Thought for the day:
"If we want to understand God's goodness in God's gifts, then we must think of them as a responsibility we bear for our brothers and sisters. Let none say: God has blessed us with money and possessions, and then live as if they and their God were alone in the world. For the time will come when they realize that they have been worshipping the idols of their good fortune and selfishness. Possessions are not God's blessing and goodness, but the opportunities of service which God entrusts to us." (From A Testament to Freedom, p 197.)
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2 comments:
Would it be overstating things to say that many American evangelicals live precisely this way: "as if they and their God were alone in the world"? Sadly, I think not.
This is why I cannot see a difference between Christ's first and second commandments. How could you possibly love God without loving your neighbor? How could they be distinct? What would that even mean? (Unlike my comments on the last post, these questions are not satires of onto-theology.)
What, to paraphrase a favorite evangelical imperative, would it mean to make God your top priority or put Christ at the center of your life if not EXACTLY to put your neighbor and loving your neighbor as the that-for-the-sake-of-which you live? When we separate the two commandments, when we act as though we can exist alone with God in our world, then we worship our own deified reflection (our graven ideology of the idea of God, borrowing the term from Benson)as our first priority-- that is, we turn the first commandment into loving ourselves under the guise of piety. What does the order "1)God 2)Others 3)Self" mean other than "1)Me 2)My neighbor 3)Whatever I didn't get the first time around"?
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