Follow Jesus, Not Merely Ideology

“The faith passes, so to speak, through a distiller and becomes ideology. And ideology does not beckon [people]. In ideologies there is not Jesus: in his tenderness, his love, his meekness. And ideologies are rigid, always. Of every sign: rigid. And when a Christian becomes a disciple of the ideology, he has lost the faith: he is no longer a disciple of Jesus, he is a disciple of this attitude of thought… For this reason Jesus said to them: ‘You have taken away the key of knowledge.’ The knowledge of Jesus is transformed into an ideological and also moralistic knowledge, because these close the door with many requirements… The faith becomes ideology and ideology frightens, ideology chases away the people, distances, distances the people and distances the Church of the people. But it is a serious illness, this of ideological Christians.”   — Pope Francis

Moving Forward

Those of us who have gone “beyond evangelical” have moved on from the early 20th-century fundamentalist vs. modernist debate that our forefathers passionately fought . . . a fight that continues to rope many contemporary Christians into today, some 100 years later. This fight leaves people with a false choice between left or right. The alternative direction of “forward” doesn’t appear on the radar screen. Those who are “beyond evangelical” have moved on from that battle to discovering, exploring, and displaying the unsearchable riches of Jesus Christ with our brothers and sisters in Christ.

Crossroads

The body of Christ is at a crossroads right now. The two common alternatives are to move either to the left or the right. It’s our observation, however, that we are living in a unique time, when people are frozen as they look in either of those directions. When they look to the left, they decide that they cannot venture there. When they look to the right, they feel the same. Whether they realize it or not, people are looking for a fresh alternative—a third way. The crossroads today, we believe, is one of moving forward or backward (Jesus Manifesto, p. xiii).

- Leonard Sweet, Frank Viola

On her Blog, Aubry Smith writes: -

"Westerners want everything to conform to a rule, just as nature conforms to the laws of physics, and just as the rules we set for our children. We want them to apply to 100% of people, 100% of the time. A rule is a rule is a rule . . . 

"We want everything to apply to us, all the time. But the biblical writers and audiences weren’t as concerned with rules as we are; instead, relationships were the basis of reality for life. 

"This is why the Mosaic Covenant wasn’t over when Israel sinned and broke the Law – when the rule was broken. They did this millions of times before the Covenant was broken! Instead, the Covenant ended when the relationship was severed — and this took quite a long time."