Excerpt from a book with that title by David Gushee and Glen Stassen. It recovers the Sermon on the Mount/Plain teaching as eminently practical, not as impossible high ideal.
excerpt:
The Pattern Continues Throughout The Sermon
We have examined three of the teachings in the Sermon on the Mount and have seen that their basic pattern is threefold. They are not impossible ideals but transforming initiatives based on God’s grace. They are the way of deliverance from the vicious cycles in which we get stuck. Thus we have taken a major step in overcoming the “hard teachings and high ideals” interpretation that has caused evasion of the Sermon. We have begun to see how the Sermon on the Mount consists of transforming initiatives that give real, practical, grace-based guidance for Christian ethics. This is a major step in the recovery of the way of Jesus for Christian ethics.
Wayne Northey was Director of Man-to-Man/Woman-to-Woman – Restorative Christian Ministries (M2/W2) in British Columbia, Canada from 1998 to 2014, when he retired. He has been active in the criminal justice arena and a keen promoter of Restorative Justice since 1974. He has published widely on peacemaking and justice themes. You will find more about that on this website: a work in progress.
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