From our Caloundra Explorers:
Continue a reading of John Smith’s Jesus and the Empowering Influence of Friendship
Chapter 4–6 of John Smith’s book are all about social justice.
The values of friendship
P 106 A progressive Christian can be defined as a person introducing or promoting change gradually or in stages.
P 106-107 We liked this quote from Marcus Borg: One of God’s central qualities is compassion, a word that in Hebrew is related to the word for ‘womb’. Not only is compassion a female image suggesting source of life and nourishment but it also has a feeling dimension: God as compassionate Spirit feels for us as a mother feels for the children of her womb. Spirit feels the suffering of the world and participates in it . . .
P 109 . . . if we truly open ourselves to the feelings of another human being, we risk the possibility of needing to make changes in the way we behave as a friend.
P 112 John Smith’s dream: . . . I strongly believe that if the world were governed by the values that good friends share, then there would be world peace and a significant decrease in the social evils we face in our society.
Where do our values originate?
P 123 We briefly discussed cyber bullying.
oOo