Love at Work
I’m not much of a Bible thumper but once in a while I give it a few taps. Here are some New Testament verses that emphasize the importance of doing good work. It’s a major aspect of the NT’s message and one that I feel often gets downplayed. When it’s downplayed enough, Christianity can come off as self satisfied and complacent as in “Hey, what the heck, I was born a sinner and I’ll die a sinner but it’s all OK because Jesus died to save me.”
“My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.” Luke 8:21
“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.” Luke 9:23
”You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles? In the same way, every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. Mat 7:16-17
“We must work the works of him who sent us while it is day; night is coming when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” John 9:4-5
“My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work.” John 4:34
“From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required; and from one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded.” Luke 12:48
Mary Ward, Thank You…
Mary Ward of DoYouDiggIt.com reviewed this blog early this month but it only just came to my attention. Thanks Mary!
“My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.” Luke 8:21
“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.” Luke 9:23
”You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles? In the same way, every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. Mat 7:16-17
“We must work the works of him who sent us while it is day; night is coming when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” John 9:4-5
“My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work.” John 4:34
“From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required; and from one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded.” Luke 12:48
Mary Ward, Thank You…
Mary Ward of DoYouDiggIt.com reviewed this blog early this month but it only just came to my attention. Thanks Mary!
Posted by Paul at 10:32 AM Permalink
26 Comments:
“We must work the works of him who sent us while it is day; night is coming when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” John 9:4-5
As long as you are the light of the world,only shadows exist not darkness :) unless you happen to live in the shadow :)
Anyway take a look at this :)
http://visheshunni.wordpress.com/2008/08/13/god/
I appreciate that the influence of Falwell and his ilk are absent so far and the discussion was uber-polite and nice, nice, nice. If those two can maintain this level of civility until November I may have to rethink my eschatological calendar!
Outsiders like myself cannot help but notice that American Christians are still coming to grips with the idea of the separation of church and state. The two candidates have toned down the aw shucks kowtowing that Dubya piled so deep...maybe the American Faith Movement is finally maturing?
Is it possible that the fire & brimstone snake handlin' rhetoric of the turn of the last century is finally running out of steam?
The rest of the world realises from watching the American coverage of the Olympics (what the hey? apparently there are other countries competing..well I'll be!)
that the self administering manifest destiny of the Superpower that is stuck with 'saving' the rest of us (spiritually, economically and politically) sometimes appears a little too self congratulatory.
Trying to be tolerant of all the other false religions is just part of the calling...those poor bastards will all go to hell in a handbasket if we don't save them.
Let it shine
Let it shine
Let it shine.
And thanks for reminding me of these verses that I was taught in Sunday School--guess they never left my heart after all these years--
Now, Blogging to spread the Word counts as some of the MOST IMPORTANT work being done in the 21st century!
I trust you will agree...objectively,of course...
DONNNNN: Yeah… I had to listen to bits of it… I’m mainly bedridden, so what’s your excuse, lol?
From the snippets I’ve read of him I’m much inclined to doubt I’d be a Warren fan. I also dislike the necessity of US politicians having to perform those religious speeches, or whatever they are, at election time. I don’t even understand how it sells; it might as well come in a box that says “Pious Stuff I’m Saying To Get Elected.”
FIREBIRD: Your Sunday school was way better than mine…
Blessings from your friend,
Lance
www.lancessoulsearching.com
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This reminds us to serve others.There is no deed which is more satisfying than serving others who are in need.
It is also our responsibility.
I would like to quote a quote whose source I don't remember,whose text I don't remember.
It goes something like-"For every man who goes hungry and poor , I blame all the people who had the privilege over these people to get that."
And u mite like to read my latest post :)
Keshi.
(at Riverside Church, NYC, one of the great progressive-thinking churches, and way ahead of its time!) Guess I have a lot to be thankful for...
Course, with all their education, they still couldn't answer all my questions! (I was an oddball)
MARY WARD: Thank you for this information…
LAURALEE, happy to hear from you.
And what a mellifluous name! But I guess English majors have been telling you that all your life, lol…
DESPERADO: The world sure hasn’t figured that one out yet – how to get to a place where people consistently have their basic material needs met as a bottom line. Instead, the world continues to trend toward polarities of poverty combined with disempowerment and material excess combined with privilege and influence.
Communism didn’t work; right now democracy had been terribly eroded, to say the least, by corporate interests that have basically become self-regulating over the last few decades. We have an administration and congress working for the betterment of the wealthy about as openly as this can be done. In other words, you raise a really important and hard question. The answer is in the process of being played out.
Personally, I've found it best to stop trying to guess how it will turn out for the human race. I know that the interface of our species with God, so to speak isn’t on my job description. For all I know it may be faulty. Or it may be in the process of moving through turbulence toward something more sound and sane than anything we’ve realized to date.
But then there the matter of one’s own interface with the One in whom we live and move and have our being, whether we think of the One as a God existing distinct from the rest of being or reality, or as identical with All. “Do your best – forget the rest,” is what lets me sleep at night, and my whole job description.
KESHI, thanks, and hope to read before you've moved on, but as you may have noticed, my blogging visits have had to slow up a bit lately because of more to do in less time.
Is "good work" some kind of missionary work? If so what message is to be propagated?
VINCENT: It wasn’t recently that I made note of these verses but to the best of my recollection the contexts don’t refer to missionary work and the words “good” and “work” are employed in their general/standard usages.
thanks for stopping by.
I'd love to hear more about how your understanding of the history behind the canonization of the New Testament has given you insight into truth.
STEVE S: How that informed my perspective could easily be at least a post, and actually, I have gone into this topic in the past - I think in this blog’s archives, unless it was in a previous blog incarnation.
In brief, having a basic understanding of the complexity of the process that resulted in what eventually came to be known as the New Testament allowed me to appreciate the degree to which what has come down to us as the narrative of Jesus’ life and death has been an interpretation – or rather, the accretion of many interpretations. This helped, in turn, to highlight for me the way that this interpretive process continues into the present day, even though large numbers of Christians don't seem to be aware that their views are interpretive.
Is that what you meant by "the accretion of many interpretations?"
If so I would be interested as to why you come to that conclusion. It has been my understanding that no reputable historian of the period would dispute the authorship of the four canonical gospels...
Perhaps you meant something else?
Love to hear your thoughts...
It's not just America where religion and politics go together. Look at Islamic countries. In England, the monarch is the head of the Church. And in Paraguay, a Catholic Bishop was just elected as the new president (though he resigned his bishop-ness :)
During the decades following Jesus’ crucifixion and prior to the writing of the gospels, oral traditions developed about Jesus. They formed the basis for what would become the canonical gospels and other early Christian writings such as an inferred common source text for the synoptic gospels.
I should add that these aren’t my conclusions – I haven’t studied ancient Greek or the other fields involved in biblical scholarship. I just have an MA in religous studies and never worked in that field professionally.
CRYSTAL: I see what you mean… it does sound like the US may be coming to resemble some other countries more than it used to in this respect, although of course the monarchy in England is mainly symbolic. I don’t know much about church/state relations around the world though, and was thinking of trends in the US in our lifetimes.
Faith and the desire to do good work are both powerful spiritual realities. As you point out, both end up having to be acknowledged.
It makes for an interesting tension – one that Christian belief in Jesus as Savior highlights. If the important work has already been done, the fate of the earth decided, why worry about “working while it is day because the night comes, when no one can work”?
For the most part, it seems that what you are saying is what most scholars say: the canonical gospels were written during the lifetimes of the original disciples of Jesus.
Is there a reason why you would call them 'anonymous,' I was under the impression that the authorship of the gospels was not something under dispute amongst the general body of NT scholars?
I guess I don't quite see what you meant by 'accretions of interpretations."
Thanks again for your thoughts...
In sum, the NT is a faith document written and developed by the early church. Jesus as the Christ or Savior is an interpretation of the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth – a theological one – and not historical information. This would remain the case even if it could be shown that the gospels were written by Jesus’ contemporaneous disciples.
As to authorship of the gospels, to the best of my knowledge, “anonymous members of the early church” is the most accurate general way of describing it. I also recall that there are Christian traditions saying that John, I believe, and perhaps Luke, were written by those actual disciples; but the bottom line is that this is unknown. When I studied at the U of Chicago divinity school, the basic process of scriptural formation that I’ve outlined in this reply and my previous was presented as the scholarly consensus. UC is one of the nation’s top divinity schools; its faculty consists of renowned scholars who are also almost entirely Christian clergy.
I’ve heard the same process referred to by scholars at the Yale and Harvard divinity schools, likewise staffed by scholars who are also ministers; and it’s summarized in the notes to the RSV, now the NRSV (New Revised Standard Version), considered the most accurate translation of the Bible.
Love is an common thread in all peoples. Human beings have a lot to work through in order to focus on the meaning of pure love. So often, individuals get wrapped up with judgement, such as which ideas are better, more strategic or more useful at a given moment. To evolve to where all views are valued and appreciated is a process.
;-)
I have been led to believe that some of the things you are asserting (Church councils being responsible for the canon process centuries after the life of Jesus, doubting the authorship of the gospels, etc.) are either considered the work of fiction-writers, con-artists, or cranks...
...I am by no means the expert myself, but I am wondering if you have read some of the New Perspective on Paul folks? ...Sanders, Dunn, and others, Wright in particular?
Not all of these authors are Christian (I am not sure they are all even theists...) and there is quite a lot of disparity amongst them. ...but (aside from the large number of letters behind their respective names) they all seem to share a similar estimation of the process of canon.
On another point, calling them works of faith, and 'theologically motivated' seems like somewhat of an anachronism. Is there anything in the ancient world that wasn't theologically motivated?! (I am thinking of some of the proclamations of the gospel of Caesar...) ...and why should that be in any way a challenge to their authenticity? We don't consider Jane Goodall to be suspect in her reporting of factual accounts of primates simply because she is personally invested in them?
I know that it is popular to consider the canonical gospels as power plays by the early christian communities; ways of shoring up their power over people with a divine Christ looking over their shoulder and endorsing their power...
...but this has Dan Brown to thank, not historians.
The earliest Christians were tossed into the Colosseum, and set on fire for reading the canonical gospels... hardly what you'd call a consolidation of power. The Romans were more than happy to consider Jesus an enlightened religionist (Gospel of Thomas, etc.), adding him to a long list of acceptable religious options for a good Roman citizen to choose from; but the canonical picture of Jesus was threatening and subversive of the established order...
I don't really think the 'oral period' transitioning into a 'written period' is in any way a valid critique for the historical veracity of what we hold in our hands today... do you? What else would you expect of the process? I mean the same thing happens today with any current event (albeit, the oral period is usually shorter, given the ubiquitous access to the written word, and means of publishing.). It seems the relevant point is not that there existed an oral period, but that it was sufficiently short enough to give a tremendous number of eyewitnesses the opportunity to challenge the authenticity of what was written down. I don't know of any scholar who would dispute that, do you?
And thanks for the time and energy, I appreciate the dialogue!
STEVE S: I believe Harvard, Yale and Chicago are still considered the top three divinity schools in the US. The NRSV, as far as I know, is still the most scholarly and accurate version of the Bible. If you have questions about the scholarship, professors are usually pretty easy to contact if you Google their universities, which usually give faculty email addresses.
happy labor day,
lance
www.lancessoulsearching.com
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