I'm surely still learning this and don't have it all figured out, but for me, my earlier belief that Jesus' way is a means to organize the whole world has faded away (that he would redeem human systems). Because I believe in human agency, the thought of all the people involved in these systems coming along and accepting his way on their own just doesn't seem possible. Maybe this makes me more cynical than hopeful (for the whole of the current world, at least...I do still hold to an eschatology).
So I'm believing (and it is a matter of faith, indeed) that trying to make Jesus' way everyone's way is not an effort he's called us to. Rather, his way is a means to live through it all, faithful to holiness and love, with effort by grace to not participate in anything other. What "participation" means...I'm not completely sure, though I am determined to figure it out a day at a time, for at least myself.
I certainly don't think that bombs are a way to peace. Well, I suppose with enough bombs to kill enough of the right people, I could make a semblance of peace for me and my own, but that's certainly not the way of Jesus. And I think I know my heart enough to know that this would not bring inner peace whatsoever.
Maybe it comes down to the question, "Just how much do I believe in Jesus?"
Totally agree. Bombs I think you really have to twist yourselves in knots to justify. The easiest way to do it, at least in some contemporary cases, is an efficacy argument, but Jesus didn’t spend a lot of time imploring us to be efficacious did He? If anything, quite the opposite.
I don’t think you’re being cynical at all. I think people can get in almost as much trouble believing they are responsible for stopping all of the world’s bombs (or the world’s injustice or whatever the case may be) than they can in trying to justify the bombs’ existence. There’s a quote I think of often, and I may butcher the actual phrasing, but it’s something like “instead of asking what I should be doing, ask where I should be doing?” — the idea being that we all have different places, degrees, and spheres of influence and that it’s within them more so than outside of them that we find our work. Personally, I find it easy to dismiss things like the Serenity Prayer and “bloom where you’re planted” as cheesy but I actually do think that’s kind of the idea.
“What, Lord, is mine to do?” I think it’s a different answer for all of us.
Surely some things must just have to happen though
"Have to happen" or "will happen"?
I'm surely still learning this and don't have it all figured out, but for me, my earlier belief that Jesus' way is a means to organize the whole world has faded away (that he would redeem human systems). Because I believe in human agency, the thought of all the people involved in these systems coming along and accepting his way on their own just doesn't seem possible. Maybe this makes me more cynical than hopeful (for the whole of the current world, at least...I do still hold to an eschatology).
So I'm believing (and it is a matter of faith, indeed) that trying to make Jesus' way everyone's way is not an effort he's called us to. Rather, his way is a means to live through it all, faithful to holiness and love, with effort by grace to not participate in anything other. What "participation" means...I'm not completely sure, though I am determined to figure it out a day at a time, for at least myself.
I certainly don't think that bombs are a way to peace. Well, I suppose with enough bombs to kill enough of the right people, I could make a semblance of peace for me and my own, but that's certainly not the way of Jesus. And I think I know my heart enough to know that this would not bring inner peace whatsoever.
Maybe it comes down to the question, "Just how much do I believe in Jesus?"
And how much I actually believe Jesus.
Totally agree. Bombs I think you really have to twist yourselves in knots to justify. The easiest way to do it, at least in some contemporary cases, is an efficacy argument, but Jesus didn’t spend a lot of time imploring us to be efficacious did He? If anything, quite the opposite.
I don’t think you’re being cynical at all. I think people can get in almost as much trouble believing they are responsible for stopping all of the world’s bombs (or the world’s injustice or whatever the case may be) than they can in trying to justify the bombs’ existence. There’s a quote I think of often, and I may butcher the actual phrasing, but it’s something like “instead of asking what I should be doing, ask where I should be doing?” — the idea being that we all have different places, degrees, and spheres of influence and that it’s within them more so than outside of them that we find our work. Personally, I find it easy to dismiss things like the Serenity Prayer and “bloom where you’re planted” as cheesy but I actually do think that’s kind of the idea.
“What, Lord, is mine to do?” I think it’s a different answer for all of us.
Mercy