Bruce Charlton is suspending blogging, thinking that he has nothing to say. A pity: he tends to get to the core of problems fairly quickly and generally in an orthodox manner. I’m quoting him here because he said something in that was mentioned this morning.
The text was the sermon on the mount: if a man strikes you on the right cheek, offer him your left, if he presses you into service for one mile, go two, and love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. That you must be perfect, as God is.
Which we cannot be. (The morning lectionary was written before church). Perfection is something we cannot get to.
The concept of repentance is a difficult one for even Christians to grasp, I think; and non-Christians seem to be baffled by it altogether.
Yet repentance is, if not at the core, then very near the centre of Christianity; because it is repentance which is required for salvation – and not virtuous behaviour nor sinlessness (which are regarded as impossibilities).
One way to think of repentance is as a kind of learning – and indeed, the set-up and purpose of human mortal life can be understood as being about learning.
Since humans are so weak and prone to err and sin; and the world is so full of temptations and suffering (as well as beauties and joys) – then it seems clear that we are not so much meant to behave perfectly as to learn from our experiences – and perhaps especially from our errors.
We learn by acknowledging our errors; indeed (thanks to the work of Jesus Christ) that is all that we need to do for salvation – but we do need to do it. We do need to acknowledge our errors.
The usual way of saying this, is that we need to repent our sins. Sin is another concept which modern people cannot grasp – and one way to think of sin is as errors… but errors that must be recognised as errors.
Son one discussed with me thinking… over the last couple of days. We agreed that thinking is hard, that getting solutions to new problems is hard, and that the first issue is knowing and acknowledging that there is a problem. Once you have a solution, changing things can take time. You may need to buidl the tools to fix the problem. You may have to develop new skills. You may have to stop doing things that you like.
It makes me think of the shed that Robyn and I have. It was full of timber and a mess: we removed the timber and stacked it neatly (taking up much less room) but it was still filthy, so we swept it once, then twice, then removed some junk shelves and swept it again. It is now sort of clean. I is not perfect. It is still a shed. It still needs some work, but it is now empty and dry and we can use it. Perhaps we can then improve it.
But if we don’t do something (and yes, the woodpile needs a tarp over it) then the problems we have won’t be fixed.
On ongoing changes: some sites are dormant and have remained so. I’ve removed the ones I don’t go to that often: some links remain because they remain useful to me. I am back at work tomorrow, which means that the scientific posts are likely to restart (it helps if you can read the full article).
However, the core of this blog remains the lectionary.