God is love - a Lenten series 12 Love prevails
1 Corinthians 13:13 And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.
I am constantly challenging in my mind presentations of "good news" of the universality of that presentation. For example, will the version I'm hearing of #gospel sound like good news to an enslaved fisherman on a Thai factory ship? Will this podcaster's version of #gospel apply to anyone who is not a white upper class American? Will this 4 step #gospel mean anything to someone who does not share a european enlightenment intellectual history? Does your #gospel bring any hope to one whose recently deceased uncle never heard that version before?
When I strip away race, culture, accessibility, intellectual capacity, gender, sexual orientation specific gospels I'm left with this.
I do not deny that a philosophy which only believes in our brief terrestrial lives may find this hard to embrace. However, even the early Jewish religion as seen in the Jewish writings mostly held to our lives and the grave, without many references to an afterlife, and still believed love and justice prevailed because they viewed themselves as part of a family whose ancestors and descendants formed a sort of pre and post life, eternal if you will. So even if one of them died unjustly, they believed their righteous God would bring vindication to them through their living relatives and descendants.
Justice. Righteousness. Vindication. These are all forms of love. Love will win. This is good news worth shouting from the rooftops.
I am constantly challenging in my mind presentations of "good news" of the universality of that presentation. For example, will the version I'm hearing of #gospel sound like good news to an enslaved fisherman on a Thai factory ship? Will this podcaster's version of #gospel apply to anyone who is not a white upper class American? Will this 4 step #gospel mean anything to someone who does not share a european enlightenment intellectual history? Does your #gospel bring any hope to one whose recently deceased uncle never heard that version before?
When I strip away race, culture, accessibility, intellectual capacity, gender, sexual orientation specific gospels I'm left with this.
Love has the last word.
I do not deny that a philosophy which only believes in our brief terrestrial lives may find this hard to embrace. However, even the early Jewish religion as seen in the Jewish writings mostly held to our lives and the grave, without many references to an afterlife, and still believed love and justice prevailed because they viewed themselves as part of a family whose ancestors and descendants formed a sort of pre and post life, eternal if you will. So even if one of them died unjustly, they believed their righteous God would bring vindication to them through their living relatives and descendants.
Justice. Righteousness. Vindication. These are all forms of love. Love will win. This is good news worth shouting from the rooftops.
Comments