Monday, September 29, 2008
What Do You Value?
Mark Daniels recently quoted Phillip Yancey:
At this moment I cannot help but reflect on C.S. Lewis' choice in making the Christ figure of Narnia a lion - so beautiful and so terrifying. I wonder - does the church today present a God that is at all frightening? How many times have I been told when I asked a preacher why he did not preach about the God that ordered Saul to wipe out an entire nation, that it was "too scary," or "unpalatable," or the ubiquitous "They would not sit still for it."
And yet that is God - The same "God of love" of John's gospel and epistles - The same God "That so loved the world..." Which is sort of the point here. God so loved the world that He killed His son. In other words love, real love, is not comfortable, it is not cute, it is not fuzzy and warm. REAL love is measured not in the comfort it produces, but in its willingness to sacrifice.
How come I don't hear about love like that in church?
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God seems to value character more than our comfort, often using the very elements that cause us the most discomfort as His tools in fashioning that character.And followed that up with a citation of Paul in his second letter to the Corintians:
Because of the extravagance of those revelations, and so I wouldn't get a big head, I was given the gift of a handicap to keep me in constant touch with my limitations.Do WE truly value character enough to endure the pain? Do WE trust God enough to know that the pain is for the betterment of our character? Don't we usually approach God like we would an aspirin - "Take two and the pain will go away."
At this moment I cannot help but reflect on C.S. Lewis' choice in making the Christ figure of Narnia a lion - so beautiful and so terrifying. I wonder - does the church today present a God that is at all frightening? How many times have I been told when I asked a preacher why he did not preach about the God that ordered Saul to wipe out an entire nation, that it was "too scary," or "unpalatable," or the ubiquitous "They would not sit still for it."
And yet that is God - The same "God of love" of John's gospel and epistles - The same God "That so loved the world..." Which is sort of the point here. God so loved the world that He killed His son. In other words love, real love, is not comfortable, it is not cute, it is not fuzzy and warm. REAL love is measured not in the comfort it produces, but in its willingness to sacrifice.
How come I don't hear about love like that in church?
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