The way forward

There is lots of food for thought in Tom Ehrich's commentary on "the way forward" over at the Religious News Service blog.


COMMENTARY: The way forward is not an escape from troubled times


From Religion News Service


. . . These are troubled times, and those troubles cut broadly.

This is the moment for Christianity to step up and offer a way forward. Not a way backward, as many religious traditionalists offer; not a cantata of scapegoating, as the Glenn Beck-Sarah Palin "religious revival" would offer; and not a phony patriotic fervor that is self-service wrapped in a flag.

I mean the way forward that Jesus offered. People in his era, as in ours, were distracted, seeking escape, wanting easy answers, fearful of change, hungry for wealth and power, blaming foreigners and strangers, pulling inward, and willing to give up their freedom to the strong-willed.

Jesus' answer was clear, albeit threatening. Love me first, he said. Love your God before all others. Love your neighbor before yourself. Don't baptize your desired way of life and call it holy, but conform your life to the true holiness of God. Seek the courage not to be afraid.

Posted on September 1, 2010 7:30 PM | |
Comments (3)

Amen.

Posted by Bill Carroll [TypeKey Profile Page] | September 1, 2010 8:07 PM

Conform your life to the true holiness of God. Seek the courage not to be afraid.
And the way to put this into practice is . . . ?

It occurred to me recently that the preaching of the Hebrew prophets was in vain in a practical sense. No matter how faithfully the people of Judea followed their teaching, they still lived on the edge of competing world empires, and were going to get stomped on from time to time. As they were repeatedly, because of their location, not because of their unfaithfulness, until Hadrian put them out of business in 135.

Our banks are broke, though they're trying not to call in the debts that would prove it just yet, and the cheap fuel that's made possible the burgeoning of our civilization is running short of demand. The price of all our goods -- food, manufactures, transportation -- can only rise.

It would be nice for the churches to provide spaces for communities to form and some guidance for dealing with others in hard times -- but there's no way forward, economically or socially speaking. Hard times ahead.

Posted by Murdoch Matthew [TypeKey Profile Page] | September 2, 2010 12:39 AM

How? I would suggest that we can't do much about the rising prices of goods, about the global issues, about all sorts of things that are beyond our power to change.

BUT we can do all sorts of practical things like praying more, recycling, composting, voting, writing to our representatives in government, speaking up when it would be easier to remain silent, helping out at our local food bank or literacy program, spending more time with your kids talking about your fears and theirs, building community whenever the opportunity presents itself, praying even more, stop blaming the poor for asking for their fair share, reading the gospels to see how Jesus dealt with the clash of worlds, and in all of this perhaps we can learn to live out the motto: "In GOD we trust."

Posted by Peter Pearson [TypeKey Profile Page] | September 2, 2010 8:31 AM

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