We are called as Christians to act before an audience of One.
As William Shakespeare put it,
“All the world’s a stage.
And all the men and women merely players.
We have our exits and entrances,
and one man in his time plays many parts.
God has put us on display in an arena.
We have been made a spectacle to the whole universe,
to angels as well as to men.
We are fools for Christ!
Become imitators of God, as beloved children
and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us.
Your Heavenly Father, who sees what is done in secret,will reward you.
Do not be like the hypocrites.
Be carefulnot to do your “acts of righteousness” to be seen by others.
If you do,you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.
(1 Corinthians 4:9-10; Ephesians 5:1; Matthew 6:1-18)
1 comment:
My brother write this as a response to my original posting on the MARROW blog:
Language is metaphor. I AM was/is the only authentic utterance and the fountainhead of all others. Metaphor is all there is in terms of describing God - except for Emmanuel, God With Us as in John 1:14-18. As to Craig's (aka symmimex) theatre metaphor, we go back to our Marrow discussion on the Trinity. We realized that we speak of God in Three "Persons" not quoting scripture but rather Tertullian who drew the metaphor from actor's presenting a "persona" by changing masks. And that was in the 2nd century.
nick drt
September 21, 2007 10:15 PM
symmimex said...
One must be careful in using the term "persona" when speaking of God. Yes, it can mean "mask," but also "face" and "person" and "presence" (and more ...).
God did not merely mask himself with the what appeared to be the face of Jesus. God's Presence identified Himself in bodily form in Jesus, the man born of Mary, crucified at Calvary, resurrected on the third day, and reigning now forever.
The face of the Father is no figment of imagination; however, no one has seen the Father "except He who is from God; He has seen the Father." (I wonder how this relates to the angels of those little ones Jesus heeded us not to despise; "their angels always see the face of My Father who is in heaven.")We here on earth must focus our attention on Jesus Christ, "the image of the invisible God."
Even then the persona we perceive will challenge the imagination. What do we think we will see? Our own faces figure importantly here. Somehow Stephen, being full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the Son of Man; because he bore witness to Jesus Christ others "saw his face as the face of an angel."
Witness is the essential act of Christian discipleship. In the process of becoming an imitator of God, the Christian persona presents others with some perceptible image of who God is in Jesus Christ.
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