Human beings like to break the world up into binary categories of right and wrong, good and evil, moral and immoral. It seems that this is a mode of thinking that has been adopted from the beginning, yet not what is intended for us. Essentially, it is a way of passing our own judgments on the world on what we see is good, and what we see as bad. But where do we get these ideas from? And who says?
When Jesus turned up, he gave a lot of his air time to pulling apart ideas that pulled some people into a class of "righteous" and some into the "unrighteous" category. He chastised the religious pharisees yet raised the poor and downtrodden, the undesirables, the unclean. It was radical equality in the face of authoritarian religion.
In this undoubtedly epic talk by Mark Strom, he unpacks these ideas and decontructs this thinking through the story of scripture. I listened to this 3 or 4 times in the middle of last year and I am still thinking about it. It is that revolutionary and mind crunching. What does living without law actually mean? What is grace? What does it mean to be a human in relationship with God?
This really is a challenge, because it is about 3 hours long. But if you're up for it, give it a download and listened to it on the way to work a few times. It will stretch you and confuse you and hopefully push you into understanding how trapped we are in our thinking.
Are ya keen?
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