Revolution exists to help people find their way back to God. The other day Katie pointed this out me:
“Considering “good old sin” in the sense that the ancient monks understood it, exposes the vast difference between their worldview and our own. These days, when someone commits an atrocity, we tend to sigh and say, “That’s human nature.” But our attitude would seem wrong-headed to the desert monks, who understood human beings to be part of the creation that God called good, special in that they are made in the image of God. Sin, then, is an abberation, not natural to us at all. This is why Gregory of Nyssa speaks so often of “[returning] to the grace of that image which was established in you from the beginning.” Gregory, in fact, saw it as our lifelong task to find out what part of the divine image God has chosen to reveal in us. Like the other early monks, he suggests that we can best do this by realistically dteremining how God has made us – what our primary faults and temptations are, as well as our gifts – not that we might better “know ourselves” or in modern parlance, “feel good about ourselves,” but in order that we might become instruments of divine grace for other people, and eventually return to God.” – Kathleen Norris, The Cloister Walk
Posted in book review, church, missional church, revolution church, video Tagged: kathleen norris, mission statement, original sin, revolution church, the cloister walk, the image of God
