From NT Wright...
"But this is only true if it's the true God you're worshipping. I was talking to somebody not long ago who said, 'You know, I used to believe in God; but then, as I grew up, I found it harder and harder to think of this old man up there in the sky, so far removed from all the pain and suffering down here in the world.' And I said to him, 'I don't believe in that god either! The God I believe in is the God I see in the middle of the pain and suffering down here in the world. Without Jesus, sharing and bearing the pain and sin and suffering of the world, I don't know who on earth, or in heaven, God might be at all.'
You see, if you envisage a god up there in the sky, detached from the reality of the world, any worship you offer will simply be a distant acknowledgement of majesty, like the ploughboy doffing his cap as the great nobleman rides by ignoring him. And if you go the other route, as my friend was inclined to, and say that therefore the word 'god' can only refer to the impulse of goodness inside ourselves, then you'll find it pretty hard to sustain any real sense of worship at all. All you're left with is the ploughboy imagining himself to be a nobleman. But if Jesus is to be the lens through which you glimpse the beauty of God, you will discover what it means to worship, because you will discover what it means to be loved."
NT Wright, For All God's Worth
"But this is only true if it's the true God you're worshipping. I was talking to somebody not long ago who said, 'You know, I used to believe in God; but then, as I grew up, I found it harder and harder to think of this old man up there in the sky, so far removed from all the pain and suffering down here in the world.' And I said to him, 'I don't believe in that god either! The God I believe in is the God I see in the middle of the pain and suffering down here in the world. Without Jesus, sharing and bearing the pain and sin and suffering of the world, I don't know who on earth, or in heaven, God might be at all.'
You see, if you envisage a god up there in the sky, detached from the reality of the world, any worship you offer will simply be a distant acknowledgement of majesty, like the ploughboy doffing his cap as the great nobleman rides by ignoring him. And if you go the other route, as my friend was inclined to, and say that therefore the word 'god' can only refer to the impulse of goodness inside ourselves, then you'll find it pretty hard to sustain any real sense of worship at all. All you're left with is the ploughboy imagining himself to be a nobleman. But if Jesus is to be the lens through which you glimpse the beauty of God, you will discover what it means to worship, because you will discover what it means to be loved."
NT Wright, For All God's Worth
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