Quotes For Reflection

As I am finishing up some writing assignments for a commentary series from WJK Press, my blog pieces will be few and far for a week or so. With that in mind, let me share two quotes with you for your pondering. The first is from Marcus Borg; the second is from Josiah Strong.

In an interview, Borg said:

Faith is not primarily about believing a set of claims to be true-that's what goes with the earlier vision of Christianity. The understanding of faith that goes with the emerging vision is about a relationship of trust in God and faithfulness to God. The ancient meaning of the word "believe" is "to commit oneself, to be loyal to." The Middle English word is "beleve," and that means to love or be loved. So faith is about loving God and loving that which God loves--which is the whole of creation.

Would you agree with this definition of faith that Borg proposes?

Josiah Strong was the secretary of the Congregational Home Mission Society in the late 19th century. He wrote:

There are many in the Church as well as out of it who need to learn that Christianity is neither a creed nor a ceremonial, but a life vitaly[sic] connected with a loving Christ.

Would you agree this understanding of Christianity that Strong proposed?

Who gets to decide who is what?

At the end of August - yes, I am that far behind, and more, on some of the items I have saved for inclusion in the blog - the Washington Post ran a story about a woman who had converted to Judaism in 1992 and lived in Israel for the last 15 years. She and her husband sought a divorce, which, in Israel, meant that they had to appear before a court made up of Ultra-orthodox rabbis. After appearing before the court, the woman was told the shocking news, at least it was to her, that she did not need a divorce because she had never really been married because she had never really been Jewish. In one fell swoop, the court of rabbis waved a 'religious wand' and made the last 15 years of her life disappear and made her children less than respectable.

The decision of the rabbinical court was based on the woman's faithfulness in obeying all of the Jewish law. For those who are not aware, there are generally considered to be 613 commands in the Hebrew scripture. This woman was found to be negligent in her obedience and, thus, not really a true convert.

That, of course, sparked some questions for me. I do not agree with the decision of the Ultra-orthodox rabbis in Israel, but my objection to their decision does not matter at all. They obviously followed what they believed to be the clear teaching of their scripture.

This incident caused me to reflect on other people in other faiths, as in Christianity, who have taken on the same mantle of authority and made similar pronouncements of who is and who is not really a Christian. Too frequently, these pronouncements are based on more subjective criteria than the corpus of Jewish law. For example, on more than one occasion, someone has presumed to tell me that I am not a Christian because I have not agreed with their particular interpretation of some doctrinal point. I think I am glad that there is no similar human court of orthodoxy within Christianity. I am much more comfortable to leave such decisions for God.