"When all your lives were free"

Continuing the conversation that started here, and drifted here.

To this post at Street Prophets, I posted this response:

I must admit I've thought, more than once, that the proper answer to that question is: "Get crucified."

Not because it was the sought after goal, but because it was the only option left to the world when you lived as much like Jesus as possible, did as much like Jesus as you could do. If you keep pushing the limits of God in the world, the world will push back.

The passage from Thomas Mikelson made me think of that all over again, in a new way. It had been a bit of snark, my disgust with the glibness of the sentiment.

Now I have to reconsider my subconscious, and what kind of trouble it tries to lead me into.

It 's a question of boundaries. No less so than this question:

RMJ:
I find myself, as I attend a United Church of Christ weekly, increasingly gentle in my lack of belief. I have little patience for the directly Christian part of the service, but have yet, in a year or two of attendance, to hear them speak of the larger world, science, the universe, and man's obligation to his fellow man in a manner with which I can't agree. I find myself, much to my surprise, wondering if they'd baptise me on the basis of my beliefs. Would Jesus welcome someone who, while not sure of His resurrection, would follow His command to help fellow man?

There's the last Narnia book, where the Christ-like Aslan welcomes a virtuous non-believer, saying, anything good you've done you've done for me, no matter in whose name you've done it...
ProfWombat

Very different kinds of boundaries, to be sure. But, in the end, the same set of boundaries.

When do we go beyond what God requires? And how do we know? What does the Lord require of you? And what does the rest of the world have to say about it?