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Subscribe to CommentsLove demands more of us than any other thing. Because God is love, and man, can he be demanding! So why does an emphasis on love make some people of faith nervous?
I’m mystified by the occasional push back I get on this blog when I quote the golden rule: “”In everything, therefore, treat people the same way you want them to treat you, for this is the Law and the Prophets.” Matthew 7: 12 Someone objected that this is not the gospel. Oh?
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Carl Safina, an environmental scientist and science writer of some note, spoke at the Vineyard Church of Ann Arbor two weeks ago. Our first secular scientist as a speaker–a man who professes no Christian faith, but is an admirer of Jesus of Nazareth along with Charles Darwin. He was nervous to be speaking to a congregation in the evangelical wing of American Christianity. He was nervous as one might be who is crossing a minefield without knowing where the mines are located. Would he offend people without even intending to? Would he get me into trouble with congregants by what he might say? I told him not to be nervous: we wanted to hear what he had to say about the oceans and science and the environment. Tell us what you know. But I was nervous too.
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Our brains manage meaning by the use of metaphor, comparing one thing to another so as to illuminate the other. Jesus did the same with his parables: revealing the unknown kingdom by the known mustard seed, sower, pearl of great price, daft woman who lost a coin, grieving father. We are ruled by the metaphors we embrace. Jesus said, “If any want to be my followers, let them deny themselves, and take up their cross daily, and follow me.” Carrying a cross, a beam of wood used to execute criminals, is the metaphor he chose to illuminate what it means to be his disciple. To be his disciple is to accept this metaphor. It is time for us to critically examine a metaphor offered to us in recent years to illuminate what it means for Christians to engage the surrounding culture: the metaphor of war, and it’s application by the Religious Right, that to be a faithful disciple of Jesus is to be a culture warrior.
