{"id":73,"date":"2009-04-03T15:46:14","date_gmt":"2009-04-03T15:46:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/flirtingwithfaith\/2009\/04\/the-relational-life-snapshots-from-part-2-of-so-beautiful-by-len-sweet.html"},"modified":"2009-04-03T15:46:14","modified_gmt":"2009-04-03T15:46:14","slug":"the-relational-life-snapshots-from-part-2-of-so-beautiful-by-len-sweet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/2009\/04\/the-relational-life-snapshots-from-part-2-of-so-beautiful-by-len-sweet.html","title":{"rendered":"The Relational Life: Snapshots from Part 2 of ‘So Beautiful’ by Leonard Sweet"},"content":{"rendered":"
The second part of Leonard Sweet<\/a>‘s new book, So Beautiful: Divine Design for Life and the Church<\/span>, focuses on the “R” in what Sweet calls the “MRI” manifestation of faith (where “M” is Missional, “R” is Relational and “I” is Incarnational. Click here for excerpts from Part 1: The Missional Life<\/a>.<\/div>\n
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<\/div>\n
In Part 2 Sweet writes:<\/div>\n
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With all due respect to J.I. Packer, “gospel holiness” is not to love Jesus so much that you live a holy life. “Gospel holiness” is to so be in relationship with Christ that your life channels the name and nature of God: love.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In a world where gated individuals come preequipped for isolation, hermetically sealed in a protective glass bubble, the two biggest challenges in life are these: letting other people in, and letting yourself out.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Propositionalists want you to fall in line. Relationalists want you to fall in love. Christians aren’t people who follow Christianity. Christians are people who follow and fall in love with Christ. Yet the church spends more time trying to get people to follow and fall in love with Christianity than follow and fall in love with Christ.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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If not for Jesus, I would be an atheist.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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It is not enough that Jesus told stories.  The “good news” is that Jesus became the story. We are narrative creatures that hunger for the True Narrator. It was Paul’s discovery of Christ as the Truth rather than any dissatisfaction with the teachings or practices of his Jewish faith that caused his Damascus Road experience.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Since the Protestant Reformation, slowly at first, then at breakneck speed over the past thirty years, the church has been turned into a principle-factory. Propositionalism is a horrible modern doctrine that has all but performed spiritual hari-kari on the Western church. I call it the Dutch Elm disease of Christian faith. To get rid of it is almost to convert Christians from another religion.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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The problem with religion as a “belief system” is what I call the “belief relief.” The relief of belief is that belief doesn’t force you to do anything other than to “believe” or “think” it. Relations require action: beliefs require only assent.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Forget about putting Christ back in Christmas. It’s time to put Christ back into Christianity. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In the aggressive “new atheism,” Christians are reaping what we have sowed since the enlightenment, when Christianity reframed the faith as something that can be conceptually argued and proved as a hypothesis…All the atheists like Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Frederick Crew, etc. are doing is throwing our conceptual, propositional God in our faces.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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By yourself, you are nothing; in relationship, you are everything.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The more we claim to have “figured” God out, the clearer and nearer our understandings of God, the more systematized and rationalized our thoughts about God, the more we are pulled away from God, not drawn closer.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What do you think?<\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The second part of Leonard Sweet‘s new book, So Beautiful: Divine Design for Life and the Church, focuses on the “R” in what Sweet calls the “MRI” manifestation of faith (where “M” is Missional, “R” is Relational and “I” is Incarnational. Click here for excerpts from Part 1: The Missional Life. In Part 2 Sweet writes: With…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":181,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spiritual-growth"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Relational Life: Snapshots from Part 2 of 'So Beautiful' by Leonard Sweet - Flirting with Faith<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/2009\/04\/the-relational-life-snapshots-from-part-2-of-so-beautiful-by-len-sweet.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Relational Life: Snapshots from Part 2 of 'So Beautiful' by Leonard Sweet - Flirting with Faith\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The second part of Leonard Sweet‘s new book, So Beautiful: Divine Design for Life and the Church, focuses on the “R” in what Sweet calls the “MRI” manifestation of faith (where “M” is Missional, “R” is Relational and “I” is Incarnational. 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