{"id":37255,"date":"2024-04-06T14:15:35","date_gmt":"2024-04-06T21:15:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=37255"},"modified":"2024-04-07T20:32:28","modified_gmt":"2024-04-08T03:32:28","slug":"despite-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/despite-me\/","title":{"rendered":"Despite Me"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cGo from your country and your kindred and your father\u2019s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing\u2026 and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. So Abram went, as the Lord told him\u2026\u201d[1]<\/a><\/p>\n

One of my favorite stories in the Bible is the story of Abram and Sarai being called by God. This random guy, who\u2019s now considered the father of God\u2019s people, was obedient to God in going to a foreign land, leaving behind his family, home, and all that was familiar. What I love about the story is that one of the first things that\u2019s recorded in Genesis of Abram after the covenant God makes with him and his subsequent obedience, is surprising. In the face of danger in Egypt, Abram sells his wife, Sarai, out to the pharaoh to save his own skin. From the very early beginnings, God\u2019s people were acting in ways that did not reflect His standard.<\/p>\n

Tom Holland\u2019s book Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World<\/em> shows readers the radical nature of early Christianity. In a world marked by violence, vengeance, and social inequality, the message of love, forgiveness, and the equal worth of every soul stood in stark contrast. Dominion meticulously traces how these core Christian values left an undeniable mark on Western civilization. Holland argues that the values of the Western world, however vehemently many who live in it might disagree, are profoundly and inescapably shaped by Christianity.[2]<\/a> Holland postulates in the book that Western civilization is so shaped by Christianity that even if the current trend of secularization continues, the standards set by Christianity don\u2019t seem likely to change soon. [3]<\/a><\/p>\n

While I\u2019m unsure of the extent to which I agree that the entirety of Western civilization is built on a Christian scaffolding, Holland presents a remarkable case for just how intertwined Western civilization and Christianity have become. Holland\u2019s work reminded me of Nigel Biggar\u2019s Colonialism[4]<\/strong><\/a><\/em> in that it points out positives that came from at times horrible actions.<\/p>\n

Much like the story of Abram in Genesis, Holland\u2019s work is in some ways, comforting. It helps us to realize we are not alone in the tension we feel as Christians. That part of following Christ is to realize that we hold paradoxical tensions as reality: our flawed nature interacting with the divine, the now and not yet reality of the kingdom, and in Holland\u2019s words the coexistence of the saeculum<\/em> (temporal) things and religio<\/em> (eternal) things.[5]<\/a> While I am not absolved of wrongdoings I commit, nor should Abram or any Christians through history, I am comforted knowing that the advance of God\u2019s plan and heart does not rest on my perfection, but the already completed perfection of Christ.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Gen 12:1-2<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Tom Holland, Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World<\/em>, (New York: Basic Books, 2019), 15.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Ibid, 525.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Nigel Biggar, Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning<\/em>, (Glasgow, William Collins, 2023).<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Ibid 160.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cGo from your country and your kindred and your father\u2019s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing\u2026 and in you all the families of the earth shall […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":161,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3171],"class_list":["post-37255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dlgp01-holland","cohort-dlgp01"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/161"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37255"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37255\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37280,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37255\/revisions\/37280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}