Monday, May 16, 2016
496 - The Short List
Spirituality Column No. 496
May 17, 2016
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary
“Christianity does not want to propose solutions for overcoming social difficulties; it wants to lead the individual person into the presence of the living God.” - Martin Mosebach
Do you ever entertain the notion that maybe, just maybe, our Christian focus is aimed too broadly at the world and not enough at the bullseye of Jesus Christ?
I’d never heard of Martin Mosebach, but his recent words echo C.S. Lewis’s great line in Mere Christianity: “Aim at Heaven and you will get earth ‘thrown in’; aim at earth and you will get neither.” The point? God has to be first.
Paired with Mosebach’s sentiment, let’s reflect on our proper aim as Christians.
Mosebach, a highly acclaimed German novelist, essayist and social observer born in 1951, is a Roman Catholic traditionalist famous for his support of a return to the pre-Vatican II (pre-1960s) Catholic liturgy. He’s also a critic of Pope Francis’s aggressive social doctrines – issues and conversations for Catholics, not me.
What I as an evangelical take away from Mosebach’s statement is the simple truth of Jesus’s commandment to love others, and I am reminded of the frequent, nearly universal misinterpretation of Christian obedience. Jesus left us very few rules but we nonetheless legalistically seek, conjure and judge countless ordinances we – and of course we believe, the world – should obey.
Jesus boils down God’s commandments to two: 1) Love God and 2) love others. The often quoted “The Vine” passage in John 15 is Jesus’s final teaching before the Crucifixion. As He and the disciples depart the Last Supper for Gethsemane, Jesus instructs, “This is my commandment, that you love each other as I have loved you.” (v.12).
Love is the commandment of Jesus, fruitfulness God’s promise, and fullness of joy the believer’s reward (John 15:1-17; 1 John 3-4). Pretty simple.
When the resurrected Jesus issues another command to “go and make disciples” (Matthew 28:19, the Great Commission), the next sentence is “teach them to obey everything I have commanded you.” Christians read the word “everything” and panic, but “everything” is a very, very short list: love God, love others, and spread the word.
A common Bible-class error is trying to make a rule-book of the parables of Jesus. Those stories aren’t so much instruction about what to obey; they clandestinely describe the un-divine tarnish borne by the Pharisees on what they wrongly considered to be the “righteous” crown of their errant, self-begotten obedience. They had made up their own enslaving, unrighteous rules, and Jesus shrewdly called them out on it.
Plainly, eternally, the example of Jesus is love, not rules.
That’s all the obedience we need.
Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) is saying Jesus is easy; it’s the world that complicates things.
May 17, 2016
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary
The Short List
By Bob Walters“Christianity does not want to propose solutions for overcoming social difficulties; it wants to lead the individual person into the presence of the living God.” - Martin Mosebach
Do you ever entertain the notion that maybe, just maybe, our Christian focus is aimed too broadly at the world and not enough at the bullseye of Jesus Christ?
I’d never heard of Martin Mosebach, but his recent words echo C.S. Lewis’s great line in Mere Christianity: “Aim at Heaven and you will get earth ‘thrown in’; aim at earth and you will get neither.” The point? God has to be first.
Paired with Mosebach’s sentiment, let’s reflect on our proper aim as Christians.
Mosebach, a highly acclaimed German novelist, essayist and social observer born in 1951, is a Roman Catholic traditionalist famous for his support of a return to the pre-Vatican II (pre-1960s) Catholic liturgy. He’s also a critic of Pope Francis’s aggressive social doctrines – issues and conversations for Catholics, not me.
What I as an evangelical take away from Mosebach’s statement is the simple truth of Jesus’s commandment to love others, and I am reminded of the frequent, nearly universal misinterpretation of Christian obedience. Jesus left us very few rules but we nonetheless legalistically seek, conjure and judge countless ordinances we – and of course we believe, the world – should obey.
Jesus boils down God’s commandments to two: 1) Love God and 2) love others. The often quoted “The Vine” passage in John 15 is Jesus’s final teaching before the Crucifixion. As He and the disciples depart the Last Supper for Gethsemane, Jesus instructs, “This is my commandment, that you love each other as I have loved you.” (v.12).
Love is the commandment of Jesus, fruitfulness God’s promise, and fullness of joy the believer’s reward (John 15:1-17; 1 John 3-4). Pretty simple.
When the resurrected Jesus issues another command to “go and make disciples” (Matthew 28:19, the Great Commission), the next sentence is “teach them to obey everything I have commanded you.” Christians read the word “everything” and panic, but “everything” is a very, very short list: love God, love others, and spread the word.
A common Bible-class error is trying to make a rule-book of the parables of Jesus. Those stories aren’t so much instruction about what to obey; they clandestinely describe the un-divine tarnish borne by the Pharisees on what they wrongly considered to be the “righteous” crown of their errant, self-begotten obedience. They had made up their own enslaving, unrighteous rules, and Jesus shrewdly called them out on it.
Plainly, eternally, the example of Jesus is love, not rules.
That’s all the obedience we need.
Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) is saying Jesus is easy; it’s the world that complicates things.
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