The Call :: Essays Papers

The CallTouching delivererJesus initial call is not to believe, but to come. The disciples have no answers when they leave their families and their occupations, merely a person and a promise. Faith, therefore, is not professing a certain checklist of dogma or signing a statement (as schools like Wheaton require for entrance). As pack May put so eloquently in his fall chapel talk, the person of faith, as demonstrated by the woman with hemorrhaging in Mark 525-34 d ars to touch Christ amidst the masses swirling around him. It was in the doing that she encounters Jesus, and he responds Your faith has made you well. Therefore, I agree with Stassen and Gushee, who challenge,There is not authentic Christianity, discipleship or Christian ethical motive apart from doing the deeds he taught his followers to do (S&G 486). Faith does not require an action it is an action. So how do we touch a Christ who is no longer physically present with us, especially when clouds of opinion about him swir l around us? As the disciples were asked to trust the promise that Jesus would act as their identities as fishers of men, we must begin our journey of discipleship by examining what promises we have been given as immortals people. The Word of GodCertainly, most Christians would agree that these are most readily found in the news. But as I have been challenged more recently, and as Stassen and Gushee articulate, It is not possible in principle to repose limits on where Gods truth might be discovered, and thus to place some ultimate outer boundary on the sources of authority for Christian ethics (S&G 90). While I think Stassen and Gushee make some bold claims about the Bible being the sun around which all opposite sources of authority are to orbit (isnt Jesus the Son around which all authorities are brought into proper order (Philippians 2.5-11)?), they do emphasize the proportion of seeing Gods Word as neither an ancient, irrelevant relic nor an answer-book for all present-day circumstances. To practice Christian ethics, then, Christianity must understand the Bible as only one means of revelation, and a means that requires constant scrutiny and guidance to understand if were really hearing the fullness of Gods Word within its complex pages. Thus, Christians can understand that the promises of God are neither restricted to the Bible (where would the illiterate of the world be?