Sunday, December 16, 2007

A flourishing faith

What is it to be a Christian who has a flourishing faith? Cornelius Plantinga in his book, Not the Way It's Supposed to Be, says it is the following:

As Christians see her, a spiritually whole person longs in certain classic ways. She longs for God and the beauty of God, for Christ and Christlikeness, for the dynamite of the Holy Spirit and spiritual maturity. She longs for spiritual hygiene itself--and not just as a consolation prize when she cannot be rich and envied instead. She longs for other human beings: she wants t olove them, and to be loved by them. She hungers for social justice. She longs for nature, for its beauties and graces, for the sheer particularity of the way of a squirrel with a nut. As we might expect, her longings dim from season to season. When they do, she longs to long again.

She is a person of character consistency, a person who rings true wherever you tap her. She keeps promises. She weeps with those who weep and, perhaps more impressively, rejoices with those who rejoice. She does all these theings in ways that express her own personality and culture but also a general "mind of Christ" that is cross-culturally unmistakable.
pp. 34-35

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