I’m having a debate with somneone who insists that obedience is not valid unless accomanied by “right belief”; I am objecting that the only “right belief” there is results in obedience, therefore, the OBEDIENT subject is of the proper “right belief”. They are trying to insist that works that DO the Will of God are not “of the Kingdom” if the “beliver” or “doer of the work” does not recognize that they are following Scripture.
The same argument about hsitoricity. I insist that one does not have to assume that a Biblical story is historical to actually “believe” and “obey”. I insist that “belief” is what I have been taught that belief meant to the pre-scientific/modernist mind: “By Life” or “What you live by”. One can say “I believe in Jesus” but apart from obedience, that is NOT belief, but mere “intellectual consent to allowing others to call you a “believer”.
Historicity , for me, is not the source motivation, but the end result. If a Biblical value expressed in a story is not LIVED, then it is NOT believed. This is more accurate and more imprtant than to say if I don’t believe the story was a historical, objective event, then I don’t “believe”. Hogwash. This is to misunderstand the concept of myth and narrative. A “myth” is not a myth because it is historically true. A Myth is a myth because it has MEANING and connects to something in the human experience and the influence of one who is THE OTHER; it REVEALS something about that “meeting”, and its encouragement of how that story should affect OUR OWN HISTORY. Historicity should be in the result of our response; not in the dependence upon it being a historical event.
Jesus’ ressurrection , for me, is Historical. It is also mythological becuase it puts us into divine dialogue and confrontation. But the thing about myth, even if Jesus’ resurrection were could be proven ahistorical, I would emerge from that knowledge still believing. It would bother me, having believed that all my life. But what I have known of that experience since my “accepting it” has shown me that what the Resurrection MEANS is still very much REAL. If I lose that, I lose it all. If I maintain the “historicity” and disengage from the resulting “belief/action/lifestyle”, I’ve been fooling myself.
The debate sounds familiar, to an extend. I all too often find that even though in conversations with a brother/sister in Christ we both believe the same things, that we still disagree on certain issues because of our epistemology, and what it ends up coming down to is that they just want you to agree with them. Living in the Body is not about agreeing with each other. It’s about being obedient to God, which can only be interpreted through a faithful community of believers in this story.
For example, I was in a discussion with a friend of mine about abortion. We both believe abortion and war are wrong. However, my friend is a pretty conservative Roman Catholic, so therefore, abortion to him is more important than just about anything else, that he’s even willing to think that George Bush is “okay” because he’s “against” abortion, even though in reality, abortion rates have now gone up under the Bush regime, when they were steadily declining under Clinton (thanks to Glenn Stassen for pointing that fact out, by the way). He spent so much of his time trying to pretend that abortion was the absolute only issue that matters that in defending Bush, he was compromising his stance on war and actually sounded exactly like all believers in “just war theory” that I know. It was pretty sad, actually.
Thing is, I agree with him that abortion is wrong! So why were we even having a debate? Because we were talking about political candidates, and in the end, he couldn’t rest until I agreed with him: which means I have to vote for Bush, which is utter nonsense. That’s what agreeing with him really meant.
Is it really all that important that I had to agree with his “cause”? No, not at all, and that is the point my friend completely missed. Instead of bickering over the “fundamentals” of the issue (*gag*), you’d think we could come to an agreement that we should both be working together to decrease the amount of abortions. Writing laws to end abortion doesn’t fix anything, as has been shown in countries where abortion is illegal — they have the highest abortion rates in the world.
On the contrary, we must be changing/inspiring the hearts of those who consider abortion. That’s the only real way. I also think it’s an obedient way.
Just think: what if Roe v. Wade gets overturned? While I obviously don’t think abortion is right, just think what would happen? All these religious theocrats would suddenly have a false smug feeling for a few years, pretending that they’ve actually accomplished something. Until a few years later, all hell would break loose (assuming that somehow the right-wing media didn’t shout out the facts again), when it would be discovered that abortion rates have skyrocketed and a suddenly a lot of women are dying from back-alley abortions.
“But we changed the law! It was written down on paper as the law!”
Thing is, they spent no real time making sure it was written on their hearts.