The Way, the Truth and the Life
In light of my last post I came up with the following way to express the point I was making.
Jesus said he was "the way, the truth and the life."
For many Christians, where faith has been reduced to propositional assent ("I believe x to be true"), Jesus' claim moves through the following sequence:
Truth-Life-Way
That is, we have the following order:
Truth: I believe in Jesus
Life: Because of this belief I get to go to heaven
Way: And maybe, but this doesn't always happen, I'll begin to live more like Jesus
What I was arguing for in the last post was this kind of sequence. A reversal of the traditional order:
Way-Life-Truth
Things go in this order:
Way: I begin to follow the path of Jesus
Life: I discover that in losing my life I find it
Truth: And maybe, but this doesn't always happen, I'll begin to believe the claims about Jesus to be true