ernie@lrchouston.com
Jesus talked about and lived a theology of love, but the church that took it's name from whom He became ("the Christ"- which wasn't His last name but His character) adopted a theology of laws, dogmas, doctrines, and stuff that divides, and divides again.
As Bruce Bewar put it, "The church needs desperately to grapple with the fact that when we insist on faith statements as the core of faith, we assualt not only the truth but virtue."
Reinhold Neibuhr took this concept a little deeper when he write, "Some people are atheists because of a higher implicit theism than that professed by believers." That one hurts but the truth is that many are turning from today's Christianity, both intellectually and morally, beause of what the legalistic faiths have made of God.
The replacement of Jesus's gospel of "unconditonal love" with the church's gospel of "conditional love" has pushed spiritually minded people out of the church, but not out of love with Jesus.
Paul Tillich wrote, "Many are waiting for a religious answer which does not destroy reason but points to the depth of reason, and points to the mystery in nthe ground of the natural." Love is the great mystery of life. It will make you do unreasonable, insane, and miraculous things whereas the theology of LAW will only make one grow more and more weary as the discovery sets in that we simply cannot fulfill the LAW.
That's one of the reasosn Jesus came! :-)
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