JDG wrote:
At 07:18 AM 6/4/2004 -0700 Nick Arnett wrote in response to Archbishop Chaput of Denver:
I don't hear grace in these words. Confession doesn't change God, it changes me, but what I hear in the words above are that God demands repentance as a condition of forgiveness... which flies in the face of agape, unconditional love.
There is no contradiction here. Parents, for example, may unconditionally
love their children *and* choose to punish them anyways for their
transgressions.
I wasn't trying to argue that there's a contradiction between love and creating consequences for misbehavior. I was saying that the Bible says to me that God doesn't put *any* conditions on grace, including repentance.
Moreover, it is difficult to imagine how one can be forgiven for those things one is not sorry for.
Indeed, it is difficult for me, too. Perhaps impossible, but I'm not at all surprised that God does things that are impossible for me. When I expect God to act the way I do, God seems crazy.
Christ chose to spend his time with people whose imperfections were no secret, saving his harshest criticisms for the self-righteous ones.
Those people with imperfections all ask for forgiveness - and indeed, Christ tells them "go and sin no more."
You're alluding to John 8, I believe, the woman caught in adultery. I don't see anywhere in that story where she asks forgiveness or expresses repentance. Jesus doesn't ask her anything except "Where are your accusers now?" after he sends them away by challenging their self-righteousness. He doesn't ask if she is sorry, he doesn't ask if she'll go back to her affair. Nothing like that.
Consider the parable of the prodigal son. The father is ready to accept him back without knowing anything about his attitude. He runs to his son when the son is still a dot on the horizon. There's no possibility that he knows if his son is repentant at that point. And when the older brother becomes self-righteously resentful about the party for the prodigal, the father reaches out to him anyway, without demanding sorrow or any other change of attitude.
Or consider the landowner who paid his workers for a full day, no matter how long they had worked. It doesn't deal with repentance directly, but it says that God isn't keeping score; God is erasing scores.
I read and heard these stories for years without realizing that my little brain was reading things between the lines that just aren't there. The big one is that God doesn't demand that people repent. Certainly my experience of grace is that it transforms me; repentance is an outcome of forgiveness, not a prerequisite.
More simply, shame holds us down; take away the voices of shame (the guys who were pointing fingers and ready to throw rocks at the adulteress) and then we're free to do better. That's what "go and sin no more" means to me, because it puts the statement back in the context of freedom. I used to imagine that the Bible is telling me that God will free me from sin, but these days I think it's saying that it frees me from being a slave to sin, which is quite a different thing.
Denying anyone Communion is a very grave matter. It should be
reserved for extraordinary cases of public scandal.
Goodness, this puts into a different perspective all the times I've gone to a Catholic mass and not been allowed communion. Apparently I am an extraordinary public scandal, I guess because I'm not Catholic.
Cheap shot.
This I can admit.
In the Catholic Church, Communion is presented with the affirmation "The
Body and Blood of Christ", to which the communicant responds "Amen." Why
would you wish to say "Amen" to a statement which you do not believe to be
true?
Not an issue for me, as I agree with the statement. I even say pretty much the same thing when I serve communion. And most Sundays, along with the other Lutherans, I say that I believe in one catholic church.
Nick
-- Nick Arnett Director, Business Intelligence Services LiveWorld Inc. Phone/fax: (408) 551-0427 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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