Christian communities have failed to have sufficient reflection on how grace or the divine life works in us.
One example is the portrayal of Jesus and
Mary as violent warriors like Greek or Roman gods and goddesses. It may gladden
a militant understanding of Christianity, but totally fails to understand how
God loves, saves, forgives, or destroys evil. It is not simply an artistic distortion,
but it closes the spiritual depth of the life of God at work in us. Instead, it
represents ‘some spiritual beings’ at war, and sometime at our disposal doing
favours by magical actions. We can deceive ourselves placing ourselves as spiritual
by joining the side of these spiritual characters that have no connection with
Bible or the teachings of Jesus. The dual spiritual powers or a duality of
worlds are not a Christian vision at all.
We also need a reform to free Christian spirituality
from a guilt culture. How do we teach ourselves about a responsible belonging
and love? Are they given significance in our spirituality? Rather, we are
centring our lives on obligations and the failings in keeping them. Jesus’
meaning of conversion and repentance were not about faults, it was about the
relation to a loving and providing Father. If our spirituality is not based on
such belonging (whether it be to God or to one another in a family), how can we
experience a belonging to the Church. Relation to the family or to the church
or to God is not primarily about fulfilling obligations, but about belonging to
the family, the church or to God. Those innumerous ways of belonging are the
doors to grace which shape us and sustain us. Even in moments of failures we
have assurance of acceptance which a guilt culture does not offer. Guilt culture
speaks heavily on reparations bringing the burden of blame. The promise of
grace is not conditional, it is assured within the reality that we belong.
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