Indeed the litmus-test for Christian orthodoxy is not the creed (can you believe this set of truths?) but this particular challenge from Jesus: can you love an enemy? Can you avoid giving back in kind? Can you move beyond your natural reactions and transform the energy that enters you from others, so as to not give back bitterness for bitterness, harsh words for harsh words, curse for curse, hatred for hatred, murder for murder? Can you rise above your sense of being wronged? Can you renounce your need to be right? Can you move beyond the itch to always have what’s due you? Can you forgive, even when every feeling inside of you rebels at its unfairness? Can you take in bitterness, curses, hatred, and murder itself, and give back graciousness, blessing, love, understanding, and forgiveness? That’s the root invitation inside of Christianity and it’s only when we do this that we move beyond “an eye for an eye.”...
When I read Camus’ novel The Plague during my freshman year in college, it never occurred to me that I would live to see a global pandemic. Nor did I expect that this novel would describe so accurately our reaction to this “new plague.” Here is Camus providing a picture of how the residents of the Algerian city of Oran first met this brewing disaster.
“Our townsfolk were not more to blame than others; they forgot to be modest, that was all, and thought that everything was still possible for them; which presupposed that pestilences were impossible. They went on doing business, arranged for journeys, and formed views. How should they have thought of anything like plague, which rules out any future, cancels journeys, silences the exchange of views. They fancied themselves free, and no one will ever be free as long as there are pestilences”...
no one can reasonably conclude that biblical texts are commanding disruption or even severance of normal human relationships as a goal within themselves. But these same texts do insist on the possibility that for each person to fulfill her or his own unique spiritual, moral or psychological responsibilities as a higher calling to God’s purposes there can be personal loss. This may be the price to fulfill a unique commitment. It is not a sacrifice we seek; it is a possibility we acknowledge.
(Resources listed here reference more than one reading and are normally shorter than the resources listed under the individual texts above. If you are looking to link the readings, check these resources.)
(Resources listed here reference more than one reading and are
normally shorter than the resources listed under the individual
texts above. If you are looking to link the readings, check these
resources.)
