"We somehow move beyond precarious social or cultural 'visions' as we live in the presence of Jesus... Jesus comes through in spite of everything. The most profound critic of society and the 'masks', Christian and otherwise, is Jesus himself. In this respect he stands in the line of the sharp-tongued Hebrew prophets and brings it to completion... Religion has many critics, but Jesus very few. He is a self-authenticating reality beyond the myriad social cocoons. He belongs to humanity. He calls himself 'Son of Man'... That is the scalding truth of the matter. Suddenly from under the smothering panoply of human visions there emerges an outbreak of realism – a little breath of something that promises to interrupt and stand in judgement upon all our enculturated 'visions' and their possible 'alterations' of one into another. It is the Jesus of 'all nations', of 'all ethnic groups', of all kinds of people...of the last who are first and the first who are last in human orders. That is the light that gives light to everyone who is in the world."
- Dallas Willard, Personal Religion, Public Reality? Towards a Knowledge of Faith, HarperCollins, 2009
0 comments:
Post a Comment