“Our Daily Bread”     http://odb.org/

The Daily Devotions of Greg Laurie    http://www.harvest.org/devotional

 15 Bible verses about being more like Christ-  https://everydayservant.com/top-15-bible-verses-being-more-like-jesus/

Written by Gabrielle Guthrie for “See, there’s this thing called biology…~insanitybytes” @ https://insanitybytes2.wordpress.com/

Original post found @ https://insanitybytes2.wordpress.com/2024/07/31/on-being-christ-like/

On being Christ-like?

31WednesdayJul 2024

Posted by insanitybytes22 in Uncategorized

Tags blogging, faith, humor, insanitybytes22, life, opinion, social critics

“Our foremost call is not to be armchair social critics but to be Christlike.” -John Crowder.

I enjoy John Crowder, he’s a rather charismatic charismatic, refreshing and much-needed voice in the world sometimes. Just off the top of my head, I can think of about a dozen Christian social media influencers with all their bizarre and off-the-wall “hot takes” on every single issue who really need to take his words to heart.

That said, I kind of had to laugh at the irony. I am pretty sure that Christ was actually a social critic. The ultimate social critic. Unlike some of the corny films from long ago, He did not hover 3 feet off the ground floating around and just being virtuous and Christ-like. In fact, it actually took me decades to get that false image of Him out of my mind, that distant and Holy Jesus with the stony look on His face that was often portrayed in some of those old films. That is so not the Jesus we read about in the Bible, the One who actually knocked over some tables and called a few people, white-washed tombs.

Much of what Jesus said to us involved some form of social criticism. His parables actually begin with something akin to, A priest, a Levite, and a Samaritan were walking down the road one day….Spoiler alert here, but at the time there really was no such thing as a “good” Samaritan. Jesus often liked to flip our preconceived notions on their head.

You simply cannot separate Jesus from both his social justice activities and His social criticism activities. As inconvenient as it might feel politically, to be Christlike is to incorporate them both. And yes, also to infuse your whole being with mercy, compassion, healing, love, forgiveness, joy kindness, gentleness, self-control….

It’s a tall order and none of us are capable of pulling it off, not fully and certainly not alone.

Thomas Aquinas is credited for once having said, “justice without mercy is cruelty; mercy without justice is dissolution.” Some people in the Christian world are like, just preach the gospel, implying that we should just ignore everything else so as not to convolute the issue. We Christian people need to get used to holding opposing concepts in tension. In fact, we have to stop making them “opposing” in the first place! There is no conflict between justice and mercy, at least not in Christ.

To be a social critic actually is to be Christ-like, it is an aspect of who Christ is and how He walked in our world. True, human beings can make a mess out of anything and I’m sure we can find numerous examples of social critics who seem to display something decidedly not Christ-like. Just the same, Jesus was a social critic.

We should probably go back to the definition of a “critic.” It does not necessarily mean, “a judgy, disapproving person,” it can also mean, “one who judges the merits of literary, artistic, or musical works, especially one who does so professionally” or even, “a person who engages in the analysis, evaluation, or appreciation of truth and beauty.”

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P.S. (from bruce)  When there is no other place to turn…turn to God !!  If you’re not a “born again” Christian, is the Holy Spirit urging you to open this link ??  Here is the truth about how God’s grace is received to become a Christian in God’s eyes; through understanding and obeying the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ…   https://godsmanforever.com

To my brothers and sisters in Christ, please feel free to share this message of the cross with those in need…

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