Jesus and After | From Readers #4

ETHICAL CHOICES

Reader: I also saw the ad for the book. I am preparing a message to be delivered to our congregation on Jesus's teachings and our principles. I found the description of the Alpha Christians very useful and will be quoting this book in my talk.

"Between stimulus and response is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom." Victor Frankl

Author: Traditional Christianity is under pressure in many ways. Some of them, as you note, are ethical: "our principles." I wish there had been space in Jesus and After to show the diversity that is evident in the Hebrew Scriptures, even just in the Psalms. There is commitment to the national concept of Israel, centered on the Temple sacrifices, and there are also moments which go beyond the sacrifices, the narrow idea of Israel, and reach out to the concept of a universal God, whose "chosen people" is everyone who keeps to the ways of God. Of the two Israels at the time of Jesus, it was mostly the followers of Jesus who took that second path.

That will have to be another book.

Best wishes meanwhile, for your message to the congregation. As your quote from Frankl reminds us, we do have choices, and everything depends on what use we make of them. That would be true, it seems to me, whatever the history of Christianity had been like. Historical research finds what it finds; it is not there to invent the past, or shape it to our modern preferences. It is just an accident, but I think it is an encouraging accident, that this ethical position turns out to be so close to what the early Jesus followers were following.

The Author

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