If God is ultimate, then it is what's ultimate that is 'good'. This means, rather than saying "God is good" (which, whilst true, primarily allows us to project our notions of goodness onto God), is it not better to say "Good is whatever God is"? This allows God to take the lead, and exclusively 'own' and demonstrate goodness.
Also...
If what God has said through Jesus is "take up your cross, die to self, crucifixion, love your neighbour as yourself", then the entire emphases of this life shifts onto 'the other' to the complete detriment of self. This means that our greatest sins are the systems which encourage and facilitate our caring for and relying soley on ourselves, and our lapping-up there of, and our greatest achievements are places where we give of ourselves and depend on one another.
In the Nth degree, sacrifice and prefering of others = life and survival, the preferring of self = death.
...Right?
4 comments:
I have an unease about what you're saying - in that, for a long long time a whole gender in our cultural setting were (and in some places still are) told that they are the ones who need to sacrifice, deny self etc while the other gender enjoyed the privilages of power, influence, authority etc. This then led to situations where women who were being violently abused in the home were told by ministers/priests things like - 'don't antagonise him, just take it, if Jesus suffered for you surely you can suffer too.'
Just a thought...
I appreciate the reason for your unease and agree with you entirely. What you describe though, is a forcing of one, by another, to 'sacrifice'. That is not what i would describe as sacrifice, it's oppression! I think what i'm aiming at with this thought is more to do with some sort of God ordained sense of community and interdependence. If a sacrifice is to be genuine, doesn't there have to be an easy way out of it, since this will mean it's entered into in an empowered, fully-comprehended and willfull way?
I don't think that interdependence is the same as prefering the welfare of others to self - I don't think it has to be either/or (don't like dualisms!) and I'm not sure, given my previous comment, that the language of sacrifice is always the most helpful. Besides - it's taken me so bloody long to come anywhere near valuing myself, my own needs and my own worth that I'm not giving that up for anyone!!
sounds like peter rollins. i think what your saying is right, but we also need to accept self and live in the resurrection and take up the importance of our lives. Christ is forever on the cross and forever risen. This paradox is how we must live as christians, stretching to the good thief with one hand aswell as reaching over to the bad thief.
http://touchingbasewithgod.blogspot.com/.
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