Summary
William T. Cavanaugh says the Christian gospel turns our ideas about doing good for others upside down.
I think it’s important to acknowledge that when Christians care for each other, they’re doing so as very flawed human beings; that we’re all in the same kind of position of relying on the grace of others and on the grace of God to overcome our own kind of flaws.
And so the idea that Christians should care for others should never be kind of from the point of view of superiority. And it’s interesting to note that Jesus does not identify himself with the good people who do good things for others; he identifies himself with the people that are hungry and thirsty, and in prison, and naked, and sick and so on. And so it really kind of turns our ideas upside down, that Christians aren’t this kind of battalion of good people out to do good for others, but we’re a people that recognises Christ in our own lives, and Christ in the lives of people that may not seem very Christlike, but there’s this whole kind of mysteriousness of grace in brokenness that I think is really at the heart of the gospel.
