What's Love Got to do with It? The Politics of the Cross
Stanley
Hauerwas ABC Religion and Ethics 3 Apr 2015
Through the cross, we have been freed from the necessities we inflict on ourselves in the name of 'peace', a peace that often turns out to be an order established and continued through violence. Credit: shutterstock
Nothing is more
destructive to the Christian faith than the current identification
of Christianity with love.
If God wants us to be more loving, why do you need Jesus to tell us that? And if Christianity is about the forgiveness of our sins, then why did Jesus have to die?
If God is all about love, in other words, why go through the trouble of being this man, Jesus? Why did God not just tell us through an appropriate spokesman (it could have been Jesus) that God wants us to love one another?
God, in such a faith, becomes that great "OK" who tells us we are OK and, therefore, we are taught we should tell one another we are OK. But if Jesus is the proclamation of the great OK, why would anyone have bothered putting him to death? There must have been some terrible failure in communication.
One of the problems with the identification of Christianity with love is how such a view turns out to be both anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic. The Jews and Catholics become identified with the law or dogma, in contrast to Protestant Christians, who are about love. Such a view assumes that any form of faith that creates divisions must be retrograde because such a faith is not about being loving.
Of course, when love becomes what Christianity is all about, we can make no sense of Jesus's death and resurrection.
If God wants us to be more loving, why do you need Jesus to tell us that? And if Christianity is about the forgiveness of our sins, then why did Jesus have to die?
If God is all about love, in other words, why go through the trouble of being this man, Jesus? Why did God not just tell us through an appropriate spokesman (it could have been Jesus) that God wants us to love one another?
God, in such a faith, becomes that great "OK" who tells us we are OK and, therefore, we are taught we should tell one another we are OK. But if Jesus is the proclamation of the great OK, why would anyone have bothered putting him to death? There must have been some terrible failure in communication.
One of the problems with the identification of Christianity with love is how such a view turns out to be both anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic. The Jews and Catholics become identified with the law or dogma, in contrast to Protestant Christians, who are about love. Such a view assumes that any form of faith that creates divisions must be retrograde because such a faith is not about being loving.
Of course, when love becomes what Christianity is all about, we can make no sense of Jesus's death and resurrection.
Read more at: http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2015/04/03/4210472.htm
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