Thursday, August 13, 2009

Joy and Beauty Without Christianity

If you travel at all in Christian circles, you may hear a theology about how depraved we all are; useless and good for nothing. The logic behind this brand of Christian thought is that apart from Christ we cannot do anything good. Probe a little deeper and you may hear that only a Christian can really do anything "good", and that only through Christ.

Garbage!

I choose to quote a scripture in Acts uttered by St. Paul.

"For in Him we live, and move, and have our being."

Good is good and does not need a label.

The scripture above was actually a quote taken by Paul from a Greek poet, Epimenides (c. 600 B.C.) If Paul shared the above version of Christian thinking - that good things are only good based on their Christian labeling - I hardly believe he would have been quoting Greek poets in such a positive fashion to make his case for Christ.

This whole thought came to me because of a video I saw today. It was beautiful and filled me with joy. I believe its goodness stands independently. As a Christian, I also believe that its goodness pleases the heart of God because He is good; but its goodness can happily stand apart from Christianity.

Watch Matt as he lives, and moves, and has being :



On a related note, this video also made me think of people who always have to thump their chests saying "America is the greatest nation in the world!"

I don't think so. I think America is a pretty good place, amongst a lot of other pretty good places. All of them together make a pretty great world.

An HD copy can be downloaded here.

6 comments:

Don Hendricks said...

I have been sharing that video for a year, the music is so beautiful, the story of the organization it took to get the folks together, the whole thing really does testify to the joy of dancing and the joy of living.

Andrew said...

Yeah, this video really moved me when I saw it today.

Thomas Rasmussen said...

That's a fantastic video.

atimetorend said...

I think I would like to have that guy's job! Thanks for linking, that was super cool.

Unknown said...

super super super - and I'm a Jew.
Frank
www.gods-electbook.com

Andrew said...

Thanks for stopping by Frank!

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