Children of God May 24, 2010
Posted by Dan R. Dick in Congregational Life, Core Values, Critical Thinking, Theological Reflection.Tags: Biblical interpretation, Christian Community, Theology, Values
24 comments
I’ve gotten in trouble lately for an idea that I thought was fairly safe, but turns out (as many ideas do) is theologically open to debate. I suggested that human beings, created in the image of God, might be children of God. I do have to acknowledge that this is a theological perspective that does not align well with the “truth” of other perspectives. I have been “taught” that no one can be a child of God until they agree to be a child of God — that parentage is dependent on the child deciding to be a child. I have been “instructed” that until we accept a narrowly defined set of acceptable Christian standards, we cannot “qualify” as children of God. I have been chastised by “theological experts” that children of God has nothing to do with God’s intention, but only the human response. I have been corrected by those who know the truth that we have to completely ignore the whole of Christian and theological thinking in order to pick and choose a few isolated passages of scripture and a limited theological perspective that limit our acceptance of “children of God” to include only those we like and with whom we agree.
