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Jettisoning Modernity

Posted by Nathanael Szobody on

“The Church does not exist for me; my salvation is not primarily a matter of intellectual mastery of emotional satisfaction. The church is the site where God renews and transforms us–a place where the practices of being the body of Christ form us into the image of the Son. What I, a sinner saved by grace, need is not so much answers as reformation of my will and hear. What I describe as the practices of the church include the traditional sacramental practices of baptism and Eucharist but also the practices of Christian marriage and child-rearing, even the simple but radical practices of friendship and being called to get along with those one doesn’t like! The church, for instance, is a place to learn patience by practice. The fruit of the Spirit emerges in our lives from the seeds planted by the practices of begin the church; and when the church begins to exhibit the fruit of the Spirit, it becomes the witness to a postmodern world(John 17). Nothing is more countercultural than a community serving the Suffering Servant in a world devoted to consumption and violence. but the church will have this countercultural, prophetic witness only when it jettisons its own modernity; in that respect postmodernism can be another catalyst for the church to be the church.”

— James K.A. Smith

Who’s Afraid of Postmodernity?

The Pure in Heart

Posted by Nathanael Szobody on

Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God

“How does one obtain a pure heart?

“By believing in Jesus Christ and so that your sins may be washed away by his blood.

“Why is it that such people will see God?”

“Because Jesus is the one who brings us to God.”

“What does it mean to ‘see God’?”

“There are two promises in this statement, which are actually one promise with two fulfillments. The first promise is that those who are pure in heart, that is, those who have been washed with Jesus’ blood, will be with him forever. This is God’s plan for the fullness of time, to present everyone blameless before God to dwell with him forever.

The second promise is really the same one, but is fulfilled even right now. There is so much evil in the world, and our own minds are so shaped by the sinful desires of the flesh, that we are prone to regard everything with selfishness. But when we belong to Jesus we know that everything belongs to him, and so everything belongs to us through him. So we learn how everything is to be used by looking at how Jesus uses it and how he teaches us to us it.”

“So what does that have to do with seeing God?”

“Well we have physical eyes, and God is spirit. So we see God by getting spiritual eyes. That’s what it means to be pure in heart. To see the things of this world with spiritual eyes. When we do that we see God and enjoy him in his creation.”

“For example?”

“Well, take anything that people are bound to abuse. That thing is intended for a good purpose, but it is missused. The easiest way for a person to become impure is to think selfishly. One of the easiest sins to commit is sexual sin. People think that chastity is a hard rule. But in fact sexuality is one of the greatest gifts from God for our enjoyment. But like everything, it has to be in is rightful place to be good and useful and thoroughly beautiful. God explains in scripture that the image of marriage and sexuality are a picture of god’s love for his church, giving himself to her that she might produce the fruit of life in this world. So sexuality is an awesome gift to marriage as a way for people to see God through their own bodies, to see him as a God of love and pleasureable communion. So in this way if someone is pure in heart, then they have spiritual eyes to see God in sex. But impure eyes would see it as a means only for physical pleasure; this would be selfish eyes that are of the flesh and they would not see God.”

“So really the promise ‘blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God’ is a promise both for this life and the next!”

“Yes, and this applies to every area of life. If we find that there is a law that is burdensome to us, or a rule or moral that we would prefer not to have, then we are not seeing with spiritual eyes. But if we are pure in heart, we see that all of life is a way to see God through our relationship to Jesus Christ and his creation. This is what it means to say that the law is fulfilled in Christ, or that Jesus has “done it all”. This doesn’t mean we stop doing good, on the contrary! It means we get his heart, his pure heart, to love seeing God in everything we do.”