The God Beyond Orthodoxies

At the risk of dismissing the more subtle points in the topics explored in this link,  I find the whole thing extremely tiresome,  the constant emphasis upon certain "orthodoxies" that when all is said and done,  don't amount to jack squat in the larger Kingdom of God picture.  All that matter there/here,  is that we are obedient to the call God makes upon us to fulfill our role in bringing some of that deeper reality to bear and to impact upon our lives and contexts.  We can "believe all the RIGHT STUFF according to some authority's interpretation of what's important,  and STILL live in a manner utterly irrelevant to what God desires for us and our world.  So once again,  I say,  a self-proclaimed "athiest" may be actually "More responsive" and open to a call God is making upon them,  and order their life accordingly,  all the while refusing to "credit" a God who is actually moving in them -  who is "unrecognizable" to them becuase to them God is "ingrained" in them as something from past experience where God is a legalistic, simplistic "overly religious" God who became increasingly irrelevant to them.  Their response to God's actual call upon them and the language they use to express it may be based on a thought system that speaks to them and what they feel is being said to them from those places in them where calls derive.   I apply this same criteria to the legitimacy of "other religions". 

God's action in the world is UNIVERSAL. The call God makes upon all of us is beyond what has been handed to us as "orthodoxy",  although we may indeed find,  as I have,  MANY avenues for dialogue with God in those traditions,  or we may not.  It all depends on how authentic and sensitive that tradition is to our specific point of reference.  What we reject in our faith is not God,  but particular charicatures of God,  particular "theologies" which strike us as unloving;  particular embodiments of that theology in certain people we meet and often "have our fill" of.  We reject a God they bring to us becuase we sense that they have not responded with authenticity,  at least insofar as their treatement and response to us.

Apologia Cornucopia. Mark Shea discusses the Perpetual Virginity of Mary. This became a hot topic on Mark’s site with the recently reported discovery of the ossuary, dated to about 63 A.D., with the inscription... [blogs4God - WWJB?]

People argue with me all the time that "the Bible says" that you have to "confess Jesus with our lips",  but one must look at this as one of those "polarities" of existence just like the faith-works debate.  It's gotta be both.  You confess it,  you live it.  If  you live it,  you make a living confession.  Your life is your "lip".  Parents realize this.  Children learn what they live.   

© Copyright 2003 Dale Lature. Last update: 9/23/2003; 3:36:29 PM.