School has started again and all my extracurricular research activities are moving forward. God is doing a good work in me and I'm going to hang out with the girl from the grocery store today. Pray for Non-awkwardness. Haha. Crazy Love.
Saturday, May 17, 2008
I just finished reading this book called Resident Aliens by Stanley Hauerwas and it really challenged some of my and our thinking as the Christian church in a culture such as America, where we have cultural Christianity. One of his views is that of a pacifist, with the point being, our allegiance to God should come first before our allegiance to a Nation. This seems like a generally agreeable point, but he gives the example of WWII and fighting against the Nazi's. As much as the Nazi's were misguided in their cause Hauerwas makes the point that we had American Christians fighting and killing German Christians and vice versa, making the point that the earthly nation had super-ceded the Kingdom of God. Hauerwas makes the analogy of a Christian fighting for a Nation is like a person fighting for the telephone company. Your thoughts?
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3 comments:
no awkwardness!!! lol
hey i think there are definitely a million things about our cultural beliefs that influence the way we think being christian is. I think being abroad makes some of these things so much more obvious too, because it is way easier to see the differences in christian cultures. For example think about the ideas of consumerism and business and one can see how these ideas have influenced the christian culture. Or i just think about the focus one puts on results rather than processes which originates from our culture. But I think the bigger question is how does change happen within a culture, particularly in the christian one?
Im studying away today and this week was solid. You all are in my prayers and i think of you often. Ive been really enjoying this blog so I will post the next article here if you want to check it out http://blog.streamsministries.com/feed/
So should there be a Christian nation and anyone that doesn't support the country is it's enemy and OK to go to war with? What do you do when one Christian nation (Germany) invades another Christian nation (France, Poland,etc.). The theory is great, but idealist. Once you factor in sin and tempation it is something to strive for, but not very realistic. Continuing to use WWII as an example, as a Christian you have to respond in some form. Even taking no action is a statement in its self. You can justify going to war by saying a real Christian wouldn't do this and they are imposters, but that is a judgement I would reseve for God. You can write strongly worded letters, but I don't know if that would have stopped the blitzkrieg. My point is if your hand is making you sin it is better to cut off the hand than to continue sining. Any one have thoughts they would like to share?
I agree with what you're saying, but I think the point of the WWII example wasn't that we shouldn't have done anything, but a drastic symbol of how the world's Nations goals are becoming blurred with a Christians goals. Does that make sense?
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