I'm finding the Sermon on the Mount virtually unscalable and I don't labor under those mistaken apprehensions. David calls materialists(atheists) fools but they seem more like headless chickens running around banging into walls and falling over the simplest obstacles. And yet, they love to talk about the wisdom and beauty of this Sermon and how much better Christianity would be with just the Sermon on the Mount and none of the Deity of Christ, as if every word is not based on the Fatherhood of God and Christ's Mediation. Thanks for commenting. I always appreciate feedback.
There is a famous story about a yielded person doing exactly what the Holy Spirit directed him to do: get in your car, go buy a quart of milk, drive, turn left, turn right, stop: go knock on the door and hand it to the person. The person's complete faith turned out to be an answer to prayer for someone who desparately needed and prayed for said milk.
But who are we to judge, or even to know, when God needs a wino to get a bottle of Thunderbird? Jesus Himself was insistent that He only did what the Father directed Him to do. And He tells us to do the same.
I am not saying that I am good at this: my wife would say that I am often injecting what I think is right in places that it does not belong. I guess that is wisdom.
That's a neat story and very relevant to the Sermon on the Mount. Even the attempt to follow the mystical and mysterious commands Christ gives us here puts us in a very different place.
From the excellent George Macdonald on the command to love your enemies at the end of Matthew 5:
'If any one say, "Do not make such vague distinctions.[as loving the enemy and not loving the things about him that are detestable -jc] There is the person. Can you deny that that person is unlovely? How then can you love him?" I answer, "That person, with the evil thing cast out of him, will be yet more the person, for he will be his real self. The thing that now makes you dislike him is separable from him, is therefore not he, makes himself so much less himself, for it is working death in him. Now he is in danger of ceasing to be a person at all. When he is clothed and in his right mind, he will be a person indeed. You could not then go on hating him. Begin to love him now, and help him into the loveliness which is his. Do not hate him although you can. The personalty, I say, though clouded, besmeared, defiled with the wrong, lies deeper than the wrong, and indeed, so far as the wrong has reached it, is by the wrong injured, yea, so far, it may be, destroyed."
MacDonald, George. Unspoken Sermons Series I., II., and II. . Kindle Edition.
Everyone should consider getting MacDonald's Unspoken Sermons on Kindle. For $1 you can have some of the greatest thoughts of one of the 19th centuries greatest Christian writers in your hands any time that you want them. I know for you Jeff, thinking on the excellent and the praiseworthy is a big part of what you do, you could hardly find more excellence or praiseworthiness than in MacDonald.
Hard to figure these things out for those who believe people are only highly developed animals and that the whole cosmos just happened by accident.
I'm finding the Sermon on the Mount virtually unscalable and I don't labor under those mistaken apprehensions. David calls materialists(atheists) fools but they seem more like headless chickens running around banging into walls and falling over the simplest obstacles. And yet, they love to talk about the wisdom and beauty of this Sermon and how much better Christianity would be with just the Sermon on the Mount and none of the Deity of Christ, as if every word is not based on the Fatherhood of God and Christ's Mediation. Thanks for commenting. I always appreciate feedback.
Every jot and tittle will be fulfilled.
This is so GOOD!
Glad you like it sir. Much appreciated.
There is a famous story about a yielded person doing exactly what the Holy Spirit directed him to do: get in your car, go buy a quart of milk, drive, turn left, turn right, stop: go knock on the door and hand it to the person. The person's complete faith turned out to be an answer to prayer for someone who desparately needed and prayed for said milk.
But who are we to judge, or even to know, when God needs a wino to get a bottle of Thunderbird? Jesus Himself was insistent that He only did what the Father directed Him to do. And He tells us to do the same.
I just read this posting, which seems relevant. https://www.missiodeicatholic.org/p/an-important-message-for-you-dictated
I am not saying that I am good at this: my wife would say that I am often injecting what I think is right in places that it does not belong. I guess that is wisdom.
That's a neat story and very relevant to the Sermon on the Mount. Even the attempt to follow the mystical and mysterious commands Christ gives us here puts us in a very different place.
From the excellent George Macdonald on the command to love your enemies at the end of Matthew 5:
'If any one say, "Do not make such vague distinctions.[as loving the enemy and not loving the things about him that are detestable -jc] There is the person. Can you deny that that person is unlovely? How then can you love him?" I answer, "That person, with the evil thing cast out of him, will be yet more the person, for he will be his real self. The thing that now makes you dislike him is separable from him, is therefore not he, makes himself so much less himself, for it is working death in him. Now he is in danger of ceasing to be a person at all. When he is clothed and in his right mind, he will be a person indeed. You could not then go on hating him. Begin to love him now, and help him into the loveliness which is his. Do not hate him although you can. The personalty, I say, though clouded, besmeared, defiled with the wrong, lies deeper than the wrong, and indeed, so far as the wrong has reached it, is by the wrong injured, yea, so far, it may be, destroyed."
MacDonald, George. Unspoken Sermons Series I., II., and II. . Kindle Edition.
Everyone should consider getting MacDonald's Unspoken Sermons on Kindle. For $1 you can have some of the greatest thoughts of one of the 19th centuries greatest Christian writers in your hands any time that you want them. I know for you Jeff, thinking on the excellent and the praiseworthy is a big part of what you do, you could hardly find more excellence or praiseworthiness than in MacDonald.
Thanks, Jon! I appreciate it. I have been on summer break. It's time to get back to it.