Monday, July 11, 2011

God Won't Make Us Believe in Him, Says Pope

http://www.zenit.org/article-33044?l=english
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7 comments:

louis said...

"Love always respects freedom."

I thought friends didn't let friends drive drunk.

11:15 AM, July 11, 2011
James Swan said...

"Love always respects freedom."

I think this saying was in one of the books Martin Luther took out of the Bible.

12:01 PM, July 11, 2011
louis said...

lol. If love respected freedom more than it did mercy, we'd all be done for.

3:06 PM, July 11, 2011
joe berg said...

God clearly does allow us to drive drunk. The amazing thing about the Cross is that it took the whole drunken career (both meanings) of mankind onto the shoulders of Christ. There is no power in the law to engage us into holiness, nor has God chosen to wield the just recourses law establishes against us.
The freedom to yield to Jesus or to resist Him still exists both in those of us who purport to have "received Christ", and those of us who fester in "reformation" (no slam intended against anything I've seen here, but only against a sort of Christianity which makes a smug, spoiled godlet of its own incompetence, willfulness and lethargy.) Love, because of the enormous power of freedom it offers; and by extension, potential for the rejection of God; is a fearfully dangerous gift. A truly magnificent gift.

And always a gift. What God insists upon with regard to absolut(ion) was resolved at Gethsemane. When He spanks us he is not forcing us, but merely training us with an interuptive insistence of reality. The Old Testament might therefore be seen as manhood's childhood, with power to instruct but no power to save; i.e. to set and maintain a course reflective of and responsive to our Father's course.

So we have before us the story of the Old Testament, where God shows Himself loving and masterful; and we have our own lives, where He intervenes in a personal way to demonstrate the same realities: and we have Christ, who both demonstrates perfect Sonship and carries our sins.

God's Love moves through and over all this, and freedom to love God or not remains both to encourage and haunt us.

8:03 AM, August 07, 2011
joe berg said...

God's Love moves through and over all this, and freedom to love God or not remains, both to encourage and haunt us.

Further, I'd like to point out that doctrine is not itself inherently salvific, whereas love is, if Jesus is to be believed. This love thing has deep roots which doctrine can only delve at.
God's historical willingness to offer paradoxical expressions of Himself for our two-dimensional consideration is indisputable, perpetually confounding doctrine but never love. Mercy and freedom are fast friends in the Godhead.
Peace to all who draw near.

8:21 AM, August 07, 2011
joe berg said...

Jesus carries God's masterful reality into ours, and then bears away the bloody scraps of our own.
Here is a portrait of mercy and freedom and holiness. The flash of a picture, and the thunder of a true reality with power to bring us into sonship.

8:35 AM, August 07, 2011
joe berg said...

In short, I think the Pope has got this one right.

8:37 AM, August 07, 2011

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