It is always challenging to be a follower of God. We have to get beyond the culture in which we find ourselves and learn to uphold the values into which we have been Baptised. Abraham loved God totally to the point of metaphorically being willing to sacrifice his son, Isaac! But the metaphor goes on to say that with deep devotion, God will always be present and provide. Saint Paul in his writing to the Romans exhorted The Romans and us not to have a separateness from God for sin was understood as being separate from God. We are to enjoy the free gift of God ‘s building a community of love and equality which includes all people. Jesus, in Matthew the warns us that in welcoming the whole of God's teaching into our daily behaviours we can't expect it's going to be an easy road. Some people will just not accept the values that we are striving to uphold. As progressive Christians who hold values of emergent faithfulness it is always challenging.
We live in the midst of a world of Christendom that tends to want to be literal in its interpretation of the Bible. We are to build a Kingdom based in the values of love, peace, forgiveness, and inclusion. This includes fighting racism, bullying, narrowness, homophobia, and all the other issues of our day which don't seem to fit into the boxes of the scriptures. We are the people of emergent love. This however has its risks as Jesus warned us. Not everyone will be pleased that we're standing up for inclusive regenerative values for all peoples of the planet.
When we get knocked down It's important to remember that life is like a straight line. A straight line is really a series of contiguous points, something we all learned in geometry. Every point is an episode in our life and when we turn the page, we leave those earlier episodes behind and we move ahead. What's important is to learn from them and try not to make the mistakes again and strive to repair any damage that happened but keep moving forward. We are called not to carry the negative pain from the previous days. I think of the metaphorical example of Abraham’s son Isaac who was traumatized by the altar experience but moved on and moved away from this trauma and helped to build up the Jewish nation. As Progressive Christians we too are called to put our hurts behind us and keep moving forward building up the Kingdom of God in a healing and restorative way. May God bless us all as we journey.
