VALLEY FORGE, PA (ABNS)-American Baptists, in their General Board meeting here this week, heard a call for "radical discipleship" based on a contemporary reading of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount.
Jesus was not advocating "some kind of perfectionist love," said Dr. Glen H. Stassen, a California professor of Christian ethics and a life-long American Baptist. Instead he taught "regular practices" to deal with anger, greed, conflict, and other human behaviors. The command, "Be ye perfect," really means "be complete in your love, to all kinds of folks," Stassen said.
Stassen teaches Christian ethics at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, and is the author of "Living the Sermon on the Mount" and "Kingdom Ethics: Following Jesus in a Contemporary Context."
Speaking to leaders of a denomination that has had to deal recently with divisive issues, Stassen said people on both sides of controversies often have a clear solution to them-those on the other side should repent. But, he said, "We've got to repent, all of us. We've all got to learn to be a little more humble."
Stassen suggested there is a three-part plan behind the Sermon on the Mount, rather than simply an antithesis of two positions-evil and perfection. Using anger as an example, he observed that Jesus states an evil, diagnoses the vicious circle involved, and only then gives orders about what to do.
"Jesus never commands us not to be angry-it's about when you're angry, what do you do about it," he said.
In a question session, he was asked what he would like to see as the theme of the church's biennial meeting next year. He suggested "a focus of following Jesus in peacemaking." And when another questioner asked whether he was giving enough weight to idealism, he replied that he was not so much interested in people striving toward impossibly high ideals as in seeking "God's gracious deliverance."
Andrew C. Jayne American Baptist Churches, USA Mission Resource Development http://www.abc-usa.org/