Rules or Relationship?

Ultimately the Bible is not a book of rules. There most certainly are rules in the Bible, but their purpose is not to show us how good we are... because of course, none of us is good enough to be okay with God; only Jesus can fix our relationship with God. Rather, the instructions and commands and rules in the Bible, especially ones like this one in Hebrews, describe how life works best. For example...

*Raises eyebrow*. I always thought there were rules in relationships. In fact, the only relationships where there are not are the relationships of imaginative projections of our fantasies. Alas, the Bible is a testament to humanity and Israel's unfaithfulness to the commands and callings of God with severe warnings to the Church. The rules serve many purposes, not least of which is to show us how to be faithful in our relationship. So while rules w/out relationship might get us nowhere, relationship w/out rules gets us a bag on the doorstep and a note saying "Have a good life".

I'm serious about that imaginative projection. Relationships take place in real world interaction; otherwise it's all in one's mind, despite what one may believe.

It's not like I'm personally comfortable with rules. In fact it's precisely my uncomfortableness which accentuates my awareness of their existence. It's my own violation of implicit ones which creates the need for "talks" where explicit ones are laid out.

In her post Rules or Relationship on the issue of Sabbatarianism, my friend Renea wrote that "we lose ourselves, largely because we lose sight of God, we forget to be with him."

The chief historical temptation has been to forget God. It is in forgetting God that we become unfaithful. The question is not though of us losing ourselves but of us "mirroring" the surrounding culture. Israel was judged for its lack of distinctiveness as the people of God by appropriating the practices of its anti-shalom neighbors.

We've found ourselves in a bizarre time, when being religious is looked down upon while being somehow nebulously "spiritual" is good and respected. If the Church has been called though to be a holy people, then we are called to participate in the life of that Church. This means being religious.

Today we find ourselves desperately struggling with the consequential inconveniences this might place upon us. Framing the issue in a legalistic/antinomian context allows some to provide a solution for avoiding these tendencies. My concern is that this is a miscatagorization of the problem. The problem is the question itself needs repentance of. What working out our faith(fulness) means for us today is not that we need to contemporize our faith and practices for "new realities" but need to sanctify contemporary culture.

Legalism is as much a perversion as an accommodating lifestyle. The solution is not for oneself to individually negotiate the tension in the name of not forgetting God. The solution is to remember the Lord your God who has called the Church to honor him and carry out his will. The diversity is not how one's religion plays out in one's personal life; the diversity is in how our personal lives play out in the life of the Church. Looking for the other solution is tantamount to reassurances that all God really cares about is cheap rhetoric and finding our own personal way to live a good life or worse, care that only that we believe a handful of doctrines.

While these ritualistic practices are no longer prescribed and regulated by the Law; they do somehow magically find themselves implemented by faith-communities. While the life prescribed and regulated by the Law might be the shadow, participating in the life of the Church is the foretaste.

The question is not if one is being good or bad Christian, it's if one is meaningfully Christian at all. Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus. Without participation in the gift of Jesus within the church, "Christian" becomes just another label we use for self-description, albeit increasingly unpopular as we distance ourselves from from others for whom claim this label. Once "Christian" was a derogatory name for those believers practicing in the church of Antioch. If we're going to be applying labels, perhaps a more fitting one for these wishing to disassociate from Jesus' corporate body is a Christianist, a more purely ideological identification for believing in Christianism. If this sounds ludicrous, what is it about what it describes that makes sense?

This response ignores a lot of legitimate questions. What it's designed to do though is shift the theological impetus back to "Christ Resurrected" and "Repent, for the KoG is near".

And for the record I presently rarely go to church on Sundays.