kent lee's blog & ramble

So fühle ich mich heutzutage im Bezug auf meiner Theologie. In Bezug auf meinem vorherigen Blog-Stück, muss ich sagen, es ist schwer, diese abgespaltenen Richtungen zusammen zu bringen. Ich finde, in diesem Tiel meiner Glaubensreise, dass ich ganz underschiedliche Richtungen abstimmen muss: meine neue Emerging-Theologie-Richtung und/oder moderne evangelische Richtung, meinen aalten evangelikalen Glauben, und die charismatische Richtung meines Glaubens. Im Moment scheint es, wie Öl und Wasser zu mischen. Ich schreibe heute über einen gewissen Schwerpunkt: die Theologie des Todes und der Hölle.   Universalismus kann ich nicht akzeptieren - nicht ganz. Aber die Theologie der exklusiven Errettung von Menschen finde ich problematisch - wo die Mehrheit der Mesnchen zur Hölle gehen müssen. Hier in Kürze hat es mit dem Charakter Gottes zu tun, zum Beispiel, wie könnte er Seelen ewiglich und endlos bestrafen für einen beschränken Satz von Sünden? Wie ist das kon...

In Jesus’ day, a disciple was a follower, a student and an apprentice of a rabbi (a spiritual teacher). If one wanted to become a rabbi, one trained as a disciple-apprentice to a rabbi, learned from him, followed him, and then started to do as the rabbi did. Jesus, by the way, was a self-taught rabbi; as God’s son he did not need to learn from a human rabbi. Jesus commands us to be his disciples. We follow him, we learn how to live the spiritual life that he wants for us, we learn his teaching, and we spread his teaching to others and encourage them to become disciples of our Lord. Being a disciple, then, entails a cost, because we must give up everything to become his disciples [Luke 14.33]. There’s no room for the sort of easy-believism that has become popular today. One could be a faithful disciple, or a disciple who is ineffective or inactive (just as one could be a good or bad student, but a student nonetheless; in fact, ‘disciple’ and ‘discipline’ come from the Latin word f...

When I was younger, for example, in my teenage years in fundamentalist churches, I used to regularly hear some bad analogies for faith, especially in evangelistic or apologetic contexts. I heard faith being compared to sitting in a chair [“your belief in the chair’s ability to hold you does no good unless you sit in it”] or getting on a plane [“your belief in the plane’s ability to take off safely or transport you won’t work until you decide to board it”]. Now I cringe whenever I hear salvation compared sitting on a chair, or getting on a plane. Thankfully, my church here doesn’t use such analogies that trivialize faith and salvation. Such analogies are cheesy, simplistic illustrations of salvation. They reduce faith to something trite, like a mundane decision, a mere intellectual act, little different than choosing to vote for a certain party, or choosing what shoes to wear in the morning. And they’re rather human-focused rather than God-focused. (They sound rather Arminian, in fact.)...

Salvation is like this: You're caught up in a fast moving river, in the process of drowning, as the river is hurling you toward a steep waterfall, where you will plummet to your final death, drown, or be dashed against the rocks. Jesus stands on the shore, shouting your name. He extends his arm out to you to grab you. He's the only one who can save you. You are helpless. All you can do is respond, and let him grab you, let him rescue you. He is your hero. Your only hope. Or you can refuse his help. Try to save your own life from the predicament that awaits you - though you cannot. Ignore his outstretched hand, and decide to go it alone, be your own boss, the king of what's left of your life, the master of nothing but your own destruction. Or call out for help, let him grab you and save you, let him pull you out, revive you, dry you off, give you new clothes and a new existence. Notice that you contribute absolutely nothing here. He does all the work. All you did was not to ...