Ignorance is blamed for all great injustices today. If we knew more about poverty we would be moved to help. If we truly understood hunger we would feed the poor. If we truly understood racism we would fight against it. The ‘problem’ is that we just don’t know enough.
What should we say about this?
The more major issue though is sin. Christian’s actions are meant to flow out of their faith. When we give Christians emotional reasons to act without first grounding these actions in Christ we set them up to disobey the bible. The bible says all actions must flow from faith. We must look though Christ to deal with sin in any pleasing way for God. It helps to be informed of need so that our efforts may be the most fruitful, but it is not the root of the issue. The root is that if our faith was deep enough we would count all things as rubbish compared to Christ and his kingdom. When all things in the world become rubbish to us then we will be prepared to fight with all our hearts for God. Education to eliminate ignorance might produce ‘works,’ but those works will be despicable to God if they come from anywhere else than our satisfaction in what his son has done for us. For this reason elimination of ignorance is a very distant secondary issue compared to the elimination of sin.
2 comments:
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Danny, I feel that elimination of ignorance is one way in which we can start to combat our sin. Ignorance and sin are not seperate problems like you seem to be making them. Ignorance flows from our sinful nature, a product of our sin perhaps thus being a less of a distant secondary issue than you think. I disagree that all things in the world should become rubbish to us. To say that everything else is rubbish would be inappropriate because the world is a product of God's great workmanship. You well know that God created the world, "the material", like you've talked about previously. I understand that you are comparing the most important relationship with the things of this world, which truely nothing should be greater. But just because something might be the greatest, it's greatness does not have to down play the importance, reality, or severity of life's experiences. In fact if we get too caught up in things that are above, we will become less like Jesus, who came to earth to experience life, teach the ignorant, and walk amongst us. He was fully God and FULLY HUMAN. Christianity to me, is supposed to be lived out day to day in our lives experiences, it is not just something to be experienced through the study of theology. I agree that studying theology is great, but only if we apply what we've learned to help the world become less ignorant. The world has it's hardships and joys and unless we live in the world, experiencing them with eachother, baring eachother's burdens, we will miss the purpose of Christianity entirely.I agree that not all actions flow from faith, as a result of our sinful nature, but having relationships with Christ does not automatically prepare us to produce works either. Ignorance is the problem or at least part of the problem because with out knowledge of life's hardships, we can not begin to understand what our relationship with Christ is worth. In other words, our relationships with Christ are useless if we become ignorant of the world around us.
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