Marshall Rosenberg
The audio file runs about 37 minutes
As a both-and thinker who sometimes recognizes an either-or, I see that THowever, countless other conflicts yield to attitudes and tactics that differ from those that are appropriate when open warfare breaks out between light and darkness. Being clear about the difference between spiritual warfare and social, economic, political, and academic disputes puts the latter conflicts into perspective. From Marshall Rosenberg’s methods of nonviolent communication and Thomas Aquinas’s method of resolving disputed questions, we can learn much that helps us make peace in our world today.
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I like where this is going and the opportunity to assess where we are today regarding the duality of our new identity, purpose and focus as children of God. Distraction is the root cause of dissension in our minds that eventually leads to attitudes,opinions and eventual actions/consequences. If these attitudes and opinions are formed by taking a hard and fast position on worldly issues and especially those where we attempt to make someone wrong because they don’t agree our viewpoint we have gone from thinking to creating worldly drama.
If we profess to be His children we have but one purpose here and that is to love. That should make it easy but it hasn’t. Paul wrote to Timothy concerning the activity of the believer ” no one serving as a good soldier gets himself entangled in worldly affairs but instead tries to please his commanding officer (NIV) also Jesus wrote on the subject “my Kingdom is not of this world. If it were my servants would fight to prevent my arrest”.
We have a serious and separate mission and can ill afford to be sidetracked by the cares and concerns of the world controlled by the evil one. What do you think?
Dave, thanks for your thoughtful comment. I agree with your main thought that gospel messengers had better stay unentangled with, e.g., political controversies. At the same time, I believe that there is a place in a religious discourse for articulating the different levels and for making a brief moral statement about secondary matters. This is something that I try to do in pp. 174-78 in Living in Truth, Beauty, and Goodness. I would love to receive your critique of my effort there (and let me send you a copy if you don’t already have one). I believe that it is important today to add wisdom to faith as well as to add faith to wisdom. My experience thus far is that I seem to have avoided entanglement while being able to illuminate some of the rampant confusion that ensues when people fail to discriminate levels.
What do you think?
I like where this is going and the opportunity to assess where we are today regarding the duality of our new identity, purpose and focus as children of God. Distraction is the root cause of dissension in our minds that eventually leads to attitudes,opinions and eventual actions/consequences. If these attitudes and opinions are formed by taking a hard and fast position on worldly issues and especially those where we attempt to make someone wrong because they don’t agree our viewpoint we have gone from thinking to creating worldly drama.
If we profess to be His children we have but one purpose here and that is to love. That should make it easy but it hasn’t. Paul wrote to Timothy concerning the activity of the believer ” no one serving as a good soldier gets himself entangled in worldly affairs but instead tries to please his commanding officer (NIV) also Jesus wrote on the subject “my Kingdom is not of this world. If it were my servants would fight to prevent my arrest”.
We have a serious and separate mission and can ill afford to be sidetracked by the cares and concerns of the world controlled by the evil one. What do you think?
Dave, thanks for your thoughtful comment. I agree with your main thought that gospel messengers had better stay unentangled with, e.g., political controversies. At the same time, I believe that there is a place in a religious discourse for articulating the different levels and for making a brief moral statement about secondary matters. This is something that I try to do in pp. 174-78 in Living in Truth, Beauty, and Goodness. I would love to receive your critique of my effort there (and let me send you a copy if you don’t already have one). I believe that it is important today to add wisdom to faith as well as to add faith to wisdom. My experience thus far is that I seem to have avoided entanglement while being able to illuminate some of the rampant confusion that ensues when people fail to discriminate levels.
What do you think?