Escape story
Doctrine builds bordersThis story provoked me into thinking about doctrine and love. Doctine builds borders. Doctrine says 'believe and obey and you can live within. Don't believe and you can live without. And if you come back you will be punished, maybe with your life. ' Love breaks borders down. Not just IslamJust as Rahaf's story broke, I happened to read an extract from The Great Spiritual Migration by Brian McLaren. McLaren, pictured, is an American, writing under an appellation I've never heard before - 'Public Theologian.' The whole extract is too long to reprint in this post, so I've selected parts of what I read and printed them below in sequence. Here is what he says:
What would it mean for Christians to rediscover their faith not as a problematic system of beliefs, but as a just and generous way of life, rooted in contemplation and expressed in compassion, that makes amends for its mistakes and is dedicated to beloved community for all? Could Christians migrate from defining their faith as a system of beliefs to expressing it as a loving way of life? . . . What would it mean for Christians to let Jesus and his message lead them to a new vision of God? What would it mean for Christians to understand, experience, and embody God as the loving, healing, reconciling Spirit in whom all creatures live, move, and have their being? Of the many radical things said and done by Jesus, his unflinching emphasis on love was the most radical of all. Love was the greatest commandment . . . his prime directive—love for God, for self, for neighbor, for stranger, for alien, for outsider, for outcast, and even for enemy, as he himself modeled. The new commandment of love [John 13:34] meant that neither beliefs nor words, neither taboos, systems, structures nor the labels that enshrined them mattered most. Love decentered everything else; love relativized everything else; love took priority over everything else—everything. Reference: Brian McLaren, The Great Spiritual Migration: How the World’s Largest Religion Is Seeking a Better Way to Be Christian (Convergent: 2016), 2-3, 42. And so?I've found that the emphasis on doctrine and belief has another spin-off. It hinders many of my friends and contacts from understanding what religious faith and practice is about. 'I can't beieve that. It's not rational' one of my fellow croquet players said to me. I wish he could be involved with a church such as McLaren envisages - one that invited him in, to be part of a loving, servicing, realistically human, community. He could come to think about doctrine and belief later, if he liked what he found there. Putting love first doesn't mean that we should wash away seeking truth and believing what we find to be true, But it does mean not allowing doctrine to define. to dominate and to shun. I wish Rahaf well. Safe in Canada I hope she will be free from religious and male domination and be free to believe what she chooses. And I hope she will find people who love and care. Indeed, I wish that for us all. John McInnes Friday 25 January 2019 ##########
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