what's in a word?

suggested replacement definitions for some common words and phrases, now rather battered around the edges, from dallas willard:

disciple: one learning to live their life as Jesus would if he were they - an apprentice of Jesus; instead of someone who is serious about church involvement

salvation: being caught up into the life that Jesus is living right now on earth; instead of going to heaven, not hell, after death

grace: God acting in our life to accomplish what we cannot do on our own; instead of God's forgiveness for our sins that takes away our guilt

love: to will the good of another; instead of a feeling of desire for, or to act nicely toward, another

kingdom of God: the present range of God's effective will, where what he wants done is done; instead of heaven, or the perfect realm that will exist at the end of history

'Come, let us reason together...'

The Christian message, which in its origins intended to be an affirmation and culmination of Judaism, became very early diverted into a repudiation and negation of Judaism; obsolesence and abrogation of Jewish faith became conviction and doctrine; the new covenant was conceived not as a new phase or disclosure but as abolition and replacement of the ancient one; theological thinking fashinoned its terms in a spirit of antithesis to Judaism. Contrast and contradiction rather than acknowledgement of roots relatedness and indebtedness, became the perspective. Judaism a religion of law, Christinaity a religion of grace; Judaism teaches a God of wrath, Christianity a God of love; Judaism a religion of slavish obedience, Christianity the conviction of free men; Judaism is particularism, Christianity is universalism; Judaism seeks work-righteousness, Christianity preaches faith-righteousness. The teaching of the old covenant a religion of fear, the gospel of the new covenant a religion of love.

Abraham Joshua Herschel