People seem to think that becoming a Christian is an answer: the answer.
They think; if they can only become the right kind of Christian - i.e. join the right church and believe and do what it says - then they will have the answers.
(Not all the answers, but all the most important answers.)
Because people think that being a Christian is itself the answer, then they make-it-so - or try to make-it-so.
If they succeed in making being-a-Christian the answer - then from-that-point-onwards, they hand-over responsibility for ultimate values to... whatever they consider to be Christianity.
From-that-point-onwards their job is to understand and obey.
They regard becoming a Christian as arriving, coming home: as the end.
If, however, they fail to make-it-so, and discover that becoming a Christian is not the answer - then they stop being a Christian.
However, I would say that becoming a Christian is Not the answer.
Instead; becoming a Christian is to ask the right question.
I would say that becoming a Christian is not the end, but instead the beginning.
4 comments:
Well, early Christianity was called "The Way" not "The Answer."
@Derek - It's the "the" plus way that is the problem; because "the" implies a single route - which description has much the same character as "the" answer.
I was giving my children, teenagers, counsel recently that life is best seen as a struggle against your enemy, sometimes within yourself, sometimes with others, and sometimes with the strategic darkness which wills your destruction, as opposed some kind of list of correct answers versus incorrect answers.
@Lucinda - The difficulty is that what most people want most of the time refers to this mortal life; and often to what they want now or in the immediate future.
If we try to answer this want in the most direct way - we are led back into the hedonic (feelings-based) ideals of current materialism.
This is why our saturation with busyness, social-relationships, and media - and the attention-grabbing nature of these concerns; work against understanding and valuing Jesus's teaching.
Because what Jesus offers has its effect on here-and-now in an indirect way, by providing a different basic understanding of life and its purpose.
Our actual life changes its meaning with Jesus, because life is then "set" within this much larger (eternally large) perspective.... but it's not going to be directed to address the here-and-now experiences of sufferings and pleasures.
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