The general thrust of my treatment of the coin in the fish’s mouth and especially of Jesus’ words, “then the children are free,” is to interpret the whole passage as a proclamation of the end of religion. The entire human race is profoundly and desperately religious. From the dim beginnings of our history right up to the present day, there is not a man, woman, or child of us who has ever been immune to the temptation to think that the relationship between God and humanity can be repaired from our side, by our efforts. Whether those efforts involve creedal correctness, cultic performances, or ethical achievements, or whether they amount to little more than crassly superstitious behavior; we are all, at some deep level, committed to them. If we are not convinced that God can be conned into being favorable to us by dint of our doctrinal orthodoxy, or chicken sacrifices, or the gritting of our moral teeth, we still have a hard time shaking the belief that stepping over sidewalk cracks, or hanging up the bath towel so the label won’t show, will somehow render the Ruler of the Universe kindhearted, softheaded, or both. The point is, we haven’t got a card in our hand that can take even a single trick against God. Religion, therefore, despite the correctness of its insistence that something needs to be done about our relationship with God, remains unqualified bad news: it traps us in a game we will always and everywhere lose. But the Gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is precisely Good News. It is the announcement, in the death and resurrection of Jesus, that God has simply called off the game.” ~ Robert Farrar Capon, The Parables of Grace, pp.28-29 via PM
Posted on: Wed, 06 Aug 2014 15:37:46 +0000
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