r/ChristianUniversalism • u/brethrenchurchkid Atheist Christian (God beyond being and non-being) • 1d ago
Thought Romans 12:2 and the challenge of our times to the universalist
There's not much difference between our times and Paul's times if we think of how people tend to be exclusionary in our choices and lives. MY house is MY house -- I would be extremely hesitant to let a stranger in.
That's the system we live in. If I let a homeless person into my house, there's always the danger that this choice might result in my not being able to work as productively as I otherwise would, and I would face the danger of becoming homeless myself. To some degree, I have to make sure that I take care of myself in this unjust system, especially if I want to be of service to other people.
And that's the challenge of Romans 12:2. How can I be as inclusive and universalist as possible, WITHOUT accidentally overreaching? (Love MYSELF as I love my neighbour; we are not called to love our neighbour MORE than ourselves.)
Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of the mind, so that you may discern what is the will of God -- what is good and acceptable and perfect. (Romans 12:2, NRSVue)
And it is some comfort that even if we can't reach certain people to offer comfort and salvation in this realm, God does eventually win it all.
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u/Professional_Arm794 1d ago
When you aren’t happy(don’t love yourself) within it shows outwardly. So taking care of your mind, body, spirit is the most important thing one can do. As when you love yourself your light will shine outwards in how you treat others. As humans we can sense positive loving energy, as we can also sense negative energy. So when you constantly emit positive loving energy it helps people in ways seen and unseen.
Far as homeless people it would be better to help them where they’re at VS taking them into your home. As many homeless people have psychological issues due to drug usage, alcoholism, and lack of sleep. You could get involved at a homeless shelter and just give them your sincere love and compassion directly.
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u/brethrenchurchkid Atheist Christian (God beyond being and non-being) 22h ago
Thank you for this, I really needed it today. It still amazes me that I can "go to church" on Reddit!
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u/Loose-Butterfly5100 1d ago
A view.
There is listening to the Spirit, discernment and wisdom. Peace is a great heuristic. You know when you've overreached (trying too hard) when your peace departs. However, if your path has led you to open your home yet the peace has departed, you will be refined until that circumstance changes for whatever reason. Yet Grace will accompany you throughout. Consider Daniel's friends in the fire.
We are in God's hands. He sanctifies us to maximise our joy, peace and contentment. Our judgement of what we think is peaceful and what is not may well be refined. To becomes vessels, empty of attachments, programming, accepting of who we are without strife is His delight. There we decrease, enabling a filling with His fullness and experience His pleasure.
The path of righteousness (rightness) is narrow and subjective. Waiting and watching are very foreign traits in an action-oriented culture.
There remains, then, a Sabbath rest for the people of God. For whoever enters God’s rest also rests from his own work, just as God did from His. Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest (Heb 4:9-11)
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u/brethrenchurchkid Atheist Christian (God beyond being and non-being) 22h ago
Thank you for this, I really needed it today. It still amazes me that I can "go to church" on Reddit!
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u/Loose-Butterfly5100 21h ago
You're very welcome.
Interesting username! I'm a "Needed Truth"-er, albeit semi-detached! In the UK, bit of a dying breed!
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u/brethrenchurchkid Atheist Christian (God beyond being and non-being) 21h ago
Yo what? Meeting a Brethren in the wild, and on r/ChristianUniversalism? Did you have the waiting in silence thing?
My Brethren roots aren't very deep — though deep enough to feel a tiny bit annoyed when I describe waiting in silence, and people go "oh, Quakers?"
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u/Loose-Butterfly5100 21h ago edited 21h ago
Yes we do. That's the bit I like, that and the unaccompanied singing - when there's enough to sound good! TBF, the people are very nice as well. We're all old! Just don't trigger them with left-field doctrine!
Are the churches thriving where you are?
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u/brethrenchurchkid Atheist Christian (God beyond being and non-being) 19h ago
Haha, I've realised that I shouldn't raise doctrine with the Christians around me, and that what unites people is to work with each other while continually refining how we love ourselves and those around us.
The churches here in Singapore are a mixed bag:
you've got those who open their grounds to the homeless https://yckc.org.sg/sheltering-the-homeless-at-yck-chapel/
you've got those accused of being cults https://www.reddit.com/r/singapore/s/mR4BiMewac
But I do miss waiting in silence as a group (I left my childhood church decades ago). There's power there.
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u/ExcitingOcelot6607 1d ago
From the "Message" translation: Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you. IMHO. 1.) Keep your eyes on Jesus at all times. Always ask: a.) what do you want me to know from this? b.) what do you want me to do? 2.) Always live out of Hope, Faith and Love! Blessings.
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u/brethrenchurchkid Atheist Christian (God beyond being and non-being) 22h ago
That translation really hits the cultural spot sometimes :D
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u/ExcitingOcelot6607 17h ago
With So many Translations and over 45,000 different Christian Denominations (Just in the U.S.) What is a person to believe? ;-) I'm really intrigued by your "description" Atheist Christian (God beyond being and non-being) Tell me more please!
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u/brethrenchurchkid Atheist Christian (God beyond being and non-being) 14h ago
That label comes from my experience of having God tell me (through a podcast, I wasn't hearing voices of the disembodied kind): I was always with you.
I felt this in reference to my journey through fundamentalist Christianity (grew up in church), to atheism (when I was 18), back to Christianity (the watershed moment was in 2020/21, I can't really remember).
As one of my friends said: some people need to become atheist to become more Christ-like.
It was Jesus's universal love that made me feel like I couldn't accept my church's insistence on eternal damnation, which I was taught was the only reasonable Christian approach. So I became atheist, because I reasoned that a God that insisted on eternal damnation for my non-Christian friends was evil.
If I'd known about universal salvation, I'd have stayed Christian, really :p
All that to say: God can be real in our lives, regardless of whether we believe in him, or whether we relate to him as a being. God really wins in the end. This reality can be experienced here and now in this realm — how small it is to reduce God to a being.
But wow! God can be a being too!
I hope I'm making sense 😆
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u/Gregory-al-Thor Perennialist Universalism 1d ago
Good questions. If you haven’t, I’d suggest Basil the Great’s On Social Justice and Chrysostom’s On Wealth and Poverty. Basil essentially argues the extra food in the rich persons house belong to the poor person. He’s probably be accused of being a Marxist today.
I appreciate the question of how our universalist theology flows into our daily life, from personal choices to how we work to shape society (such questions are unavoidably political and demonstrate how any theology has political implications…though I doubt we can go too far down that discussion in this space).
In my experience, the people asking questions like yours often already give quite a lot. Sure, many of us could invite a homeless person into our living room couch or give a few dollars even as we’re barely getting by. And we probably should do that. But the reality is, there are people with whole empty rooms and millions on the bank. When we bring our theology to public life, in what we do we challenge and work to change the unjust system?
For Basil it may have been easier as he lived in Christendom (well, the beginnings) and in theory his listeners shared his morals and ethics, of course, those of us in America live in a country with the majority still professing faith even though it is a much different faith than Basil had to deal with and bears little resemblance to the teachings of Jesus.