The political vision of the religious right is for the most part an individualistic politics of righteousness, not a communal politics of compassion.
But Christian illiteracy is only the first part of the crisis. Even more seriously, even for those who think they speak __hristian_ fluently, the faith itself is often misunderstood and distorted by many to whom it is seemingly very familiar. They think they are speaking the language as it has always been understood, but what they mean by the words and concepts is so different from what these things have meant historically, that they would have trouble communicating with the very authors of the past they honor.
Speaking Christian: Why Christian Words Have Lost Their Meaning and Power - And How They Can Be Restored
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But Christian illiteracy is only the first part of the crisis. Even more seriously, even for those who think they speak __hristian_ fluently, the faith itself is often misunderstood and distorted by many to whom it is seemingly very familiar. They think they are speaking the language as it has always been understood, but what they mean by the words and concepts is so different from what these things have meant historically, that they would have trouble communicating with the very authors of the past they honor.
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God wills our liberation, our exodus from Egypt. God wills our reconciliation, our return from exile. God wills our enlightenment, our seeing. God wills our forgiveness, our release from sin and guilt. God wills that we see ourselves as God__ beloved. God wills our resurrection, our passage from death to life. God wills for us food and drink that satisfy our hunger and thirst. God wills, comprehensively, our well-being__ot just my well-being as an individual but the well-being of all of us and of the whole of creation. In short, God wills our salvation, our healing, here on earth. The Christian life is about participating in the salvation of God.
Our central problem is not sin and guilt, as it is within the monarchical model. For the Spirit model, our central problem is __strangement,_ whose specific meaning of __eparated from that to which one belongs_ is most appropriate. ... For the monarchical model, sin is primarily disloyalty to the king, seen especially as disobedience to his laws. The metaphors used to express the Spirit model suggest something else. For the metaphor of God as lover, sin is unfaithfulness__hat is, sin is going after other lovers.
It is one thing to be clever and another to be wise.
The spoken word has come to dominate many Protestant forms of worship: the words of prayers, responsive readings, Scripture, the sermon, and so forth. Yet the spoken word is perhaps the least effective way of reaching the heart; one must constantly pay attention with one__ mind. The spoken word tends to go to our heads, not our hearts.
How we think about God matters. It affects the credibility of religion in general and of Christianity in particular. Our concept of God can make God seem real or unreal, just as it can also make God seem remote or near.