Everybody's got a hungry heart -- so says Bruce Springsteen and Greg Boyd, in his newest book, The Myth of a Christian Religion: Losing Your Religion for the Beauty of a Revolution
quotes the Boss to make an important part.We all have a hunger to feel alive, to find security, to sense significance, and to feel a fullness of worth. It's what Boyd means by "Life." John 10:10 stuff.
How do you define idolatry? What do you think of Boyd's idea that the revolution Jesus came to ignite is one shaped by Life and Love? Are those terms big enough to describe the mission of Jesus?
Only God can satisfy this hunger for Life, because only God is Life. God is Love so he made humans that crave God's Love.
But God does not coerce; humans seeks for Love and Life through their freedom. Sometimes in all the wrong places. The Bible calls this Idolatry. To find life and love in less than Love and Life is idolatrous. Sex, wealth and power will come up empty eventually.
This Life and Love are embodied and seen in Jesus, who frees us from the idols. Jesus' kingdom Life revolts against the idols.
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I have not read Boyd's book - so may speak from ignorance, but I don't think that Life and Love are big enough to describe the mission of Jesus. Certainly they are a large piece of the pie but still only a piece. For starters - Jesus' kingdom life does more than revolt against the idols and is more than an embodiment of life and love.
There is an culminated action - not well described by "revolt" or "embody". We need power words as well "victory" "defeat" "inaugurate." We have victory of God, defeat of evil and death, inauguration of the kingdom. God did for us...
I'm not sure that Love and Life aren't the biggest words in the universe, and also the most underrated. They inevitable result in a defeat of death and the victory of his people an the inauguration of God's kingdom with Christ as lord and king. But these things are the thunder that follows from the lightning of God's character (Love & Life).
Love is God's creative & redemptive impulse; Life is the masterwork of his love. In this respect I don't think it was an overstatement when St John wrote that "God is love."
I think we need to think bigger about love and life as the organizing dynamics of the gospel and the life it calls us to.
Thanks Jesus Creed. You've made it possible to quit reading books altogether. I just hit your blog and read some comments. Saves me a fortune and lots of shelf-space! Good stuff.
Scot,
When we lift Jesus' mission up into concepts like uncontextualized "love" and "life," what do we do with the historical realities that are so fundamental in the biblical Story? It seems that all the earthiness of Jesus is simply a disposable wrapper around the candy bar of "love" and "life." It feels like another reduction to me. I could be wrong.
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