Rawedge Rim wrote:...Someone kidnaps you and your family. You sincerely believe in God. They tell you that you must deny God or they will shoot a member of your family. They also tell you that they will keep tabs on you, and if you display any faith in God, they will kill a member of your family...
Okay - this is a challenging example to argue versus.
I had mentally prepared for a different argument.
(Like - on the one hand - people saying you're not being 'loving' because you're not being an enabler enabling someone to get what he or she wants.
OTOH, there are a hundred little ways that a Christian can neglect to love others in the day-to-day, and tell himself that he is doing it for God and be wrong. We must guard against this too.
And there's other cases...)
Anyway, your example has people choosing an evil course of action and intending to make an innocent captive complicit by their own choices.
But the Gospel must be robust against that, because we do live in a world which has evil. People really do act in that way.
Hmm, needs more time for thought.
SoulBiter wrote:One of the things that I learned from that parable is that while people tend to learn from the prodigal son, I learn from the other son. I tend to be the 'first' son. Who says "Why is the son who went away and did everything wrong, the one welcomed and a party thrown for." i.e. I go to Church every week, tithe, pray, do for others.. why the big party for the person who did none of that?!
I am like this as well.
Once I was talking about God with someone who I didn't know well.
He spied my Bible, and said, "Is that your Bible? Do you go to church a lot?"
Annoyed with him because of our interaction so far and deciding "I'm gonna own it," or something, I said "Yeah, I'm kind of a church nut."
In that instant, the potential for me to do him good with that conversation shattered.
I had just laid out a narrative where I was just THAT kind of person, and he was a completely different one.
So I turned it over in my head for awhile, as one is wont to do... wondering what I
should have said.
And then I began to remember what things used to be like.
When I was growing up, I didn't go to church.
As a kid, I would pass the signs of churches and wonder what their names meant. With words like "Nazarene" and such.
But I would quickly tell myself, "but that's not for us." (our family) "Because we're atheists."
Not annoyed and wanting to get inside. Just quietly indifferent.
And so it's really remarkable that I should be in a church at all.
Actually, I understand this parable IS written for folks in that position of "I'm the good kid."
The complaint of the older son echoes the grumbling of the pharisees and scribes whom Jesus is telling the parable to.
(Luke is masterful in his work of noting which audience Jesus speaks to.)
And yet the scenes from prodigal son's life are displayed in such detail for all to see. I think it's partly Jesus pointing the eyes of all those envious older-brother-like bystanders to the wretched condition of the younger brother saying, "Just look at him!"
"It looked like a good thing, but don't you see how much it cost him? Do you really just think he got all the fun?"
The two sons are not that different:
one son thinks that pleasure can be found in stuff and what stuff can buy.
The other thinks that pleasure will be found in reminding himself (and everyone else who will listen!) of his self-righteous duty.
Both are far from the father. One is physically absent; the other is present, but his heart is absent.
And neither of them has any idea just how willing the father is to be generous.
Not that different at all.
and in that spirit, here's what I'm thinking about this...
Avatar wrote:Thing is, what did he actually sacrifice? He knew that he would automatically go to heaven and resume his place there. Was that really such a big sacrifice?
I always have questions like that nagging in the back of my mind, too.
It's like my mind hasn't wrapped itself around someone truly God also being truly man.
But that's not what the scriptures are saying.
Jesus' agony in the garden of Gesthemane - when contemplating - deciding about - going to His death - had him deeply distressed / horrified / alarmed / anxious.
Also, the part about being a sinless person... how do we consider that? Might it make someone capable of experiencing MORE excruciating mental anguish than you or I can?
...since he has not numbed himself to grieving over the world's sorrows and injustices.
"For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God."
Anyway, Av's question is one that bugs me too, so if others have answers that speak to it, I want to hear them.. for me.
P.S. Sorry for the long post guys... it's totally me trying to make up for my flakey absences.
