Thursday, October 31, 2024
In his book Do I Stay Christian?, Brian McLaren highlights solidarity as a universal value supporting of our common life:
There may be a way to draw the best resources we can from all our traditions, not to cure us of being human, but to help us become humane, because in the end, we humans are all connected, woven, as Dr. King said, in an inescapable web of mutuality. [1] …. If we are to avoid self- destruction, it will require solidarity across all our traditions.…
If you choose solidarity, instead of pulling away from those you once suspected, avoided, vilified, or rejected, you see them as neighbors. You smile. You talk. You try to collaborate for the common good in whatever ways you can. When you disagree, as you must, you do so boldly but also graciously, not burning bridges, not breaking solidarity. They may be your opponents for the moment, but you don’t write them off as enemies.
When you embrace solidarity, you embrace humanity, including Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, Sikh, humanist, and atheist humanity, and including the humanity of those Christians whose behavior consistently prompts you to ask if you can stand staying Christian for even one more second.
McLaren describes the new friendships that are possible when we embrace the inclusive message of Jesus:
If you choose solidarity … in the way modeled by Jesus, then you don’t have to stop being Christian. In fact, you may have just become a better Christian than you’ve ever been…. You may have some old friends reject you, and you may struggle to keep accepting them anyway. You may have to find new teachers and mentors who can walk with you toward Christianity’s deeper, wider heart…. If you dare to follow that summons deeper into the darkness of unknowing, eventually you will come into a new place, a good place, a place not of elite religiosity but of shared humanity.
You will look around and feel that all are welcome here. They have come from different places, but by the same path, the path of love. Muslims have come in their caravan of love. Jews have pursued the Torah of solidarity. Buddhists have followed the noble truth of compassion. Sikhs have learned to see no stranger, and Hindus have descended into essential oneness. Atheists and agnostics have discovered in humanism a path into our common humanity….
When you find that this option of solidarity is open to you, this option of going to the deepest and most genuine core of your Christian tradition and there finding a love that connects you to everyone and everything, everywhere … you don’t need to go anywhere else. Of course, you can if you want to. But here is a way of staying Christian that connects you to others in a quest for solidarity rather than separating you from them in a quest for innocence, dominance, or supremacy. This feels to me like the way of Christ. This feels like the way of life.
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Sarah Young
Jesus Calling: October 31st
Learn to listen to Me even while you are listening to other people. As they open their souls to your scrutiny, you are on holy ground. You need the help of My Spirit to respond appropriately. Ask Him to think through you, live through you, love through you. My own Being is alive within you in the Person of the Holy Spirit. If you respond to others’ needs through your unaided thought processes, you offer them dry crumbs. When the Spirit empowers your listening and speaking. My stream of living water flow through you to other people. Be a channel of My Love, Joy, and Peace by listening to Me as you listen to others.
RELATED SCRIPTURE:
Exodus 3:5 (NIV)
5 “Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.”
1st Corinthians 6:19 (NIV)
19 Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own;
John 7:38-39 (NIV)
38 Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.” 39 By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified.
Additional insight regarding John 7:38: Jesus’ words, “come and drink” alluded to the theme of many Bible passages that talk about Messiah’s life-giving blessings (Isaiah 12:2-3; 44:3-4; 58:11). In promising to give the Holy Spirit to all who believed, Jesus was claiming to be the Messiah, for that was something only the Messiah could do.
