Sts. Clare and Francis -- two of the anti-family types spawned by this dangerous Jesus person (Icon from St. Joseph Studio )
Sunday, June 26, 2005
Jesus on Family Values
This is the best commentary I've read on today's Gospel text...so I'll let you read it too, on Dylan's Lectionary Blog .
Sts. Clare and Francis -- two of the anti-family types spawned by this dangerous Jesus person (Icon from St. Joseph Studio )
Sts. Clare and Francis -- two of the anti-family types spawned by this dangerous Jesus person (Icon from St. Joseph Studio )
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3 comments:
Nice commentary from Dylan. I found something else pretty good: on another site:
"Family values" has become the code name in American culture for Evangelical Christianity. This is not good news. It is a reduction of the gospel - the power of God unto salvation - to a message of moralism which, of course, is no gospel at all. Instead of Jesus Christ and his word as the foundation of all, we have "moral values" at the centre. And instead of the church of the living God being the "pillar and ground of the truth" (1 Timothy 3:15) we have the family as the foundation of all things good. All we need to do is "turn our hearts toward home," and everything will be just fine.
This gospel of "family-ism" bears ill fruit: if we don't flee from it, it will lead us into miry and disastrous paths.
Even in the best of families -- perhaps especially there -- it is so easy for people to become "tribal" and inward-turned, drawing lines around themselves that, even unintentionally, keep others on the other side. I think Jesus was very aware of that dynamic, and why he calls us to a different standard of relating to one another and to God, that isn't dependent on ties of blood relationship or "natural affection." And -- well, I suppose that's easy for me to say as a single person, but if/when I find myself in a "for real" relationship, I'm sure it would be a "hard saying" and hard standard for me as well.
Indeed excellent!
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