Thursday, June 25, 2009

a hermeneutic of love

I have yet to read Alan Jacobs, book, A Theology Of Reading: The Hermeneutics Of Love, and though it looks challenging in the language used, I look forward to doing so.

John in one of his letters puts truth and love together. In Jesus they go together, inseparable. Not that anyone has either down perfectly. Only Jesus himself did.

If we choose to put the worst case construction on someone, their writing, their lives, then we violate this truth in Jesus. If we try to find common ground with them, and how they are in the boundary lines of Christian orthodoxy, as well as to find good from them, then we do well. But if we jump on a statement they said, pulling it out of context, or refer to what someone else said about what they say, and we don't take the time and pains to do as I just said, then we do err.

Christians often are quite guilty in this. Truth and love are wedded together, forever, in Jesus. We must not let go of either. And that means we will consider what others are saying with love. And judge their words by God's revealed truth in Scripture, and in Jesus.

What might you like to add?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

sounds right.

Ted M. Gossard said...

nAncY,
Thanks.