Jesus answered, "I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.
Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to make sure that all of his servants were spreading correct information about him. As he began his task of interviewing the population, a man who had been spreading rumors that the king was a heartless and uncaring dictator was brought to him. The king ordered that all the man had be taken from him and he be put in prison for spreading untruths about the King.
The Servant fell on his knees before the king. "Be patient with me", he begged, "and I promise I will stop spreading false rumors about you." The servant's master took pity on him, canceled his sentence and let him go.
But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who was telling the people that the king had six toes on his left foot. He grabbed him and began to choke him, "Stop spreading lies about the king!" he demanded.
His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, "Be patient with me and I promise I will stop spreading false rumors about the king!"
But he refused. Instead, he went and had the man kicked out of the village and told the people to shun him. When the other servants saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed and went and told their master everything that had happened.
Then the master called the servant in. "You wicked servant," he said, "I had mercy on you because you begged me to. Shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?" In anger his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured each day until he had made amends to every servant in the kingdom he had wronged.
This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive a brother or sister from your heart.
Mt. 18:21-35 (Revised)
One of the most thought provoking and relieving quotes that I have heard in my life is that "God loves (and saves) people with Bad theology". This is a very good thing considering that all of us are probably wrong in some aspect of our beliefs about God. By God's very nature She is transcendent and not able to ever be fully defined by a human brain. I do believe, however, that there is the possibility for us to say "true" statements about Him but with the humility and knowledge that we probably don't fathom the entire picture.
ReplyDeleteI think many people follow Mt. 18:15-20's teaching with regard to false doctrine (the original language actually referring to sinning against an individual) and fail to apply the same interpretation to the very next passage (in this post) regarding forgiveness.
The author of "Velvet Elvis" writes that he prefers to compare faith to a trampolin rather than to a brick wall - when you take one brick out of the wall - i.e. you hold one wrong belief - the whole wall falls down; to jump on a trampolin you need a couple of strong springs at the edges - but if one breaks, the others still hold the trampolin. And jumping is more fun than bricks :-)
ReplyDeleteI don't know...I had a lot of fun playing with bricks growing up. We used to dress them up or pretend they were telephones. Good ol' bricks. :D
ReplyDelete:-D
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