Quote: "A drowning man cannot be saved until he is utterly exhausted and ceases to make the slightest effort to save himself."
There's probably something to that. But
why do we ever let it get that far before we change? When that change is all upside, and no downside?
I think the wrong but popular reason is to say that we are lazy or stupid or slow. But it's rather
myopia, whether
imposed upon us, or determined myopia on our part.
You have to, at some point, choose not averting our eyes. Look at it. Look at the forest, and at the trees.
Every single one of them!
The Christian life is ethically superior to all other lifestyle choices
The Christian life is
valuable. It's silly how clearly superior that it is to every other lifestyle choice. When the drowning man stops trying to not drown, then he finally looks at the Jesus tree. And of course He is the obvious solution all along.
Ethical myopia
It is the Christian life as lived, and not the Christian confession of faith (a 'theory of Jesus'), that sustains the superiority over all the other lifestyle choices freely available to us. So the confession is judged according to whether it sustains the Christian life, which is the Christian or Church ethics.
Up to recently Protestant confessions of faith were even with Catholicism
Ethics sustains either prosperity or its opposite. Values are what we pursue. Our ethics determines our values, which is the same as ethics determining what we pursue. The Christian ethics, aka the Christian life or Christian lifestyle choice, pursues Christian values.
The values that we pursue sustains either prosperity or failure, if we pursue good values, then this pursuit sustains prosperity, it is unstable failing and 'wants' to prosper. The pursuit of bad values sustains failure.
Other 'theories of Jesus' invalid
Dispensationalism, and Calvinism, and other Protestant theories do not sustain the Christian life. They are not durable theories of Jesus. They are unreliable and fail frequently. The proof of the pudding is in the tasting, and the proof is in the pudding, and the proof and the taste is about whether families transmit the Christian life from generation to generation.
While there are strongly objecting exceptions the trend among Protestant churches is to raise the rainbow flag, which denies that chastity is a Christian value. Whatever theory sustains this idea, is clearly an invalid theory of Jesus, and this theory cannot infiltrate Catholicism.
When that failure becomes violent crime
It's bad ethics that fails. For us and for our salvation, we must pursue justice on the earth. This means the acknowledgment of the liberal theory of morality, which is wholly consistent with (not 'identical to') Catholicism, properly understood. This means the acknowledgment of our God-given rights.
Catholicism superior to the other Jesus theories even on their terms
Using the methods that Dispensationalism and Calvinism use, the analysis and summary of Scripture, to produce their theories of Jesus, Catholicism is clearly the only indomitable position on Jesus, and there isn't a close second ---- it's a 'blow out'.
Nobody with no other theory can knock Catholicism off the mountain. If you believe in Jesus in any way, then you also believe Catholicism, and not Orthodoxy, not Calvinism and not Dispensationalism.
And if you don't, then you're suffering from myopia, whether it is being
imposed upon you, or you are just determinedly myopic.
If it's being
imposed upon you, then we know from Scripture who is doing that.
Thank you,
FineLinen.
