Law and Love 3

Be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect. - Matthew 5:48

Sometimes Jesus says things that are so extreme that it’s hard to know what to do with them. So today we’re going to reflect on how this could actually be good news. This is an extended quote, but well worth reflection. Ask yourself what resonates with you and why?

Christianity… makes frankly impossible demands.  Instead of asking for specific actions, it offers general but lunatic principles. It thinks you should give your possessions away, refuse to defend yourself, love strangers as much as your family, behave as if there’s no tomorrow. 

These principles do not amount to a sustainable program. 

They deliberately ignore the question of how they could possibly be maintained.  They ask you to manifest in your ordinary life a drastically uncalculating, unprotected generosity. And that’s not all. Christianity also makes what you mean by your behavior all-important. It won’t accept generosity performed for the sake of self-interest as generosity.

So far, so thrillingly impractical. But now notice the consequence of having an ideal of behavior not sized for human lives: everyone fails. Really everyone. No one only means well, no one means well all the time. Looked at from this perspective, human beings all exhibit different varieties of f***-up. And suddenly in its utter lack of realism Christianity becomes very realistic indeed, intelligently resigned to our vast array of imperfections, and much more interested in what we can do to live with them than in laws designed to keep them segregated. - Francis Spufford, Unapologetic

Talk with Jesus about what is stirring in your spirit now.