Quote:
Originally Posted by ViolaMum
That's exactly the idea I grew up with. Something good happens, it's God rewarding you for good behavior. Something bad happens, it's punishment for doing something wrong. Or it's Satan causing havoc and if you just hang in there long enough and pray hard enough and do all the right things and God will work it out to bless you.
Okay, so it might not have been preached quite that simplistically, but that was the idea.
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I'm reading a book on the Gospel of Luke and this theme comes up over and over. Jesus tells them that 'it will be easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven' - it was a total reversal of this concept of 'good things mean I'm worthy, bad things mean I've sinned' and was a little shocking. Likewise the healings He performed - people didn't get it because '
obviously those people were sick for a reason'. Grace, this radical reversal of understanding of 'worthiness', is at the heart of the Gospel and obviously still so misunderstood my so many.