Should the Christian life be compared to a journey? Peter Enns thinks so.

August 31, 2015

Someone once told me that I shouldn’t speak of the Christian life as a journey, because journeys are designed with an ending in mind.  I disagreed, saying I thought the journey image provided an excellent description of a life of faith, but  that this is a journey  that doesn’t have  an end point with no more miles to cover, no more lessons to learn, no more growth to occur, no more discoveries to explore.  It keeps on going.

Bible scholar Peter Enns makes the point beautifully:

“The path does not end, not as long as we are flesh and blood, anyway. There is no summit to reach where we can look down on others below.

“And it’s common to wonder whether we’re on the right path at all, and whether the journey is worth it. We can’t really know. We walk by faith (better: trust), not by sight (better: certainty).”

Read Peter Enns’s reasons for calling the journey  “My Favorite Metaphor for All This Following Jesus Business.”

posted by Letha Dawson Scanzoni

August 31, 2015

Someone once told me that I shouldn’t speak of the Christian life as a journey, because journeys are designed with an ending in mind.  I disagreed, saying I thought the journey image provided an excellent description of a life of faith, but  that this is a journey  that doesn’t have  an end point with no more miles to cover, no more lessons to learn, no more growth to occur, no more discoveries to explore.  It keeps on going.

Bible scholar Peter Enns makes the point beautifully:

“The path does not end, not as long as we are flesh and blood, anyway. There is no summit to reach where we can look down on others below.

“And it’s common to wonder whether we’re on the right path at all, and whether the journey is worth it. We can’t really know. We walk by faith (better: trust), not by sight (better: certainty).”

Read Peter Enns’s reasons for calling the journey  “My Favorite Metaphor for All This Following Jesus Business.”

Letha Dawson Scanzoni is an independent scholar, writer, and editor, and is the author or coauthor of nine books. In 1978, she and Virginia Ramey Mollenkott wrote Is the Homosexual My Neighbor?, one of the earliest books urging evangelical Christians to rethink their views on homosexuality (updated edition, 1994, HarperOne). More recently, Letha coauthored (with social psychologist David G. Myers) What God Has Joined Together: The Christian Case for Gay Marriage (HarperOne, 2005 and 2006). Another of Letha’s most well-known books is All We’re Meant to Be: Biblical Feminism for Today, coauthored with Nancy A. Hardesty (Word Books, 1974; revised edition, Abingdon, 1986; updated and expanded edition, Eerdmans, 1992). Letha served as editor of Christian Feminism Today in both its former print edition (EEWC Update) and its website for 19 years until her retirement in December 2013.

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