Simply Christian - Reflection 2

N. T. Wright's
Simply Christian
Why Christianity Makes Sense

“Christianity is all about the belief that the living God, in fulfillment of his promises and as the climax of the story of Israel, has accomplished all this - the finding, the saving, the giving of new life - in Jesus. He has done it. With Jesus, God’s rescue operation has been put into effect once and for all. A great door has swung open in the cosmos which can never be shut. It’s the door to the prison where we’ve been kept chained up. We are offered freedom: freedom to experience God’s rescue for ourselves, to go through the open door and explore the new world to which we now have access. In particular, we are invited - summoned, actually - to discover, through following Jesus, that this new world is indeed a place of justice, spirituality, relationship, and beauty, and that we are not only to enjoy it as such but to work at bringing it to birth on earth as in heaven. In listening to Jesus, we discover whose voice it is that has echoed around the hearts and minds of the human race all along.” a paragraph from Chapter 7.

It was very interesting right before this paragraph he points to a list of things that Christianity is not. Some of the things he lists I have at one point or another in my life had thought or even claimed out loud that Christianity was. One example was that Jesus’s main purpose was to be a great moral example, as if all we had to do was follow Jesus’s example of great devotion to God. He likened that to watching Tiger Woods playing golf. For some it may help improve their golf game, for others it would make them depressed, because there would be no hope of coming close to playing like Tiger. It isn’t that we can’t learn from the example Jesus lead, but this isn’t the chief end of Christianity and of why Jesus came. He didn’t come to simply be a moral example.

This book has been refreshing for me in his connecting Jesus to the story of Israel and the Jewish tradition, which I think I don’t keep connected sometimes.

This is the “new world” I desire to participate in. The rescue and restoration of creation. God rescuing and restoring me and using me to bring about the same in all of creation around me. Participating with God bringing justice putting things to rights, healing relationships, experiencing and creating beauty, and sharing in the spirituality of communion with God and the Body of Christ.