Monday, July 31, 2006

Obedience –
After mostly writing the previous entry last night I listened to a talk from a non-LDS church on the way to work this morning. When I heard his subject was “obedience” I almost turned off my mp3 player. I had had enough of obedience in the last 24 hours. Here comes the to-do list and the guilt trip, I thought.

His take on obedience was quite interesting. He quoted from 1 John and pointed out that obedience can be summed up by 1) love God and 2) love your neighbor, and spent about thirty minutes on #2. He didn’t say a thing about personal morality, standards, or serving within the church as directed by the pastor. What he talked about was reaching out to others with whom we come in contact and simply loving them as Jesus did. He used the example of a man who spent three months serving the poor in India and then came home and began taking in the homeless, in his own house.

What a breath of fresh air. It was a blessing to finally hear some true Christianity.

Here’s a link to the sermon:

Obedience

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

What a great take on obedience! It's about love. Love the Lord and love your neighbor. The rest is details.
I like that a lot.

Perhaps liberal Christians can make an impact on their local faith communities to help others find the essential core of belief. What Karen Armstrong called practical compassion, iirc.