A perspective of Christianity from Bishop Theophane makes this point: Abraham lives in us
all, the body of Christ is simply a
body of faithful people seeking to know and obey God, searching for a way to
identify with God. This lunge
for the divine, this desire for connection, allows Abraham to live in us all. The bishop claims that what the early church
theologians did with Abraham was cruel.
But a hundred years from now, the serious people of faith will be
considered ecumenical. They will
understand that Abraham belongs to all of humanity.
I see this as clear as day in my AA groups. The members of AA seek to imagine for
themselves what their higher power is like.
The thing that unites me with them is not simply that we all live with
the disease of alcoholism and addiction, the thing that unites us most
spectacularly is that we are all simply
a body of faithful people seeking to know and obey God, searching for a way to
identify with God. In my mind,
that is the body of Christ. I can belong
to a mega church filled with people who call themselves Christians but do not
seek to know or obey their God. Even
though that’s a church, it may be a lesser illustration of the body of Christ
than a bunch of drunks coming together regularly to genuinely seek God’s will
with every ounce of their ability, living out that Divine will as best as they
can.
The body of Christ is everywhere.
We are united as brothers and sisters not by our doctrines and ways we
imagine God, but by our sincere, authentic and passionate attempts to connect
with a loving God and live out God’s will. The thing that unites us in church is that we depend upon Jesus to help shape our imagination of God. May we all seek to know and obey God and be a part of the body of Christ.
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