The air was electric… a cross between a speech and rock concert…a nerdy electricity.
My school (where I now work) is small. Small but strangely mighty. Blessed.
And thankfully it is committed to excellence and honest inquiry. This quality is more rare than you might imagine, in liberal and conservative institutions alike.
Yesterday, Dr. Miroslav Volf was the featured speaker at the annual Ritter-Moyer Lecture. Go ahead, click on his name if you haven’t of him.
I’m still reflecting on his message and a richer response in warranted.
But, I can say this….His message seemed radical…but only because Christians have too often loved so poorly.
They were convicting words, for me, for those who claim to forward the Gospel, and also sadly–for most of humanity. The Gospel it turns out is highly subversive and radical because it turns the all too common bad bits of human nature upside down and refutes them. Love and Grace are downright scandalous. We get Grace wrong. Almost all the time.
But the lecture was far from depressing. It was heavily laced with hope. His topic revolved around honor.
I hope to revisit the themes, but for now here’s an anemic glimpse of the approx 3 hour lecture (yes, there was a 20 min break involved in the middle).
QUOTES:
“We have a religious duty to honor everyone.” (including those who persecute us)
“Misplaced fear is one of the primary reasons we fail to honor. We should replace the fear of each other with the fear of God.”
“The [American] founding is not a pretty story. It’s an ambiguous story. It’s drenched in injustice but also suffused with ideals and institutions that can be affirmed (by Christians). It’s also the story of our own hearts. We have no excuse and we have to own our own divided history.”
” [Grace means] I am not the sum of my deeds.”
“Everyone who loves or wants to be loved distinguishes between person and deed. Forgiveness is “unsticking” the deed from the person.”
”Fear undermines honor.”
”Forgiveness presupposes that sin & sinner are distinctive from each other”
“How do we know that we are speaking the truth in love? We are gentle.”
“We bear false witness (to the Gospel) when our words don’t match our deeds.”
“Peace is not agreement. It is sacrificial love…The means is the end.”
”1 Peter: command: “Have tolerance with others when (you are) persecuted.”
“But, more than tolerance, we must honor (and respect) them.”
“Gentleness is a servant of respect.”
