Saturday, March 26, 2005

faith in friends

"in the ancient world, faith DID NOT mean subscribing to the convictions of theology; it meant LIVING IN CONFIDENCE OF RELATIONSHIPS."
-leonard sweet in "out of the question and into the mystery", my emphasis added

i read this the other day and i thought of many people i know of who have walked away from "the faith". some students, some friends, some people i used to serve with...and i can say that there is a wide range of wisdom in the statement by mr. sweet.

every single person i know who has seriously questioned their relationship with Jesus has been either a.) hurt by another "christian" (i put that in quotes because i have often questioned if they were ever authentic followers of Jesus) b.) isolated from authentic biblical community c.) in a community where they were being forced to conform to "rules" or d.) surrounded by a community of bondage and little freedom.

perhaps if we recognized this we would take a much more serious aproach to the way we live oput our faith and include all in the journey towards Christ.

nate

posted by nathan sean @ Saturday, March 26, 2005

2 Comments:

At 2:25 PM, Blogger BJ said...

Hey Nate,

Just (re)discovered your blog. Cool.

You could add another category, somewhere between the ones you've already got - "Confidence in relationships with God". My brother stopped following Jesus because he had no confidence in a number of his friend's relationships with God. They never hurt him but he could see within them the hypocrisy and decided he didn't want/need that...

He's since said that he really respects me and a mutual (close)friend of ours in the way we try to live our faith but I'm left with a sense of how weighty the negative examples have been.

Course a number of these "friends" are now not following Christ either (if they ever were).

Anyways, nice to catch up with life in your world.

Jonesboy

 
At 6:06 PM, Blogger Arkay said...

Hello again...that little video we saw at small groups at your house...I remember that guy saying that so many people have put religion and GOD together and walked away from both. I feel what your saying...

 

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