cultural understanding of his teachings affect today's implementation?
The difficulty with the evangelical approach, for me, is that it too often takes strictly at face value what Christ or the apostles said or did, without scrupulously considering what it meant in the then religiously-charged Jewish culture that was influenced by Roman rule. What it could or should mean for us today might be either less emphatic or a whole lot more inclusive, depending on the translation we're reading and the cultural biases or political conditions at the time.
There are many complexities with this, of course. Christ lived 2,000 years ago in a culture whose people had definite expectations regarding a coming messiah. How, then, do we extrapolate from these teachings and apply them to our lives in our culture?
Fortunately we have lots of help. Theologians, historians and astute thinkers have been illuminating the Biblical teachings of Jesus since the time he lived on earth. And of course we have the canon itself, plus a wealth of church history and tradition to enrich the process.
My recent readings have helped immensely in providing some fresh (for me) thinking on some very knotty faith issues amidst our affluent society and post-modern thinking. My next post in this series will deal with one of them.
1 comment:
Your dog is more Christian than Jack. He lives for his food, and lies in wait at the foot of Aubrey's chair, waiting for the moment he can steal her food from her hand or off the table. He reminds me of the pack of wolves that tries to isolate the young and feeble lamb in the flock.
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