The author warns against Christian list-making that sorts people into Good Guys and Bad Guys, citing Anne Lamott's remark about creating God in our own image. He reads Luke 6's Blesseds and Woes as people-group lists that reverse cultural approval, and says Jesus' one virtue is following him by loving God and others and caring for the poor and suffering. He closes by reversing Lamott: God is recreating us when we love those God loves.
Reviewed
Its text teaches none of the positions Doxa lists.
- Adopts· Anne Lamott
You can safely assume you have created God in your own image when God turns out to hate all the same people you do.
Christian theologians and apologists who build master lists of Good Guys and Bad Guys, and keep finding new enemies, are making God in their own image and risk becoming god-like in their judgments.
Harmless, wise 'two types of people' sayings are fine, but it is a different matter to claim to reveal God's view of such groups.
We should be careful about composing our own lists of the blessed and the woeful because we may change our minds about people we once condemned.
Election seasons encourage list-making of friends and enemies, and since they never end, such list-making is constant.
Luke's Blesseds and Woes are people-group lists, not virtue lists; Jesus shifts God's approval from what culture admires (the rich, full, laughing, popular and powerful) to the poor, hungry, weeping, and hated.
Jesus' blessing of the poor implies his followers should avoid pursuing wealth, luxury, partying, and popularity, but the virtue is not found in chasing poverty, hunger, weeping, or persecution.
Jesus' single summing virtue is to follow him: love God and others, care for the suffering and imprisoned, and take good news to the poor, free the oppressed, and proclaim Jubilee, which means economic justice.
Those who follow Jesus and love God and others are in the group God approves, while those who ignore God and the suffering end up with a diminished life; how we live eventually assigns us to one list or the other.
God is recreating you in his image when you love all the ones God loves.
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