Volume 1, Issue 3, June 1994

LIFELONG LEARNING TO DO GOOD

Contemporary life raises questions that the church is failing to answer. Society is evolving new forms in which the church can no longer function. Jesus had direct association with the poor and the outcasts. He was where the action was. He was constantly leading out. "Behold, he goes before you into Galilee".

People have become tired of a church that sings harmless songs in a narrow valley on its way to another world. Their insular world presents a style of worship you don't find any place else, a language you don't hear any place else, a physical setting you don't see any place else. Where once the Christian message was preached in the marketplace in the language of the people, it is now preached in an archaic language, to music that is more than a century old, in a setting that is in-ward looking and resistant to change.

It is only fair to say every institution in society these days is playing "catch up" with history. Medicine, education, governments, business, are all running to keep pace with the post-modern era.

The Old Testamenmt prophet, whom Jesus revered, exhorted his people to "learn to do good" (Isaiah 1:17). This is a significant word. We must "learn to do good". (Isaiah 1:17).
Isaiah preached that one must not only do the good they know, but must also learn new forms and expressions of goodness as life moves on. We must always make sure that the goodness we do is meaningful in the kind of world in which we live.

The church is forever challenged to live in tension with the example and character of Jesus, and to adjust to the changing demands of a new and ever-changing world.

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"The final test of religion is not religiousness, but love; not what I have done, not what I have believed, not what I have achieved, but how I have discharged the common charities of life". -Henry Drummond.

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"Religion NOW" is published in limited edition by the Rev. Ross E. Readhead, B.A., B.D., Certificate of Corrections, McMaster University, in the interest of furthering knowledge and participation in religion. Dialogue is invited and welcomed.