it's a cool story about how we need to forgive. i mean, the world works better when we forgive people. and i get that God has forgiven us more than someone can wrong us. all is good until the last verse of the chapter.
vs35 My heavenly Father will also do the same to you, if each of you does not forgive his brother from your heart.
seriously?
maybe he is, cause it's not the first time he's said it. hmmm.
4 comments:
Anonymous
said...
for the sake of understanding (and perhaps slight contentiousness):
so, is Jesus saying that he disowns us until we forgive someone? Like, if I get into a fight with someone, and don't forgive them, and then on the way home I get into a car wreck and die, well that stinks because God has already turned me over the the "jailers" (whoever that might be) and now I am no longer his? That seems like it runs against what I have learned about Christianity. Also, a question about this "kingdom of heaven" thing-- when and where did Jesus think the kingdom of heaven was? he describes it as if it is here and now-- "the kingdom of heaven is like..." and when he's telling the parable of the unmerciful servant, it sounds like we are already in the kingdom of heaven, as if all of us are servants, and when we become like the unmerciful servant, we get sent out of it. but when he's talking about the greatest in the kingdom of heaven, he says "...you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." and on that note, what does Jesus mean by becoming a little child? I mean, we could guess, but there are tons of ways to become like a little child that may or may not be what Jesus means, and I'm somehow missing exactly where Jesus says what he means by that. If we can't pin that down, well, we can't enter the kingdom of heaven. I'm having a hard time reading all these chapters and finding answers and feeling good about all of this, it makes me feel unsettled and uncomfortable more than anything else.
i don't know where our blogger friend is, but i can try to help, nikki~~ i think "the Kingdom of Heaven" usually refers to Jesus's reign on the earth after his resurrection/the church/salvation, if you see the connection between those things. I'm pretty sure that once you've entered the Kingdom of Heaven, you can't get thrown out, even if you die with a sin that's unrepented. Because if you're turned over to the 'jailers' to be "tortured until you've paid back everything you owe", that kind of sounds like purgatory but the idea behind sin is that you can't EVER pay back everything you owe, so it's basically eternal torture aka hell. So this guy in the parable, God offered him the free gift of salvation the way he offers it to everyone, but the man never 'entered the kingdom' or else he would have reflected God's forgiveness. But remember, the act of forgiveness (or any other good work) is not what gets you in to heaven, but your acceptance of God. So I guess this guy was never saved, or he would have been transformed by God's love and tried to mimic it. i think.
as for being like a little child, it's similar to being a sheep; you humble yourself and trust and follow Him even though you don't fully understand what's going on. (not easy to do! but it's my goal). :)
I mean, I know all that, and i got it. I'm just saying, picking up the bible and reading like i'm just learning about who Jesus is/what this whole being a christian thing means, can we extrapolate all that? we read the bible but we also read meaning into it, we interpret how we are taught to interpret. I don't think answers are that simple. Like, I for sure haven't read all the bible, and when I do read it I miss a lot of things, but I've never encountered a solid, concrete definition of "being like a sheep"-- and so until I find it, or someone points the scriptural reference out to me, I have really no idea what that means. So how can I know? My preacher tells me, thats how. Regardless of whether or not this would be impossible, I think it would be amazing to know God and know the Bible without all the cultural, americanized, for lack of a better term, "new age christian" references we put into it, just really know Him/it (God/the bible) for what He/it is. And if this is our purpose for going through the gospels this time around, I think we should be critical of what we pull out of the stories that is not necessarily all there-- stuff that maybe sounds a little too "christian-y". Not that it's all bad or wrong, just that we should be aware and critical. That's all I'm saying.
ah, i see what you mean. that's good, question everything-- you're more of a critical thinker than i am :) i guess the kingdom of heaven isn't defined anywhere that i can think of, so if you come up with an alternate definition then i'm sure that's some cool thinking you've put into it and i'd like to hear it. sometimes i wonder, how much of the future (his own and the world's) did jesus know while he was on earth, and how much was he just living and preaching from day to day based on what God gave him?
but with the whole sheep thing, when i wrote that i was thinking of the 23rd psalm. and there's the whole sheep and the goats metaphor, which maybe applies. john 10. hmm ok so i looked up a bunch of passages and i guess mostly they're talking about God being our shepherd, not what it means to be a sheep// we're obviously sheep, but what do you think that means?
4 comments:
for the sake of understanding (and perhaps slight contentiousness):
so, is Jesus saying that he disowns us until we forgive someone? Like, if I get into a fight with someone, and don't forgive them, and then on the way home I get into a car wreck and die, well that stinks because God has already turned me over the the "jailers" (whoever that might be) and now I am no longer his? That seems like it runs against what I have learned about Christianity. Also, a question about this "kingdom of heaven" thing-- when and where did Jesus think the kingdom of heaven was? he describes it as if it is here and now-- "the kingdom of heaven is like..." and when he's telling the parable of the unmerciful servant, it sounds like we are already in the kingdom of heaven, as if all of us are servants, and when we become like the unmerciful servant, we get sent out of it. but when he's talking about the greatest in the kingdom of heaven, he says "...you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." and on that note, what does Jesus mean by becoming a little child? I mean, we could guess, but there are tons of ways to become like a little child that may or may not be what Jesus means, and I'm somehow missing exactly where Jesus says what he means by that. If we can't pin that down, well, we can't enter the kingdom of heaven. I'm having a hard time reading all these chapters and finding answers and feeling good about all of this, it makes me feel unsettled and uncomfortable more than anything else.
i don't know where our blogger friend is, but i can try to help, nikki~~
i think "the Kingdom of Heaven" usually refers to Jesus's reign on the earth after his resurrection/the church/salvation, if you see the connection between those things.
I'm pretty sure that once you've entered the Kingdom of Heaven, you can't get thrown out, even if you die with a sin that's unrepented. Because if you're turned over to the 'jailers' to be "tortured until you've paid back everything you owe", that kind of sounds like purgatory but the idea behind sin is that you can't EVER pay back everything you owe, so it's basically eternal torture aka hell.
So this guy in the parable, God offered him the free gift of salvation the way he offers it to everyone, but the man never 'entered the kingdom' or else he would have reflected God's forgiveness. But remember, the act of forgiveness (or any other good work) is not what gets you in to heaven, but your acceptance of God. So I guess this guy was never saved, or he would have been transformed by God's love and tried to mimic it.
i think.
as for being like a little child, it's similar to being a sheep; you humble yourself and trust and follow Him even though you don't fully understand what's going on. (not easy to do! but it's my goal). :)
I mean, I know all that, and i got it. I'm just saying, picking up the bible and reading like i'm just learning about who Jesus is/what this whole being a christian thing means, can we extrapolate all that? we read the bible but we also read meaning into it, we interpret how we are taught to interpret. I don't think answers are that simple. Like, I for sure haven't read all the bible, and when I do read it I miss a lot of things, but I've never encountered a solid, concrete definition of "being like a sheep"-- and so until I find it, or someone points the scriptural reference out to me, I have really no idea what that means. So how can I know? My preacher tells me, thats how. Regardless of whether or not this would be impossible, I think it would be amazing to know God and know the Bible without all the cultural, americanized, for lack of a better term, "new age christian" references we put into it, just really know Him/it (God/the bible) for what He/it is. And if this is our purpose for going through the gospels this time around, I think we should be critical of what we pull out of the stories that is not necessarily all there-- stuff that maybe sounds a little too "christian-y". Not that it's all bad or wrong, just that we should be aware and critical. That's all I'm saying.
ah, i see what you mean. that's good, question everything-- you're more of a critical thinker than i am :) i guess the kingdom of heaven isn't defined anywhere that i can think of, so if you come up with an alternate definition then i'm sure that's some cool thinking you've put into it and i'd like to hear it.
sometimes i wonder, how much of the future (his own and the world's) did jesus know while he was on earth, and how much was he just living and preaching from day to day based on what God gave him?
but with the whole sheep thing, when i wrote that i was thinking of the 23rd psalm. and there's the whole sheep and the goats metaphor, which maybe applies. john 10.
hmm ok so i looked up a bunch of passages and i guess mostly they're talking about God being our shepherd, not what it means to be a sheep// we're obviously sheep, but what do you think that means?
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