Sunday sermon
Feb. 20th, 2011 09:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bladesparkFirstly, I'd just like to thank everybody who commented on my last Sunday Sermon. :) Everyone was amazingly civil. Please do try to keep that up this time around too.
Today in sunday school we studied Matthew chapter 5. This is also known as The Sermon on the Mount, and is possibly the longest, and almost certainly the most profound, of the sermons of Christ recorded in the Bible. And as far as I am concerned, this is the heart and soul of what it is to be Christian. If you are trying to follow Christ and you are not intimately familiar with this chapter, you're Doing It Wrong.
I don't mean that to be offensive, but it's honestly what I think. If you call yourself Christian, but you base your life around what Moses said in the Old Testament... how is that Christian? You're not following Christ, you're following Moses. (And quite specifically in Matt. 5, Christ said that what had been said of old was done away with, and he was saying something new anyhow!) Or if you're basing your life on the things in Paul's epistles, you're not following Christ, you're following Paul. And especially if you base your life on what your minister/pastor/preacher is telling you, you're not following Christ, you're following them.
Other people can help us understand, share ideas, and give insights. Other scriptures have value. But the heart and soul of what makes somebody a Christian is that they follow what Christ taught. His words are the most important part of the Bible. If you claim to believe Christ is your savior, but you don't do anything he's said we should do, if you don't even know what he's said... do you really believe? Maybe you do, I can't speak for anybody but myself. But to me, Christianity is much more than a mere profession of faith in somebody you haven't bothered to try and know.
I encourage anyone reading this who is a Christian (and maybe even some of you who aren't) to read Matt. 5, or read it again if you've read it already. Christ's words are a far cry from much of what I see in Christianity today. If we all tried to be a little more like the people Christ called us to be in that chapter the world would be a much better place.
Last week I didn't get around to writing this down, but we talked about miracles.
I am always a little suspicious of miracles, especially miracle healings. They're too pat. Too trite. And too many scammers and schemers have abused the term "miracle cure." Not only that, but I've seen the studies. People who pray, or are prayed for, don't get any less sick, and don't get better any faster, than people who don't believe and don't pray. The science is there, and it's pretty convincing. Praying for a miracle isn't going to do anything measurable for you.
So what good, one might wonder, is God anyhow? Why bother? Why care? Well, there are a lot of possible answers to that question. I'll try and give one small one, by telling two stories.
The first story is the story of an elderly woman dying of cancer. She lives in a nursing home, but the nurses are too busy to do more than the bare minimum to keep her comfortable, and even then she's still in some pain. After struggling with the disease for months she dies, alone.
The second story is also about an elderly woman. She has the same kind of cancer, and she lives in a similar nursing home, where the nurses are over-worked, as nurses often are, and they do only the bare minimum. But her children and her grandchildren live near by, and they visit her as often as they can. During her months-long struggle with the final stages of her disease there is almost always someone by her side. When she realizes that her time has come, she has time to tell them all how much she loves them, and they tell her the same. Eventually she dies, while holding her beloved son's hand.
At the end of these stories, both women are equally dead. So what good, one might wonder, was the second woman's family anyhow? Why did they bother? Why did she care? The answer is rather obvious. And so is the point I'm making here, I hope.
What good is God? From one point of view, no good at all. From another, every possible good that really matters. And I'll add that personally I do believe real miracle cures sometimes happen. But they're not statistically significant, shall we say. :) They're rare things, for mostly God doesn't intervene directly into our lives. They're ours to live. Because that's another thing I believe, that the first gift God gave us was life (existance, the universe, being, whatever you care to call it) but the second, equally precious gift is freedom. And that the world is the way it is has as much to do with our choices as anything else.
Today in sunday school we studied Matthew chapter 5. This is also known as The Sermon on the Mount, and is possibly the longest, and almost certainly the most profound, of the sermons of Christ recorded in the Bible. And as far as I am concerned, this is the heart and soul of what it is to be Christian. If you are trying to follow Christ and you are not intimately familiar with this chapter, you're Doing It Wrong.
I don't mean that to be offensive, but it's honestly what I think. If you call yourself Christian, but you base your life around what Moses said in the Old Testament... how is that Christian? You're not following Christ, you're following Moses. (And quite specifically in Matt. 5, Christ said that what had been said of old was done away with, and he was saying something new anyhow!) Or if you're basing your life on the things in Paul's epistles, you're not following Christ, you're following Paul. And especially if you base your life on what your minister/pastor/preacher is telling you, you're not following Christ, you're following them.
Other people can help us understand, share ideas, and give insights. Other scriptures have value. But the heart and soul of what makes somebody a Christian is that they follow what Christ taught. His words are the most important part of the Bible. If you claim to believe Christ is your savior, but you don't do anything he's said we should do, if you don't even know what he's said... do you really believe? Maybe you do, I can't speak for anybody but myself. But to me, Christianity is much more than a mere profession of faith in somebody you haven't bothered to try and know.
I encourage anyone reading this who is a Christian (and maybe even some of you who aren't) to read Matt. 5, or read it again if you've read it already. Christ's words are a far cry from much of what I see in Christianity today. If we all tried to be a little more like the people Christ called us to be in that chapter the world would be a much better place.
Last week I didn't get around to writing this down, but we talked about miracles.
I am always a little suspicious of miracles, especially miracle healings. They're too pat. Too trite. And too many scammers and schemers have abused the term "miracle cure." Not only that, but I've seen the studies. People who pray, or are prayed for, don't get any less sick, and don't get better any faster, than people who don't believe and don't pray. The science is there, and it's pretty convincing. Praying for a miracle isn't going to do anything measurable for you.
So what good, one might wonder, is God anyhow? Why bother? Why care? Well, there are a lot of possible answers to that question. I'll try and give one small one, by telling two stories.
The first story is the story of an elderly woman dying of cancer. She lives in a nursing home, but the nurses are too busy to do more than the bare minimum to keep her comfortable, and even then she's still in some pain. After struggling with the disease for months she dies, alone.
The second story is also about an elderly woman. She has the same kind of cancer, and she lives in a similar nursing home, where the nurses are over-worked, as nurses often are, and they do only the bare minimum. But her children and her grandchildren live near by, and they visit her as often as they can. During her months-long struggle with the final stages of her disease there is almost always someone by her side. When she realizes that her time has come, she has time to tell them all how much she loves them, and they tell her the same. Eventually she dies, while holding her beloved son's hand.
At the end of these stories, both women are equally dead. So what good, one might wonder, was the second woman's family anyhow? Why did they bother? Why did she care? The answer is rather obvious. And so is the point I'm making here, I hope.
What good is God? From one point of view, no good at all. From another, every possible good that really matters. And I'll add that personally I do believe real miracle cures sometimes happen. But they're not statistically significant, shall we say. :) They're rare things, for mostly God doesn't intervene directly into our lives. They're ours to live. Because that's another thing I believe, that the first gift God gave us was life (existance, the universe, being, whatever you care to call it) but the second, equally precious gift is freedom. And that the world is the way it is has as much to do with our choices as anything else.
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no subject
Date: 2011-02-21 06:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-21 06:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-21 09:50 pm (UTC)Regarding what it means to be Christian though I totally agree! Christ accepted all groups. Paul and Moses did not, and I too often see "Christians" quoting from them vs Christ to justify hate of a group. I'm not sure if you have ever seen those Christian vs Christ Follow ads, but if not- look them up on youtube :D
Oh and I wanted to say since I was away for a bit in regards to your last post- I think we both have fairly strong biases in some areas based on personal experience and probably won't ever see eye to eye. I also looked up the chapters you spoke of and realised I was less familar with them as I have mostly read the New Testament and they are in the Old. I did read through briefly at work however. It doesn't totally change my opinion as I still found negative portrals (ie the Queen in Esther I think it is) but I will grant your side some merit. :)
no subject
Date: 2011-02-21 09:52 pm (UTC)If you can find a link to that study, I'd love to see it. I've seen several that showed the opposite, and they seemed pretty well done studies, so it'd be interesting to get more detail on this one.
no subject
Date: 2011-02-22 12:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-22 01:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-22 03:46 am (UTC)Still, I know to whom you are referring to. Paul wrote personal letters to people, and I suspect he's an equivalent of McConkie--lots of out-there opinions and hypotheses, but still fundamentally good. We know Moses was preparing the children of Israel for Christ by forcing them to worry about the nitty-gritty. He had to establish some sort of government and social mores and base moral standard for a lawless, large, in the wilderness people.
no subject
Date: 2011-02-22 05:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-22 06:30 pm (UTC)As for miracles, if they happen, most of the time, we'll never recognize them as such. I certainly didn't get the great value of having my grey-and-white until it was time for him to go...
no subject
Date: 2011-02-22 07:54 pm (UTC)But the point is that he had a testimony of Christ and he was acting in Christ's name and under Christ's wishes. He was guided by the Spirit to be dynamic in a more inspired direction.