The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Conformity to Jesus v individualism?

Tom I appreciate your heavy schedule so please don’t rush to answer this , I’m more than happy to wait !
I also recognise the peripheral nature of my question :wink: and the speculative nature :wink:

this has been something that has always held my curiosity , I believe GOD highly values the individual but given the biblical notion of all being conformed to Christ , does this equate to us all being like robots ?

Meantime, may I venture an opinion? :wink:

I asked God about this some time ago as it troubled me, too. I won’t go and look up precisely what He said in my journal, but He gave me such a lot of lovely pictures . . . one was of a rope comprised of a rainbow of colors, how it shone, and together the colors made up white, but I could also still see each individual color as it was woven into this many-stranded rope. No one of us is big enough to display all of Christ. That’s one reason we need the body, the assembly (ekklesia), the temple built of living stones, etc. Together we are being built into the image of Christ.

Long ago I listened to a sermon series called “The Father Heart of God” (Josh McDowell, I think) and one of the things he said that stuck with me was that when a person was lost for all eternity, we lost that aspect of the expression of God in humankind. Even back then, I knew that couldn’t be right! But His arguments for each of us displaying some aspect(s) and facet(s) of who God is did make a lot of sense to me. It didn’t seem possible, though, that the eternal destruction of some part of His image should be countenanced. Surely He must take that revelation of Himself back and perhaps give it to someone else? Now it makes sense! :slight_smile:

Anyway, no . . . I don’t believe for a moment that we are all destined to be a tribe of identical robots. No, rather; together we convey the image of our beloved Christ in all His fullness. Individually, we convey only a partial picture of Him, but how wonderful and beautiful even in its incompleteness. Imagine the entire (ultimate) body of Christ assembled together spanning maybe the universe; maybe many universes; maybe infinity – together shining forth the true image of God! :laughing: (We should have a smiley that can jump for joy!)

YES, YES, and YES :mrgreen: