The Value System of God is significant to me
I grew up thinking up I understood Christianity pretty well (even though theology was somewhat complex). From childhood I had many years of excellent and diverse Christian teaching. However, I came to realize that many key concepts such as holiness and righteousness actually were not clear to me, not easy to remember, nor practical.
In fact, there were parts of Christian theology that remained almost mystical to me. This conflicted with my understanding of God as a rational being. Because of this also, I could not tell if I was successfully growing as a Christian. I was glad to be a Christian, but I found it difficult to articulate my Christianity to someone else.
Then my pastor developed the focus of value system as a tool to explain the theory, purpose and practice of Christianity. The value system of God is sacrificial love for the benefit of others. ••• God's values were most clearly expressed by Jesus at the cross.
Quoting Darren Twa
Seeing Christianity with this perspective removed the difficulties I had, and:
- It synchronizes perfectly with classical Christianity.
- It gives guidance for closer fellowship between the branches of Christianity.
- It makes the case for Christianity be much stronger.
- It makes Christianity much more logical, understandable and practical.
- It enables progress in the Christian life to be measurable instead of vague.
This approach makes sense because its practical nature validates against what we all experience in everyday life. It guides us to really good ways of living. And it turns semi-mystical theological stuff into real common-sense and useful stuff. •••
Mystical things can be seductive because to gain the mystical understanding is priviledged knowledge, putting you into an exclusive group. It gives you a sense of power and superiority. These things do not lead to better living - they lead to pride and to treating other people as inferior.
Mysteries are different than mystical things. For a long time it was a mystery how God would redeem his people as he had promised. This mystery was revealed in Jesus. Mysteries are simply that which we do not yet understand, and certainly life does have mysteries. There is much that we do not understand and yet God has revealed enough to us that we can have confidence in him for what we do not understand.
However, God is not a mystic and does not want us to be mystics either. Instead, God is loving, rational and practical and wants us to be like that too.
Content about this perspective is available in multiple ways here at this website you are reading. Please look into it. It represents the most significant teaching on Christianity that I have had in my adult life.