Sunday, July 15, 2012

Does this Sound Like "Good News"?

In a religiously glutted Christianized culture that throws the term "gospel" around as if we all knew what it meant, try out for size my effort to offer a fresh and perhaps more accurate reflection of not only what it means but how it is lived:

"Our God-created image is free to live the transcendent and cosmic values of God's eternal Kingdom. When we choose to respond  to promptings generated by a gift from God called "faith" by believing in a God who became human in a man named Jesus who lived a full but often troubled human existence and died a horrific death by which he overcame sin and its consequences for everyone, we discover a freedom to live in this life by God's universal design, no longer hamstrung by guilt and the debilitation that guilt and sin bring. We are free to love and be loved."

Does that sound like good news? I would think it is good for anyone who hears it, whether or not they choose to believe.

There are no doubt gaps in this statement and questions that can be raised. But at the very least, it seems to offer inclusivity rather than exclusivity. All are free to believe and choose to live in love but since it is apparent that not all do, those who choose to live selfishly and resist an Irrestible Force find their lives incomplete and empty of the Life afforded to them through Jesus' resurrection.

It is certainly their loss in this life but may not be in a life to come. They may realize after death that what was available to them by God's design was ignored or rejected in the context when it could've been best experienced. Hell may be this realization.

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