<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cWell,\u201d says Paul, clearly resigned to his fate, \u201cTurns out it was works after all. Whaddya know?\u201d<\/p>\n
The blogger who gave us this version noted in an aside that her readers might not find this as funny as she, a child of the Lutheran heritage, did.<\/p>\n
What it does is lay out the conundrum of Western religion, certainly Christianity, from its inception. How do we heal the broken heart? What \u201csaves\u201d us? From pretty much the beginning, again, at least of Christianity, here in the West people have fallen into two camps with their answers: grace and works.<\/p>\n
From my perspective the question of the mechanism of atonement is a red herring. It has two problems, literalization and dualism. There is a literalist perspective that poisons all religions, near as I can tell. Within that literalization is an implicit dualism. If one doesn\u2019t take one down the wrong path, the other does\u2026<\/p>\n
In my opinion within Christianity it is the literalization of the salvation story that wrecks it. The story of a world in ruin and how the creator sends his only son to become of the world, and through his suffering joins heaven and earth and overcomes hell, has a deep and compelling quality to it. Then they say not only does this describe our human heart but it actually happened in history. And the consequence of this is that if you simply accept the gift of the divine as literally true you will be delivered from hell and given heaven. And if you don\u2019t, well its hell for you\u2026<\/p>\n
Well, no it didn\u2019t. And no, it won\u2019t, neither way\u2026<\/p>\n
However, that doesn\u2019t mean it doesn\u2019t have truth about it. Within the heart of the story we find our hearts, we can indeed reconcile the hurt and the healing, and find salavation for the whole blessed mess.<\/p>\n
What we do counts, totally.<\/p>\n
And grace informs everything, totally. (Yes, the more traditional formulation is \u201cfaith,\u201d but I suggest \u201cgrace\u201d more accurately captures the sense at the heart of the statement. Faith too easily too quickly becomes blind faith. Which is a problem, but not the primary problem. So the best word, I think: grace\u2026)<\/p>\n
Within the liberal tradition I like that the Universalists an the Unitarians each took a different door to that healing, to that saving, the Universalists grace and the Unitarians works; and somehow ended up in the same place.<\/p>\n
The problem is a false dualism. It has to do with how we really are one and we really are multiple. Our Western philosophy which has served us so well in so many ways fails us here. As I mentioned in a recent sermon, and actually lifted from numerous others, reality is similar to energy. We see it now as a wave, now as a particle. Our dualistic perspectives have limited utility, and we need to hold them lightly\u2026<\/p>\n
What it takes for us to find our healing, best I can tell, is to surrender our knowing, whatever it is, and to confront it all with an open heart.<\/p>\n
As the man said, only don\u2019t know. From that point it all becomes clear.<\/p>\n
We need to open the eyes we have, and listen with the ears we have. That\u2019s all.<\/p>\n
When that happens we can be informed by the best of the world\u2019s faiths, not to mention science, and the arts, and nature itself. All of it begins to sing our hope, our salvation.<\/p>\n
What was literalist and dualist, becomes poetic and unifying.<\/p>\n
Then we discover each act is a healing act, and grace informs everything we do.<\/p>\n
And in that moment old Martin and the gang discover hell becomes heaven.<\/p>\n
One thing\u2026<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/_niPwTW3rBbU\/SQrrKWdypjI\/AAAAAAAABXc\/p8wz9unfFJM\/s1600-h\/luther2.jpg\")
<\/a>Today is the four hundred ninety first anniversary of that disgruntled Augustinian friar nailing his ninety-five theses<\/a> to the the door of Wittenberg\u2019s Castle Church. Those who like to nail down dates like to mark this as the dawn of the Protestant Reformation.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/tracker\/33904114-8704073160887125942?l=monkeymindonline.blogspot.com\")
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