So lately I've been realizing what a necessity practical living examples are in developing our theology. I'm thinking specifically of spiritual principles. Be holy. Do good deeds. Handle the word of God correctly.
But it's amazing how we can hear and say the same principles and yet have totally different applications.
What does holiness mean when interacting with the opposite sex?
Who are the poor and needy that I should be doing good deeds toward?
What does it look like to be single and content? What ought it to feel like? (What ought it to look and feel like to be in the middle miserable marriage while struggling to honor God?)
What does it mean to live with a forgiving attitude toward the idiot who slashed my tires?
The beauty of real examples is that they enable me to not only apply theology, but to exposes how I tend to twist theological principles to justify evil. And examples tend to expose my desires of what I want verses what God wants.
Of course, these strengths are also why I hate examples. I like being able to hide. Sometimes honesty seems like too high of a price.
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2 comments:
I agree.
Hi, it's Ruth. Been reading your thoughts since receiving your email telling me you'd be sharing them with the public in a rather anonymous way.
It always irks me a little when I know that the answer to the question "How do I react to this situation in a biblical way?" seems so difficult to find in the Bible.
If you care to read about things like knitting and remodeling, you can visit my blog. What can I say, I've been inspire by you...er...well, maybe you and some others in blog-land.
Well, I can realte as well, as though it is mildly unfortunate. My last blog describes it in vague detail. Basically I was doing something good for one friend, but ended up completly making a fool of myself to one of their "friends" who was being a complete jerk. Long story.
But in my "altercation" with him I perhaps was a little antagonizing and thus caused sin there, while the main issue that I delved into with my two friends, I was able to be a vessel for God to speak to both of them... You know those times where you start quoting verses you didn't know that you knew.... One of those kind of moments...
So yeah, I screwed that one up. He was doing wrong, so I did wrong back, thinking the situation justified it. For an illustration, I took care of the guy who was beat and left for dead in the good Samaratin, but I stalked and killed the robbers as well... One good, the other bad.
I'd like to ad something to the Romans verse "the things I don't want to do I do and the things I want to do I do not do..." My addition: and the good things I start I screw up :-)
But I handled my wrong doing the best I could and moved on. Such is the way of it...
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