I was just just reading an article by John Shore called "Are The Great Commandment and The Great Commission Incompatible?"
He breaks the two down as follows:
1. Fulfilling Jesus’ “Great Commandment” means loving our neighbors as we love ourselves.
2. Fulfilling Jesus “Great Commission” (”Therefore go and make disciples of all nations …”) means sharing the gospel with nonbelievers, in the hopes that they’ll really hear the message of Jesus, believe in Him, and become Christians.
3. Putting The Great Commandment into words means saying to a nonbeliever something that, in essence, amounts to, “I love you with all of my heart.”
4. Putting The Great Commission into words means saying to a nonbeliever something that, in essence, amounts to, “You should exchange whatever you believe in now for belief in Jesus Christ.”
5. Boiled down even further, “You should exchange whatever you believe in now for belief in Jesus Christ,” amounts to, “You need to radically change who you are.”
6. ”I love you with all my heart,” and “You need to radically change who you are” is a confusing, unhelpful message.
7. Maybe we should rethink how we do evangelism.
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I think that as christians we've omitted parts of the great commission. The great commandment though remains what it is. The thing with the great commission is that it is the "sharing the gospel with nonbelievers". But we often forget what the gospel, which means good news, is in this context.
Yes, it is the gospel of salvation that says "we are all sinners and we are doomed to burn in hell, but jesus christ paid the price in our place, so that if we believe in him, our sins are forgiven and we can now go to heaven". What we often forget though, is that there's also the gospel that the kingdom of god is right here on earth or "at hand". What I mean is that in the context of "sharing" my faith with unbelievers, it is the kingdom of god shining through from the inside out that people around us notice and want to know "hey, you're different. why?". Or showing kindness to someone
who didn't expect it and then wonders why we do what we do.
So it is first the kingdom inside of us that is demonstrated. And then it is communicating the gospel of the kingdom, that this kingdom can also be inside of the unbeliever because of the gospel of salvation.
Now, here's the tricky thing: the great commission can only be fulfilled by fulfilling the great commandment. They MUST go hand in hand, or none of them can be effective.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Sunday, January 04, 2009
What's REALLY going on in Israel
I found this quite interesting...
"The Middle East war is not now and never was a conflict between Israelis/Jews on the one hand and Palestinians on the other. In fact, the Arab-"Palestinians", while currently the perpetrators of most of the anti-Jewish atrocities, were never a very important part of the conflict. In fact, before about 1970, virtually no one in the world considered the Middle East conflict to be one between Israelis and Palestinians.
"The term "Palestinian" itself had referred to Israeli Jews back in the 1940s, and had been slowly deconstructed and redefined to refer to the Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza. The Middle East Conflict was always a war by Arabs against Jews, not a conflict between Israelis and "Palestinians." The war was repackaged as a conflict between Jews and Palestinians as a public relations gimmick by the Arab fascist regimes. These regimes had never had any interest in "Palestinians," in creating a "Palestinian" state, or in "Palestinian nationalism" before 1967. That is because Palestinian nationalism did not and DOES NOT exist. The Palestinians were a regional group of Arabs having virtually no cultural nor national distinctive traits separating them from Syrians, Lebanese, and Jordanians. They are all basically Arabs!
"The bulk of what are called "Palestinian Arabs" are members of families who migrated into the Land of Israel beginning in the late 19th century. Palestinian nationalism is a mislabeling of Arab nationalism. Arab nationalism exists, although it is closely bound up with Islamic nationalism and even Islamism. Palestinian nationalism, however, is a phantom. It is nothing more than genocidal hatred of Jews.
"The Arab assaults and aggressions against Israel in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1968, and 1973 had nothing to do with Palestinians. The Palestinian terror campaign would itself be easy to suppress today and eradicate if the Middle East conflict were really a Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Israel would simply obliterate the terrorists and expel their supporters to Syria and Lebanon. The Middle East war continues because it is really an Arab-Israeli war, not an Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In many ways it's an Islamic religious jihad against the Jews."
"The Middle East war is not now and never was a conflict between Israelis/Jews on the one hand and Palestinians on the other. In fact, the Arab-"Palestinians", while currently the perpetrators of most of the anti-Jewish atrocities, were never a very important part of the conflict. In fact, before about 1970, virtually no one in the world considered the Middle East conflict to be one between Israelis and Palestinians.
"The term "Palestinian" itself had referred to Israeli Jews back in the 1940s, and had been slowly deconstructed and redefined to refer to the Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza. The Middle East Conflict was always a war by Arabs against Jews, not a conflict between Israelis and "Palestinians." The war was repackaged as a conflict between Jews and Palestinians as a public relations gimmick by the Arab fascist regimes. These regimes had never had any interest in "Palestinians," in creating a "Palestinian" state, or in "Palestinian nationalism" before 1967. That is because Palestinian nationalism did not and DOES NOT exist. The Palestinians were a regional group of Arabs having virtually no cultural nor national distinctive traits separating them from Syrians, Lebanese, and Jordanians. They are all basically Arabs!
"The bulk of what are called "Palestinian Arabs" are members of families who migrated into the Land of Israel beginning in the late 19th century. Palestinian nationalism is a mislabeling of Arab nationalism. Arab nationalism exists, although it is closely bound up with Islamic nationalism and even Islamism. Palestinian nationalism, however, is a phantom. It is nothing more than genocidal hatred of Jews.
"The Arab assaults and aggressions against Israel in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1968, and 1973 had nothing to do with Palestinians. The Palestinian terror campaign would itself be easy to suppress today and eradicate if the Middle East conflict were really a Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Israel would simply obliterate the terrorists and expel their supporters to Syria and Lebanon. The Middle East war continues because it is really an Arab-Israeli war, not an Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In many ways it's an Islamic religious jihad against the Jews."
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