It just seems to me that when the visible expression of the community that professes to represent God in the culture takes on the mantle of Moral Policeman it's just another adventure in missing the point?
This is from the book The Ethics of Freedom by Jacques Ellul.
"We have to take seriously the morals of our century. In so doing, of course, we alienate freedom. To take current morals seriously may well be the price we have to pay if the society in which we find ourselves is to continue. All the same, we have to see clearly at this point, for the alienation entailed may well be the most serious act to which we can assist, and there is no place for frivolity here. If it is not absolutely necessary to obey these morals for the sake of love, or witness, or the support of the weak, then we should stand aloof and not only dispute them but actually act outside the body of this established morality."
Today so much energy is spent in attempting to get people who don't even believe in the good news to obey these moral and ethical codes. It is a lost cause and an adventure in seriously missing the point. People are powerless to do it. That includes even all of us that have accepted the message of the kingdom of God as being reality.....except for the reality of the life of God in us. How did we ever come to a place of thinking that enforcing a 'way of living' on people who don't Know the Way would be effective and helpful to anyone? Or is this approach helpful for something? It does at times help keep society from being really 'out of control' messy. But is that what the message of the kingdom of God is about? Or is it about addressing the condition of alienation?
I think this approach exposes that we are more interested in hanging onto a life Jesus says we need to lose in order to find the real deal.
The mess caused by immorality and lawlessness is to expose this condition of alienation. For those that are being set free from the bondage of this alienation and in turn finding freedom through life in the Spirit they become the alternative reality of the only thing that is real and free. People living in this freedom, being embraced by the love of God, will find themselves being disentangled from the effects caused by their years spent in the bondage of alienation.
They will be people of overwhelming compassion and understanding towards those still trapped. They won't be able to live any other way because they will remember clearly that it wasn't long ago that they were trapped in the same destructive behavior. But for the grace and love of God....no one has the courage or the understanding of how to walk out of that prison.
We only become people of love and grace when we know, by (seeing and hearing) the living word of God.
2 comments:
This post reminds me of LesMiserable.
I still must watch that movie.
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