Perfect Love Casts Out Fear with Richard Beck (Slavery of Death Part 3)
In this episode Ray is joined once again by Dr. Richard Beck for a discussion of his “Slavery of Death” blog series which you can find at Richard’s blog, Experimental Theology. This is the third of a three part series summarizing the material covered in the “Slavery of Death” series. In this third part, Richard and Ray talk about how we might reconfigure our identities to overcome fear so as to move more fully into the practices of love. Make sure to listen to all three parts of this series and visit Experimental Theology where you will find the “Slavery of Death” series and many more valuable insights into our life in Christ. Thanks so much Richard for sharing your insight and taking the time to join us for this series!
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June 16th, 2012 at 4:34 pm
As usual a great email. I’m yet another step closer to admitting to myself that I am an atheist from what I get from your posts. Thank you. I’m serious. I’ve come to realize the limitations of orthodoxy (which I always felt) but didn’t have the guts to admit to myself. My view of God has less and less to do with traditional Christian views and to me, ironically, makes Jesus all the more relevant in what he says about breaking down the barriers of how we look at life, through the lens of Dr. Beck’s work.
I particularly enjoyed the topic of community and how to exist within one, as well as the notion of the “other”. I have always felt the tension of placing too much emphasis of having to be in a “christian” community and labeling people as the “other.” Christianity ultimately has to be nothing more than exclusivist like most other traditions. Why perpetuate the notion of the “other”? Is the more “enlightened” Christian really more inclusive? I don’t really think so. We all look at individuals and unwittingly, or deliberately label them with “otherness” based on their mental capacity, their criminal behavior, their political affiliation, their sexual preferences. Is being truly Christian, then, one who doesn’t see any of that? If that really is the case, as we say Jesus presupposes, then what basis, really, is there for the value judgements of holiness, rigtheousness, and sin? These terms have no real intrinsic meaning and are only barriers that we set up, perhaps as another way to hold off the slavery of death.
Given the atonement theory supported by Dr. Beck, what value does the crucifixion have? Did it really change anything? We all live on the other side of Newton, Copernicus, Galileo, Darwin, Freud, and Einstein, so understand how people saw the world before is academic. In fact, we are in the midst of yet another paradigm shift with the gradual influence of the quantum physics and how many see consciousness itself reflecting this shift. How people will see the world in another century is unimaginable as it was pre-Galileo.
Has the worldview really changed on the other side of the Crucifixion? We’ve been wrestling with that for 2000 years. God is the one who’s changed. We continually recreate Him, don’t we? I hope that this comment sparks some interesting comments and as usual, keep up the good work guys.
June 21st, 2012 at 10:26 am
Hi Matteo – liked your comment. A comment I can return but “interesting” is asking a bit much from me.
A lot of God-influenced worldview was based around the idea that God is an angry old fart. A typical Protestant view for example, was that sin totally insulted God’s honor and it was beneath His dignity to even interact with sinners, so Jesus allowed Father to take out His frustrations on Him (Jesus) instead of us. The overall result was that Father ended up with a set of “Jesus glasses”. These magical glasses allow Him to see Jesus whenever He is looking directly at us. As long as He is wearing “the glasses” we are safe – it’s called relationship. However, you don’t want to see what happens if He takes them off. This kind of view seems consistent (with some modifications) to that associated with other Greek deities like Zeus etc. and even from a lot sections in the OT.
Jesus showed a Father that was quite different from this, and some of the early NT dudes got this (i.e. Paul – 1 Cor 13; John – 1 John 4:8 etc). Not long after however (sometime in the 2nd century AD), much of the “church” began to revert back to the angry God view. This angry God idea affects your worldview and how you view/treat others that are not on your team.
So maybe God hasn’t changed from what Jesus revealed, but neither has the church changed from its angry deity stance (except for an initial brief period). That may explain in part why there doesn’t seem to be a lot of progress since the crucifixion. Fortunately, there have been some throughout the ages that “got the Father that Jesus revealed” and who have reflected this image. Unfortunately however, the big organization didn’t really promote Jesus’s revelation of the Father but reverted back to the old classical worldview and the result has been slow progress.
Just my opinion.