But if God is abstractly understood in terms of 'properties' then loving is unnatural. Either we need to posit some different kind of love (agape...) or we tend towards worship rather than love.
Because of Jesus, Christians ought to know God as a person. But historically this was overwritten by abstract definitions of deity, that were enforced as primary.
Endorsing abstract descriptions was made more important than knowing and loving God as a person. Worship and obedience were made more important than familial commitment.
The malign influence of intellectuals seems evident in a disdainful rejection of the childishness of God as an actual person. The demands of political control seem dominant in the demand for a worship utterly alien to a good and loving family.
Reality really is very simple, childishly simple - Get Over It!
- Note: The above view, although true, does make difficulties for modern people in explaining creation, since most people think of creation using impersonal, scientific, abstract 'processes'. Thus being a Christian implies adopting a view of ultimate creation as being also childish, primitive, mythic - simplistic with more obvious simplicity than the obscurities of abstraction.
2 comments:
"Worship and obedience were made more important than familial commitment."
Exactly. And I have seen this play out in very unsettling ways. I know a pastor whose younger brother is not a professing, orthodox Christian. The pastor has told me that he attaches almost no significance to blood ties to his brother, and has stated that someone who PROFESSES faith in Christ, living 10000 miles away, means more to him than his own brother. To me, this sounds absolutely insane...but I have met other Christians who say/believe similar things.
People get very confused by abstractions.
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