Salvogesis

What is love? This is an important question to which John, ‘the disciple whom Jesus loves’, offers us an answer. He tells us that in Jesus’ farewell discourse with his friends (John 14:1-16:33), Jesus mentions love a fair amount. Knowing how important real love is, Jesus tells his disciples to love one another as he has loved them (John 13:34,35; 15:9,12,17). Jesus tells his friends, as he is about to be executed, that if they love him, they will remain in his love even after he has gone on ahead (John 15:9): they will keep his commandments, which are always directly from God (John 14:15,21,23; 15:10). He then tells us his primary commandment: love one another (John 15:12). And how can we show that we have this love? Jesus says, while at the same time calling his disciples his friends, that greater love has no one than to lay down his life for his friends (John 15:13). Jesus, of course, proceeds to do just that (John 19:30) and in their turn, tradition tells us that the disciples res...

I recently read an interview with David Suzuki where he was asked –among other things- about political reform; how to give power to the people rather than politicians and their parties. He had what I thought was a very interesting answer. He said, ‘The solution to me is we need a system where politicians are drawn from a hat, the same way we need to set up our juries.' It has some merit. The word ‘democracy’ from the Greek roots ‘power’ and ‘people’ has come to mean ‘power to the people’ and way of drawing lots for political representation would give power to the people rather than the political parties. And actually, now that I remember it, that is the way that the first Greek democracies actually did operate, through the casting of lots. I thought it was very interesting that I read this while we have been studying Joshua. It reminded me of the way government was run in the Book and the time of Joshua in the Bible and throughout the Old Testament at least until the time of King...