Thursday, March 03, 2005

I’ve been reading The Thinklings almost from their inception and their stuff never gets old. Much of it is over my head from a theological point of view, but I read to learn. Jared posted a thought-provoking post that sparked a long conversation in the comments. That generated another related post from Jared and another from Bill.

There’s too much good, meaty stuff to excerpt, although I really loved this from Jared in the Ethos/Theos post:

I have, I think, a justifiable concern with what Bono and others are preaching. I say “preaching,” because it is not just ethical platitudes the proclaimers of social justice are offering. They are explicitly connecting their call to “what God wants.” If you really love God, they seem to say, you would do more about __________. If you really want to prove you’re a good Christian, you would do ___________. On the surface, they are right, and they should not be ignored. (This does ignore the fact that most lovers of God and most Christians are doing these sorts of things, but that’s not the point.)

No, my point is that even while God is connected to the ethical demands of these self-styled prophets of social justice, a holistic biblical understanding of God is not. My contention, therefore, is that demanding the specific ethic of Jesus without regard for the specific theology of Jesus – and all that it entails – is generally pointless and ultimately fruitless. You can’t really understand and embrace Jesus’ teachings without obeying Jesus’ call to repent and follow Him. You can’t have the Sermon on the Mount without the hill of Golgotha.

Go forth and read.