Tuesday 1 June 2010

Continuity In Daily Living

This is another must buy, must read book by Eugene Peterson.

From p. 4
God does not compartmentalize our lives into religious and secular. Why do we? I want to insist on a continuity of language between the words we use in Bible studies and the words we use when we're out fishing for rainbow trout. I want to cultivate a sense of continuity between the prayers we offer to God and the conversations we have with the people we speak to and who speak to us. I want to nurture an awareness of the sanctity of words, the holy gift of language, regardless of whether it is directed vertically or horizontally. Just as Jesus did.

Yes, we should not have a special speech for God-talk and a different, 'ordinary' form of speaking for non-God-talk. Who are we dishonouring if we use words and language like this? So no more omnipotent, or hypostatic, or whatever the phrase we love to use that is our in language.
Yes, we should not only be careful about our words and mean what we say when we talk to or about God. Integrity of language is vital in all our use of language. We honour those we speak with when we speak with integrity.

Peterson is writing about words and language, but once you catch the idea it doesn't stop. There is no religious secular divide. God loves us and cares for all our lives. God is interested in how we drive, what we do in our bedrooms, what we eat, how we talk, what we look at ... there is no part of our life that is beyond the love and care of our God.

This is the kind of Christian living that will impact the world with the good news of Jesus in ways that we presently don't recognise as evangelism, but which are profoundly a sharing of the good news of Jesus, who is God with us.

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