In the 1989 film Dead’s
Poet’s Society Robin Williams plays an eccentric teacher who continually
challenges his students to take the “road less traveled.” In this scene he tries to instill in
them the courage to avoid simply conforming to the patterns of those around
them but to give real thought to the cadence or the rhythm of their journey.
There are certainly some similarities to the Apostle Paul’s challenge in Romans
12 to live lives of intentional Christian worship.
But what does that rhythm, those Christian practices
actually look like?
If we are to
follow Jesus, what cadence, what steps does that mean we should walk in?
In the last blog post we quoted from Yoder’s Body
Politics that “the people of God are called to be today what the world is
called to be ultimately.” So this
quote begs the question what are we actually called to be and do. Yoder responds in the book with five
practices that should define the Christian church before the watching
world. Over the next few posts we
will unpack these practices that Yoder challenges us with looking at how we
might live them out today.
But before we begin with Yoder’s practices.
What do you think are the most important practices for
Christians?
What do you think it looks like to walk in step with Jesus
today?
Picture taken from (http://www.kylebostock.com/?p=387)
The most important practice for anyone is self reflection (followed by charity ... )
ReplyDeleteThe most valuable "things" we give and receive are empathy and compassion.....
You can not have empathy without understanding yourself in relation to the world ....
Once you are in the habit of self reflection, your understanding broadens and you are more careful with your words and actions ... because you understand how they affect others.
Kurt Vonnegut asked his son Mark what the meaning of life was .. and Mark replied "to help each other get through this thing ... whatever it is"
I couldn't agree more.. and just for the sake of argument I am going to assume Jesus agrees with me! :P
Self reflection is an essential rhythm.
ReplyDeleteOne of the challenges of some of things that we regularly think of and regard as
"the" Christian practices (praying, reading scripture, etc.) is that like anything there is a danger that they will be done in auto pilot. Self reflection, charity, and rhythms like these hopefully awaken us to not simply conform without thoughtful reflection.
As we unpack Yoder's rhythms in future posts hopefully they will help broaden us all.