Thursday, January 29, 2009

Wandering Wednesday

I meant to write this last night but ended up being too tired/lazy. Anyway...

Last night I went to my community group from church. Like any good Acts 29 church plant, we were discussing original sin and the fall of man. We came to a question about Genesis 3:16b, "Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you." I shared my two cents about the verse and got the usual blank stares I get when I actually speak my mind. Is it possible that this verse is cursing both the woman and the man? Is it foreshadowing the over-reaching of power on both sides of the table? Or am I just a feminist heretic?

Are thoughts sins or is the thought put into action the sin? If an erroneous thought pops into my head and I immediately dismiss it, have I still sinned? I'm not too worried about this one, but it was a huge topic of debate last night.

"If salvation is to affect our lives, it can do so only by affecting our bodies. If we are to participate in the reign of God, it can only be by our actions. And our actions are physical - we live only in the processes of our bodies. To withhold our bodies from religion is to exclude religion from our lives. Our life is a bodily life, even though that life is one that can be fulfilled solely in union with God.
Spirituality in human beings is not an extra or 'superior' mode of existence. It's not a hidden stream of separate reality, a separate life running parallel to our bodily existence. It does not consist of special 'inward' acts even though it has an inner aspect. It is, rather, a relationship of our embodied selves to God that has the natural and irrepressible effect of making us alive to the Kingdom of God - here and now in the material world"
- Dallas Willard, "The Spirit of the Disciplines"

Thanks for sticking through to the end :)

1 comment:

Chris said...

Wow. I can see how those topics consumed an entire evening. I'd love to respond but don't think this text box leaves me enough room :)