[asa] What is important?

All,

For the last few months I have been meeting regularly with 2 atheists
and an agnostic - they define themselves in those terms. All three
know a lot about science and quite a bit about Christianity. A friend
who is part of a parachurch ministry asked me to join him in meeting
with them when I moved back to the city I grew up in.

We have had a great time talking about science, Christianity and what
is sometimes wrong with the practitioners of each, including
ourselves.

As a result I found myself wondering what is really important for
people to do, wherever their starting point is - atheism,
Christianity, Islam, whatever - if they are to get to Heaven. Is
there something or some few things that I should encourage in myself
and in anyone I meet to help them along the way?

I remembered a short story I read years ago by the Catholic writer
Flannery O'Connor in which a young man who was raised in rural
Protestant Georgia becomes an atheist and a writer, fails as a writer
in New York during the 1950s, wishes he could die but rejects
suicide, gets sick and then reluctantly returns home to Georgia to
wait to die and to annoy his mother in the meantime.

While he is there waiting to die, he makes some feeble attempts to
practice his liberal political beliefs by trying to befriend the
black fellows who milk his mother's cows. This has the additional
attraction of also annoying his mother.

I won't spoil the whole story, in case someone wants to read it (The
Enduring Chill), but in the end he receives not death but the Holy
Spirit. There is a scientific-medical turn to the story that some of
you might enjoy.

It came to me that what the author was saying was that doing just a
little good, even with mixed motives, and seeking the truth or beauty
in the art or science that you are called to, would in the end be
enough.

I liked this thought, but it just came from a writer (albeit one who
knew the Bible well and believed it and also suffered considerably in
her short life), not the Bible.

So I started thinking, can I find anything in the Bible to support
this? I asked God to help me find it. Of course, it was right in the
middle of the passage I was already studing for other reasons.

At the end of Luke 10, the little story of Mary and Martha and Jesus
is inserted into a bunch of stuff about the Pharisees. And there it
was. Jesus says to Martha (I paraphrase), "you are worried about many
things, but only a few things are necessary, really only one."

Of course, we all know what the one thing is - it's love - Jesus and
the lawyer have agreed a few verses back on what the greatest
commandment is, and Mary is obviously focusing on the loving God part.

But what are the other few necessary things that presumably we need
to serve the one big thing, love?

It came to me that one is to pray every day the prayer that Jesus
gives the disciples right after the story of Mary and Martha. It
focuses on things that deflate our pride - that God is the King, not
me, that everything I have comes from Him, that it is almost always
true that I have failed to forgive someone or hurt someone within the
last 24 hours, and that without his help I will do these things again
in the next 24 hours.

But going back to my original idea, where is the truth seeking? Well,
maybe what Jesus is saying is that the most important truth to seek
is the truth about ourselves and how we go on sinning and what to do
about it.

This whole passage is directed at religious people - and that is us.
The Pharisees were very religious, and in terrible danger, as it
turns out in Ch. 11. Mary and Martha are were also very religious,
but in a much better sort of way. It seems that the way to avoid
becoming like the Pharisees is to pray that prayer and then ask for
the Holy Spirit, which is recommended just after that in Ch. 11.

There is a lot of discussion on this list about what it is important
to do. I asked a question a few days ago about what was behind the
name of our organization, and did it in such a way that some thought
I was suggesting a name change. I didn't really mean to suggest
anything, only to satisfy a momentary curiosity and maybe stir up a
little thinking.

There are many other assertions made here about what we should do,
and there is value in all of them. But I am coming to think that
whenever truth seeking or the seeking of beauty (to speak in Greek
terms) or truth preaching or defending the faith or demanding faith
or the assertion of new hope or no hope (to speak in
Christian-Jewish-Muslim terms) becomes the supreme thing and they are
done without love, then they become false gods and they get in the
way of what is really important, love for God and our neighbor.

If I have annoyed any of you along the way, and I'm sure I have,
please forgive me.

O.k., sermon over, you all can go home and eat lunch.

Preston G.

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Received on Thu Feb 12 23:36:25 2009