the healing at the pool
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?book_id=50&chapter=5&version=31
Anyone who wants to understand the relationship between Christianity and conservatism would do well to read John 5, linked above. This is the Scripture we looked at in Sunday School this morning. See if this sounds familiar.
A man living in Jeruselum had been an invalid for 38 years. He had spent that entire 38 years lying next to a pool near the Sheep Gate, waiting for someone to help him get into the pool so that the "healing waters" could restore his strength. Can you imagine? Lying there for 38 years? The man was either really patient or really lazy! Jesus came to him and asked the man if he wanted to get well. The man said that he did, but there were many reasons why he couldn't get well right at this moment, so he was content to wait for someone to help him into the healing pool. He had been waiting patiently for 38 years, and I suppose he was prepared to wait for another 38 years! Jesus said to him, "Get up and walk." Guess what? The man did! What a miracle! And what was the reaction of the intelligentsia? They were angry that Jesus had worked on the Sabbath! Kind of missed the whole point, didn't they? Later in the story, Jesus saw the man again, and He told the man to "stop sinning or something worse may happen." Are there any lessons to be learned from this account of a miracle performed by Jesus? Yes!
1. Do you have problems, burdens, afflictions, disabilities, or hardships? You can sit on your duff and wait for Mommy and Daddy Government (AKA "Hillary's Village") to solve your problems, or you can lay your burden down at God's feet and ask Him for strength.
2. If you do that--worship/praise God--be prepared for ridicule, scorn, and persecution. That's the way that the secular progressive power structure is!
3. If we "believe in God" and go to church and occasionally ask God to bail us out of the predicaments that our sinful nature gets us in to, is it OK to go on sinning and to live our life as we wish? Is Jesus "tolerant" of our sin? Does Jesus say, "It's all good! Live like you want to live! I love you and you love me and we should live as one fam-il-ee in whatever way makes you happ-ee!" NO! Jesus says, "Stop sinning!"
4. Kind of makes you think that the liberals really don't understand what Christianity is all about, doesn't it?
By the way, speaking of liberalism and Christianity and this morning's Sunday School---
One of the people in my class mentioned Tony Dungy (head coach of the WORLD CHAMPION INDIANAPOLIS COLTS) as we were waiting to start. She commented about how often Dungy has been asked about the social significance of being one of the two FIRST AFRICAN AMERICAN COACHES IN SUPER BOWL HISTORY. Dungy answers the same way every time. He says that he is proud, but that he is more proud of the fact that both he and Lovie Smith (Bear's coach) are Christians and that they are a living testament to the fact that one can be successful coaching the Lord's way. Her comment was that Dungy's answer always seems to get "edited" when he doesn't follow the racial agenda. My take on that is that any story that the drive-by media does must fit the liberal template. The liberal media has an agenda--promote the White-America-Dumps-On-The-Black-Man-But-He-Can-Still-Achieve-If-Aided-By Affirmative-Action (Rooney Rule) angle. There is no room in the liberal template for "I love God with my entire being and I praise Him for the bounty of His blessings!" That's OK. After tonight's game, when Dungy was at the podium accepting the Lombardi Trophy for winning the Super Bowl (live on international TV) he repeated his message and CBS was unable to edit. Sometimes that "live TV" thing is a curse (Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction") and sometimes it is a blessing!
Anyone who wants to understand the relationship between Christianity and conservatism would do well to read John 5, linked above. This is the Scripture we looked at in Sunday School this morning. See if this sounds familiar.
A man living in Jeruselum had been an invalid for 38 years. He had spent that entire 38 years lying next to a pool near the Sheep Gate, waiting for someone to help him get into the pool so that the "healing waters" could restore his strength. Can you imagine? Lying there for 38 years? The man was either really patient or really lazy! Jesus came to him and asked the man if he wanted to get well. The man said that he did, but there were many reasons why he couldn't get well right at this moment, so he was content to wait for someone to help him into the healing pool. He had been waiting patiently for 38 years, and I suppose he was prepared to wait for another 38 years! Jesus said to him, "Get up and walk." Guess what? The man did! What a miracle! And what was the reaction of the intelligentsia? They were angry that Jesus had worked on the Sabbath! Kind of missed the whole point, didn't they? Later in the story, Jesus saw the man again, and He told the man to "stop sinning or something worse may happen." Are there any lessons to be learned from this account of a miracle performed by Jesus? Yes!
1. Do you have problems, burdens, afflictions, disabilities, or hardships? You can sit on your duff and wait for Mommy and Daddy Government (AKA "Hillary's Village") to solve your problems, or you can lay your burden down at God's feet and ask Him for strength.
2. If you do that--worship/praise God--be prepared for ridicule, scorn, and persecution. That's the way that the secular progressive power structure is!
3. If we "believe in God" and go to church and occasionally ask God to bail us out of the predicaments that our sinful nature gets us in to, is it OK to go on sinning and to live our life as we wish? Is Jesus "tolerant" of our sin? Does Jesus say, "It's all good! Live like you want to live! I love you and you love me and we should live as one fam-il-ee in whatever way makes you happ-ee!" NO! Jesus says, "Stop sinning!"
4. Kind of makes you think that the liberals really don't understand what Christianity is all about, doesn't it?
By the way, speaking of liberalism and Christianity and this morning's Sunday School---
One of the people in my class mentioned Tony Dungy (head coach of the WORLD CHAMPION INDIANAPOLIS COLTS) as we were waiting to start. She commented about how often Dungy has been asked about the social significance of being one of the two FIRST AFRICAN AMERICAN COACHES IN SUPER BOWL HISTORY. Dungy answers the same way every time. He says that he is proud, but that he is more proud of the fact that both he and Lovie Smith (Bear's coach) are Christians and that they are a living testament to the fact that one can be successful coaching the Lord's way. Her comment was that Dungy's answer always seems to get "edited" when he doesn't follow the racial agenda. My take on that is that any story that the drive-by media does must fit the liberal template. The liberal media has an agenda--promote the White-America-Dumps-On-The-Black-Man-But-He-Can-Still-Achieve-If-Aided-By Affirmative-Action (Rooney Rule) angle. There is no room in the liberal template for "I love God with my entire being and I praise Him for the bounty of His blessings!" That's OK. After tonight's game, when Dungy was at the podium accepting the Lombardi Trophy for winning the Super Bowl (live on international TV) he repeated his message and CBS was unable to edit. Sometimes that "live TV" thing is a curse (Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction") and sometimes it is a blessing!
posted by hondo at 11:36 PM
2 Comments:
THERE is no such thing as a "Christian politics." If it is a politics, it cannot be Christian. Jesus told Pilate: "My reign is not of this present order. If my reign were of this present order, my supporters would have fought against my being turned over to the Jews. But my reign is not here" (John 18:36). Jesus brought no political message or program.
This is a truth that needs emphasis at a time when some Democrats, fearing that the Republicans have advanced over them by the use of religion, want to respond with a claim that Jesus is really on their side. He is not. He avoided those who would trap him into taking sides for or against the Roman occupation of Judea. He paid his taxes to the occupying power but said only, "Let Caesar have what belongs to him, and God have what belongs to him" (Matthew 22:21). He was the original proponent of a separation of church and state.
Those who want the state to engage in public worship, or even to have prayer in schools, are defying his injunction: "When you pray, be not like the pretenders, who prefer to pray in the synagogues and in the public square, in the sight of others. In truth I tell you, that is all the profit they will have. But you, when you pray, go into your inner chamber and, locking the door, pray there in hiding to your Father, and your Father who sees you in hiding will reward you" (Matthew 6:5-6). He shocked people by his repeated violation of the external holiness code of his time, emphasizing that his religion was an internal matter of the heart.
But doesn't Jesus say to care for the poor? Repeatedly and insistently, but what he says goes far beyond politics and is of a different order. He declares that only one test will determine who will come into his reign: whether one has treated the poor, the hungry, the homeless and the imprisoned as one would Jesus himself. "Whenever you did these things to the lowliest of my brothers, you were doing it to me" (Matthew 25:40). No government can propose that as its program. Theocracy itself never went so far, nor could it.
The state cannot indulge in self-sacrifice. If it is to treat the poor well, it must do so on grounds of justice, appealing to arguments that will convince people who are not followers of Jesus or of any other religion. The norms of justice will fall short of the demands of love that Jesus imposes. A Christian may adopt just political measures from his or her own motive of love, but that is not the argument that will define justice for state purposes.
To claim that the state's burden of justice, which falls short of the supreme test Jesus imposes, is actually what he wills — that would be to substitute some lesser and false religion for what Jesus brought from the Father. Of course, Christians who do not meet the lower standard of state justice to the poor will, a fortiori, fail to pass the higher test.
The Romans did not believe Jesus when he said he had no political ambitions. That is why the soldiers mocked him as a failed king, giving him a robe and scepter and bowing in fake obedience (John 19:1-3). Those who today say that they are creating or following a "Christian politics" continue the work of those soldiers, disregarding the words of Jesus that his reign is not of this order.
Some people want to display and honor the Ten Commandments as a political commitment enjoined by the religion of Jesus. That very act is a violation of the First and Second Commandments. By erecting a false religion — imposing a reign of Jesus in this order — they are worshiping a false god. They commit idolatry. They also take the Lord's name in vain.
Some may think that removing Jesus from politics would mean removing morality from politics. They think we would all be better off if we took up the slogan "What would Jesus do?"
That is not a question his disciples ask in the Gospels. They never knew what Jesus was going to do next. He could round on Peter and call him "Satan." He could refuse to receive his mother when she asked to see him. He might tell his followers that they are unworthy of him if they do not hate their mother and their father. He might kill pigs by the hundreds. He might whip people out of church precincts.
The Jesus of the Gospels is not a great ethical teacher like Socrates, our leading humanitarian. He is an apocalyptic figure who steps outside the boundaries of normal morality to signal that the Father's judgment is breaking into history. His miracles were not acts of charity but eschatological signs — accepting the unclean, promising heavenly rewards, making last things first.
He is more a higher Nietzsche, beyond good and evil, than a higher Socrates. No politician is going to tell the lustful that they must pluck out their right eye. We cannot do what Jesus would do because we are not divine.
It was blasphemous to say, as the deputy under secretary of defense, Lt. Gen. William Boykin, repeatedly did, that God made George Bush president in 2000, when a majority of Americans did not vote for him. It would not remove the blasphemy for Democrats to imply that God wants Bush not to be president. Jesus should not be recruited as a campaign aide. To trivialize the mystery of Jesus is not to serve the Gospels.
The Gospels are scary, dark and demanding. It is not surprising that people want to tame them, dilute them, make them into generic encouragements to be loving and peaceful and fair. If that is all they are, then we may as well make Socrates our redeemer.
It is true that the tamed Gospels can be put to humanitarian purposes, and religious institutions have long done this, in defiance of what Jesus said in the Gospels.
Jesus was the victim of every institutional authority in his life and death. He said: "Do not be called Rabbi, since you have only one teacher, and you are all brothers. And call no one on earth your father, since you have only one Father, the one in heaven. And do not be called leaders, since you have only one leader, the Messiah" (Matthew 23:8-10).
If Democrats want to fight Republicans for the support of an institutional Jesus, they will have to give up the person who said those words. They will have to turn away from what Flannery O'Connor described as "the bleeding stinking mad shadow of Jesus" and "a wild ragged figure" who flits "from tree to tree in the back" of the mind.
He was never that thing that all politicians wish to be esteemed — respectable. At various times in the Gospels, Jesus is called a devil, the devil's agent, irreligious, unclean, a mocker of Jewish law, a drunkard, a glutton, a promoter of immorality.
The institutional Jesus of the Republicans has no similarity to the Gospel figure. Neither will any institutional Jesus of the Democrats.
Garry Wills is professor emeritus of history at Northwestern University and the author, most recently, of "What Jesus Meant.
Some of what you say I agree with, and some of what you say I disagree with, but absolutely nothing that you said had anything to do with what I said in my original post. I don't know if you just misunderstood, or if you were intentionally trying to distort my message but, either way, I'll try to clear up your misconceptions.
First, you said that there is no such thing as "Christian politics." I never said that there was. I'm not sure that I even know what the term "Christian politics" means. What I said was that there is a relationship between Chrictianity and conservatism. That relationship is based on the fact that most Christians are politically conservative, and most conservatives are Christians. Why is this true, you ask? It's true because the Christian conservative believes that God and His Son Jesus Christ are the source of our salvation, not government. The Christian conservative believes that our basic human rights, our "unalienable rights," come from God, not government. All of this is antithetical to the liberal orthodoxy.
Next, you imply that it is somehow a sin to pray in school or in public because Jesus commanded us to hide our religious faith. You couldn't be more wrong! Matthew 6 doesn't say that. Jesus was saying that praying publically for the purpose of impressing others is wrong. He was condemning arrogance and pride, not public expressions of Christian faith. Read what Jesus said in His Sermon on the Mount about being salt of the earth and a light to the world. We are commanded to let our Christian faith shine as a light to others.
Next, you say that Jesus was the original proponent of separation of church and state. Maybe your Bible has been edited by the former Soviet Union, but my Bible says no such thing. After all of the unfathomable ways in which God has blessed the United States of America, it is abominal that our government would unconstitutionally censor religious expression. If you think that Jesus would support that, then you haven't read any of the Old Testament accounts of Godly governmental leaders.
Lastly, you seem to imply that publically expressing Christian faith, such as when government leaders pray or when the 10 Commandments are displayed, that it constitutes idolatry. That is such an obviously asinine statement that any attempt on my part to refute it would be redundant.
Please, christ among the partisans, re-read my original post. Read it as I wrote it, and not as you see it through the liberal lens. Also, please re-read those passages that you quoted. When I have difficulty understanding a passage, I ask God to open my mind and heart to help me understand. I highly recommend it.
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