Heard of a Language Called Christian?
“Have you told anyone ‘I’m born again?’ Have you ‘walked the aisle’ to ‘pray the prayer?’ Did you ever ‘name and claim’ something and, after getting it, announce, ‘I’m highly blessed and favored?’” asks CNN’s John Blake in his weekend article.
If this is you, Blake warns, “some Christian pastors and scholars have some bad news: You may not know what you’re talking about.”
The writer quotes two Christian professors to say that many contemporary Christians have become “pious parrots,” constantly repeating Christian phrases they do not understand or distort.
Blake’s article is based on a book, Speaking Christian , by Episcopal theologian Marcus Borg that came out in April. But the CNN’s writer also features a short video by Kirby Ferguson, a New York -based writer, filmmaker, and speaker, to bring currency to his article three months later.
According to the video, Christianity is a language with many dialects – just as English is spoken differently by Americans, British, and others. Some of Christianity’s most important terms have lost their true meaning over the years, it claims, drawing examples from Borg’s book.
Like us on Facebook , Borg seeks to show that modern Christians are steeped in a language so distorted that it has become a stumbling block to the religion. Borg argues that Christianity’s important words, and the sacred texts and stories in which those words are embedded, have been narrowed by a modern framework for the faith that emphasizes sin, forgiveness, Jesus dying for our sins, and the afterlife, says publisher HarperCollins describing the book.
Borg, Canon Theologian at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in Portland, Ore., employs the “historical-metaphorical” method for understanding Christian language “that can restore for us these words of power and transformation.”
Borg cites examples. Redemption, Borg says, is narrowly understood as Jesus saving us from sins so we can go to heaven. But in the Bible it refers to being set free from slavery. The term, “Savior,” which refers to Jesus as the one who saves us from our sins, has nothing to do with the afterlife. And sacrifice, which many think refers to Jesus’s death on the cross as payment for our sins, is never about substitutionary payment for sin in the Bible.
Union With God And Salvation - News
If you talk about the rapture or salvation, or say you are blessed or favored, or let's say you associate belief with doctrine, then you are likely just “speaking Christian” without knowing the real meaning
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The Key to Salvation « John and Lisa's Blue ... - Soaring with God
, There’s an awe-inspiring quote from one of the yogis: “Salvation is found in the marriage of the physical and the spiritual.” I suspect every major religion teaches this concept in some way, either explicitly or more likely, implicitly. Here are some examples.
The main, universally recognized symbol of Christianity is the cross. It’s made up of the union of two beams: the horizontal representing life in this physical world and the vertical representing our relationship to the world of Spirit. The person of Jesus Christ is said to be fully human (the “perfect man”) and fully divine (one with God, the Father). Christians are urged to meditate on the cross and accept/imitate Jesus to find salvation.
The Buddha (Siddhartha Gautama), at the very moment of his enlightenment, while sitting in meditation, reached down and touched the earth to conquer the mighty delusions that were assailing him. After enlightenment, he spent the remaining forty years of his life traveling and teaching the dharma practice) and the mind (in meditation) as links to the spiritual world. The physical aspects of life are not bypassed in a misguided effort to somehow jump directly into Spirit.
In Christianity, Buddhism and Hinduism (and in any genuine religion or spirituality), work and service to others are cultivated as ways of uniting the physical and spiritual realms. We cannot ignore our duties and responsibilities in life, yet expect to make progress in realizing union with God.
Love and compassion for others – and for all of creation – are natural fruits of the spiritual journey because awakening in our union with God inspires us to reach out to others. In this, we find salvation, freedom, liberation from suffering – what some may call heaven on earth.
Union With God And Salvation - Bookshelf
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