Gospel Values

We spent a week at three-colored Crystal Lake in northern Michigan where we stayed at a conference center of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).  The first days we enjoyed alone time at a cottage on the lake available for pastors and their families, and later we moved to the cabins for a three day mini-camp with young children.  So the week was part work, part retreat.

During the retreat part, I read The Four Gospels: Contemporary English Version.  I sat on the lakeside and read the story of Jesus as told from four perspectives.  This paperback edition is about the length of a novel, and the CEV makes it easy to read.  Since the story ends with Jesus and his disciples walking along a beach, it was fitting to read it at a lake.  I noted a few themes while reading:

• Gospel values appear again and again in the story:  mercy, humility, poverty, integrity, purity and simplicity.  Jesus commends these qualities.
• Jesus healed A LOT of people.  Some are individual healings, and many are references to masses of people healed.  It struck me how many lives were changed — hundreds or thousands — as Jesus released people from their illnesses.
• The Gospels presume a spiritual realm beyond our senses.  The story doesn’t make sense apart from this.  Jesus is constantly doing spiritual battle in this spiritual realm.
• The story focuses on his death, but it isn’t explained much, apart from cryptic comments.  You need the letters of the New Testament to explore the theological meaning of Jesus’ death.
• Institutional religion looks bad in the Jesus story.  He respects religion itself, but he criticizes its leaders and spends most of his time outside its walls.
• Jesus only requires two things:  he wants you to put your faith in him, and he wants you to live a life of love.  Faith and Love.  It’s simple.  We make it more complicated.

My wife and I are already talking about going up to the cottage again next year for a full week, as well as being counselors at the mini-camp again, but perhaps at different times during the summer.  Whenever we go, I’ll take my copy of The Four Gospels again.  It’s a good refresher course on gospel values.