"Nothing must interfere with proclaiming the Good News of eternal life and helping people to a way of life that would enable them to grow toward eternity - a way of peace and justice, with room for human dignity to be recognized and for love to blossom."
- "His Steadfast Love," (pg. 5) Reflections for Ragamuffins, by Brennan Manning (HarperSanFrancisco, 1998)
After twenty years of studying ethics, struggling with issues, trying to find the Good and to do the Right thing...to be a virtuous person...all of those struggles and suddenly it is clear to me in Brennan Manning's words. A simple, yet profound statement of the Christian life and ethic. We are first and foremost called to the proclamation of the Good News of eternal life in Jesus Christ. That is the Gospel...and we must always remember that is our task. But the Good News calls people in the direction of abundant life. ..the way of life that leads to God's New Kingdom that has come and is coming. And that life to which we are called and to which we call others is a life of individual peace and justice and one in which we work toward corporate peace and justice in a fallen world. Working for peace and justice grants human dignity and seeks the central virtue of the Kingdom of God...self giving, other affirming, community building love. In this all the ethical issues that are tossed about in conversation...family, government, economics, sexual issues of all sorts, biomedical issues, the life of virtue...all of these are derived from this simple statement. We must take the language of the peace and justice of the Gospel and apply it to all of these issues and that will require a Christological hermeneutic applied to the authority of scripture. Here is a simple statement of my theology and ethics...found in a simple statement, but profoundly life changing when understood by the heart.
"Christ is not a principle according to which the whole world must be formed. Christ does not proclaim a system of that which would be good today, here, and at all times. Christ does not teach an abstract ethic, that must be carried out, cost what it may. Christ was not essentially a teacher, a lawgiver, but a human being, a real human being like us. Accordingly, Christ does not want us to be first of all pupils, representatives, and advocates of a particular doctrine, but human beings, real human beings before God. Christ did not, like an ethicist, love s theory about the good; he loved real people. Christ was not interested, like a philosopher, in what is 'generally valid,' but in that which serves real concrete human beings. Christ was not concerned about whether 'the maxim of an action' could become 'a principle of universal law,' but whether my action now helps my neighbor to be a human being before God. God did not become an idea, a principle, a program, a universally valid belief, or a law; God became human....Formation according to the form of Christ includes, therefore, two things: that the form of Christ remains one and the same, not as a general idea but as the one who Christ uniquely is, the God who became human, was crucified, and is risen; and that precisely because of the form of Christ the form of the real human being is preserved, so that the real human being receives the form of Christ,"
- from Ethics, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, pgs. 98-99.
"Mere morality is not the end of life....The people who keep on asking if they can't lead a decent life without Christ, don't know what life is about; if they did they would know that a 'decent life' is mere machinery compared with the thing we men are really made for. Morality is indispensable: but the Divine Life, which gives itself to us and which calls us to be gods, intends for us something in which morality will be swallowed up. We are to be re-made. All the rabbit in us is to disappear - the worried, conscientious, ethical rabbit as well as the cowardly and sensual rabbit. We shall bleed and squeal as the handfuls of fur come out; and then, surprisingly, we shall find underneath it all a thing we have never yet imagined: a real Man, an ageless god, a son of God, strong, radiant, wise, beautiful, and drenched in joy." - C.S. Lewis
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