"Do not depend on the hope of results. You may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. You gradually struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationship that saves everything."
— Thomas Merton
Maybe the Pharisees and religious leaders could have used a dose of Thomas Merton...
In their dealings with individuals the focus was on controlling behavior as a means to measuring personal holiness and worthiness. It was never a personal, reflective type of ministry ... frequently they were accused by Christ as harboring judgmental, and often crippling attitudes towards people who would never be conformed into the image of the Pharisee ... because the image that the Pharisee tried to create was impossible for man to achieve. Jesus recognized this and challenged the religious leaders that the standard the elders failed to attain could not continue to offer hope and healing to another generation struggling to finds its place and hope in relationship to their Creator.
Besides, its not the image of the Pharisee we are called to conformity to, its the image of the Christ. Self reflection reveals that I fall short of that conformity. It reveals my absence of Christ-likeness and exposes my shallowness and sinfulness, my angst and anxiety, my lust and my lifelessness. Growing into the image of Christ is not going to happen as I demand that my children grow into the image I have sketched out for them - it happens as they and I are released to be whom God created us to be... as we humbly walk together in our similarities and boldly and cooperatively walk in our differences. Then our differences become His strengths instead of our weaknesses and our Creator is revealed more completely because more of who He is shines forth through the cooperative relationship of his children.
And the "reality of personal relationship saves everything" as it binds everything together.
— Thomas Merton
Maybe the Pharisees and religious leaders could have used a dose of Thomas Merton...
In their dealings with individuals the focus was on controlling behavior as a means to measuring personal holiness and worthiness. It was never a personal, reflective type of ministry ... frequently they were accused by Christ as harboring judgmental, and often crippling attitudes towards people who would never be conformed into the image of the Pharisee ... because the image that the Pharisee tried to create was impossible for man to achieve. Jesus recognized this and challenged the religious leaders that the standard the elders failed to attain could not continue to offer hope and healing to another generation struggling to finds its place and hope in relationship to their Creator.
Besides, its not the image of the Pharisee we are called to conformity to, its the image of the Christ. Self reflection reveals that I fall short of that conformity. It reveals my absence of Christ-likeness and exposes my shallowness and sinfulness, my angst and anxiety, my lust and my lifelessness. Growing into the image of Christ is not going to happen as I demand that my children grow into the image I have sketched out for them - it happens as they and I are released to be whom God created us to be... as we humbly walk together in our similarities and boldly and cooperatively walk in our differences. Then our differences become His strengths instead of our weaknesses and our Creator is revealed more completely because more of who He is shines forth through the cooperative relationship of his children.
And the "reality of personal relationship saves everything" as it binds everything together.
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