Re: [asa] What is important?

Preston Garrison wrote:
> 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.
>
It seems to me that your phrase "doing good... would in the end be
enough" would not be Biblical if by it you are referring to "enough to
get to Heaven". But if you are referring to "enough for the Holy Spirit
to work with, to bring you to what is really important", then that seems
closer to a Biblical message. On the other hand, even the assertion
--"that we need to do something good" before the Spirit can work is
probably not right either. The Spirit will blow where it will. (John
3:8). If you want to narrow it down to the important thing, that will
be: being in relationship with Christ. --sitting devotedly at Christ's
feet if you will, as you noted with Mary below. I take the Mary &
Martha passage to be a recommendation for Mary & what she was doing
(loving Christ), not for what Martha was doing (at that particular time
anyway) letting other business (however needed) distract and bother her.

Regarding various starting points (i.e. Christianity, Atheism,
Buddhism, etc.) I like how another author put it that I think is
Biblically defensible. He suggested that most roads (our own
endeavors/religious systems) actually lead nowhere. BUT Christ will/has
traveled any road to reach us. I think this is a solid answer to the
reactionary dilemma between those who are bothered by the "only
Christians get to heaven", and those who are alternately bothered by the
"all roads lead to God" --anything goes, mentality. Religion
(including Christianity) to the extent that it is merely a set of
practices or doctrines intellectually assented to, guarantees nothing.
Relationship with Christ guarantees everything. And Christ will move
whomever He chooses (whether atheist, Buddhist, Christian, whatever) to
come to Him. He does the finding and the drawing in. The lost sheep
did nothing but get lost. Any good deeds we are empowered to do are a
response to that or are enabled by Him and have nothing to do with
earning salvation. Additionally, I find this very Biblically
defensible: that not all self-labeled Christians are automatically in
(see Matthew 7:21-23) and that not all self-labeled "non-Christians" are
out. (see James 1:26,27 --which is not so much about salvation as it
is a tool to indifferently evaluate the usefulness of different
religious systems.) Paul also speaks somewhere of the value (or lack
thereof) of various rules/systems towards restraining our sensuality &
worldly pleasures. One gets the idea that some things are of more value
than others --perhaps some religious systems get a few more things right
or useful than other religious systems --but that all of this has
nothing to do with salvation which comes from Christ alone. (John 14:6)

So it sounds like the story you referenced does a good job portraying a
way in which the holy spirit might actually act in the world (& I bet
such things similar to that have happened.) I enjoy reading such
fiction myself --a great source for Truth as the Spirit may use it.

--Merv

> 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 Fri Feb 13 07:40:41 2009