Quote:
Originally Posted by Evangelical
Decades ago people were still grasping the concept of a "personal relationship with God" as opposed to "doing things". That was an improvement over the works-based doctrines prevalent in Christianity. Lee, Nee and others, have further clarified this,..
|
A lot of popular theology phrased in Lee's way, plus some peculiar Leeology. I'm not going to respond point-by-point. That you want to call what ultimately happens "dispensing" is fine. But that was the thing that was declared to be the whole of God's economy.
And I say that is nonsense. It is entirely dismissive of all that God does in and through us.
While I do not entirely dismiss the "personal relationship with God" teachings, they are for the most part a creation of recent thinking. Maybe more like a new label on old theology. But it is so constantly wrapped in the activities of a fully-literate population doing things that only a very few could do much more than 200 or so years ago that I think the crux of what is called "personal relationship" is about doing a lot of personal reading. Reading that a large portion of the world couldn't (and somewhat still can't) do. Deep-dives into complex studies of the scripture.
Before that, the most that many had to consider for an entire week was what they could remember from their last sermon. And that might not even be entirely straight scripture. There was a reason for creeds. It was repetition of small amounts, not continuous wandering through endless analyses of scripture, that most people could even hope to deal with in their lives.
And we gripe about how poor those people and their ways were. Their poor reliance on doing what they learned from sermons and their liturgy.
So we throw it all off, dig deep into the scripture, and think it is all about high theology, yet don't even try to DO what is commanded. We argue about who we shouldn't count as being our neighbor so we don't have to love them. We belittle the works of the faithful as we are unfaithful because we have done the modern equivalent of pledging our parent's help to the temple so we don't have to support them.
All in the name of a personal relationship that has no practical application to today's living.