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In this episode John and Gregg discuss the article “Between Easter and the End,” posted in the Untangling Christianity private Facebook group.
John found the article both tough to unpack and to be difficult to connect with / find value in. When Gregg wonders why John feels disengaged from the article, John notes that in his view the author is globalizing her experience to all Christians (rather than presenting the matter as her own experience), and this makes it hard for him to relate to.
Particularly, John finds the author’s contention that our lives are not “improving” / Christians are not becoming more Christ-like fast enough to be unrealistic and even inaccurate. Gregg echoes John’s concerns and notes that the matter is presented by the author in a very nebulous way, and yet Christians who complain of not being like Jesus should be able easily to identify what constitutes Christ-likeness. If not, then such transformation may already be happening without one’s knowledge.
For Gregg this is a matter of lacking proper integration of faith and life in such a way that should Christians detect no transformation in their lives over the short-term, then one needs to have more accurate expectations about how long such things take.
Conversely, if Christians detect no transformation in their lives over the medium-term then this should prompt them to re-assess their situation (and perhaps their understandings of Christianity / their beliefs, or their expectations) and ask some hard questions / make some difficult choices. John notices that the article, interestingly, makes no reference to our action or to our reflection on where we are at (and why).