The Way
Two Millennia of Christian Community
By Alden Bass
JUNE 8, 2018
https://www.plough.com/en/topics/community/church-community/the-way-two-millennia
Early "Christians" did not call themselves "Christians".
Instead, they saw themselves as practitioners of The Way.
Their lives comprised a process: they were not a thing - no matter how virtuous it might appear - to be acquired.
For practiionerss of The Way, devotion to the spirit of Jesus was a practice that made their lives on earth a palpable, "felt" adumbration of all future heavenliness because to live in the spirit of Jesus evokes the spirit of love.
And that is the only "homecoming."
That is to be at home.
To be in love.
To be at peace.
I have come to believe that the modern "Christian" "conservative's" obsession with "salvation" in the next life is essentially selfish - a careful, pragmatic calculation by which "the left hand" always "knows what the right hand is doing."
I once heard a black man comment: "We are not punished for our sins; we are punished by our sins."
"Virtue is its own reward."
Behaving virtuously is heavenly.
There is no other heaven.
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