Our response to God: a reverent love

In previous posts I suggested we ask ourselves three big questions about Christian faith and spiritual life: who is God? What is he like? What, if anything, does he ask of us? 

In this post I’d like to give an answer to the third question, and I’ll start by referring to a passage from Saint Augustine’s Confessions, which ends with what is probably one of the most famous single sentences in the history of Christianity:

Conscious choice-maker: the definition of what I am

Ray Caldwell reflects on the reality of human free will, responsibility and accountability. Despite the fall of our first parents human beings are still essentially defined by our capacity to decide freely to choose good or evil, love or sin, heaven or hell.

I.

"I am an invisible spirit who chooses, chooses, chooses, all my conscious existence". This is called free-will.

God reveals himself to us (5)

by Father Ian

Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; Part 4.

'It seems that many church members today lack a developed sense of God’s overwhelming holiness and divinity and majesty. Instead, their attitude is nonchalant, casual, indifferent. What this almost certainly means, unfortunately, is that they have not yet had a significant encounter with God in their lives. If they had, they would have begun to realise how inappropriate casualness, nonchalance and indifference are.'

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In a recent short book Catholic theologian Ulrich Lehner 'reintroduces Christians 

to the true God: not the polite, easygoing, divine therapist who doesn't ask much of us, but 

the Almighty God who is unpredictable, awe-inspiring, and demands our entire lives.  

(Click on the picture for the book's Amazon UK page.)

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God reveals himself to us (4)

by Fr Ian

(Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here)

'In many ways the 'Spiritual But Not Religious' outlook appears as an outgrowth of affluent western consumer culture: it has a strong element of the modern therapeutic search for personal wellbeing and security and tends towards a rather individualistic, inward-looking and self-serving attitude.'

What I want to look at now is: 

C. Some mistaken ideas about God

Let’s go back to the three central questions I suggested we consider earlier: who is God, what is he like, what, if anything does he ask of us?

God reveals himself to us (3)

by Fr Ian

(Part One here, Part Two here)

God's revelation of the truth about himself is available for us in Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition. Christians must trust these sources above our personal opinions and ideas. God speaks to us, 'not to impart information, but to invite us to share his life and to elicit a response to his invitation'.

Saint Jerome, c. 342–347 – 420, the patron saint of biblical scholars: 

'Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ'

‘I Heard it through the Grapevine’

Jesus the True Vine and His Father the Vinedresser

The grapevine as a metaphor for the course of our lives 

By Raymond Caldwell

'There is one essential gift available to us while we are yet alive and still able to think and make choices, and that is GRACE.'

Christ True Vine, Russia, 19th century, icon, unknown artist