I have a confession to make. Until last night, I have not understood atonement.
For the last decade of being a Christian, I just could not arrive at understanding. From the initial references in Genesis with Cain and Abel, I could not reconcile WHY the God of the Bible needed and preferred death sacrifice and allowed it to somehow reconcile payment for sin.
As the story evolves, Jesus, of course, becomes the ultimate sacrifice. He gives himself. He is killed terribly, and then the common phrase is offered, "He died for your sins." I just simply could not make sense of it. Some of you might be more familiar with debt and atonement based culture than I. I have no Jewish heritage, and I have a minimal legalistic background. But I understand guilt and judgement and even fee-based punishment. Atonement is not that. What Christ represents is not that.
So why does God want blood? Why does God honor sacrificial death (animal and otherwise)? I have mulled this question for the last 7-8 years, sometimes throughout Easter, other times as I consider the problem of suffering or the reality of faith.
Last night during a Good Friday meditation it finally crystalized. (The meditation was on sin and payment of sin through the cross. I was sitting there listening wondering why I couldn't make it work.) And then it finally came together in my mind. This is not about sin, though it is about sin. This cross is about faith. This very blood desire of God is really all about faith.
Sin in it's purest, most simple reality is preference of this life, this world, these wants and needs of mine over all else... even God. If we look at the Gospels, what Jesus is articulating over and over is that our filter, our perspective on life is incorrectly focused on ourselves, our wants, needs, our world in front of us. Truly, Jesus keeps trying to get us to understand, reality itself, and God's reach, extends much further, much beyond this life.
So you are sick... believe and be healed. Don't believe in the sickness, the state of your body at this moment. Believe in God who extends beyond all that. Your child died? Believe and death will be overcome. You love your money? That's going to be a problem for you. Everything in life - from wealth to death - is a tiny sliver of what is REAL - dwarfed by the God that can change everything... except is waiting for you to decide you believe in it.
See God requires faith in God. That is the absolute in Christianity. THAT is the hard line.
So back to blood. Why does blood matter? Because giving blood and surrendering to death is the clearest statement that this life is not the end. If you cherish this life and this world, and do not understand and believe in faith that God's reality extends beyond it, spilling blood is a horrible cost. BUT if you do believe, than death means little other than a passage to God's true reality. It is not (just) the blood God desires, it is the faith to believe that this world is inconsequential compared to God and God's reality.
Throughout the Bible, sacrifice is present. But sacrifice is only honored as willingness to move through death in trust. And it happens VERY infrequently Biblically until Jesus. What Jesus did on the cross is to give himself over to death, in order to move into the true and greater life, call it heaven, call it God's reality. He paved the way, he forged the path. Death was just a doorway. Suffering was real, but as Easter highlights, it was a sliver of the experience. "Be of good cheer; He overcame the world."
So what was atoned? Atonement is defined as the repair of an offense or injury. Humanity offended God for generations by not believing in what God did. Instead we still focus our power, intellect, and desire purely on this world, our wants and desires, and humanity then belittles God's power and capacity to change this world as well as God's goodness, nature, and very divinity. The entire Bible is a record of the consistency of this offense. God's chosen people could not see Him over their own view of themselves.
Jesus atones for all that by walking straight into suffering, silently allowing shame and torture and death to be afflicted upon him while he kept his power and capacity and desire on God's reality, God's plan, and God's person. It was not easy. He felt betrayed, afraid, and forsaken. But he more so believed in who and what he knew God to be. And in passing through that trial and torture and death, he revealed it to us - all - forever. He revealed God's full reality to the world, and it was His reality as well. Now and forevermore we can't say we don't really know about God. We can't offend God by denying His power and possibility. We can still turn our backs on God, but we can't misunderstand Him as they did throughout the Israelite history. He is revealed through Jesus in full. If we deny Jesus, we deny God. If we choose to live as atheists, we reject God, but he cannot be silenced or ignored ever again.
Which is why Jesus came back a few days later, and showed His wounds, and ate some fish. I have always wondered about the fish. It says he ate so that his Disciples would actually believe. The Disciples had to understand that Jesus was not a ghost, or some kind of spirit creature, but that the very fabric of reality was not what they thought they knew and divided and sequestered comfortably so they could live as Jewish peasants inside a (sometimes threatening) social / religious structure. Jesus destroyed it all. God had always, but Jesus brought it home for dinner. He could come and go in and out of this temporal space AND eat as He desired. He could be as corporate or as incorporeal as he chose. And this impacted them greatly. They became bold. Their fear of the worlds' authority from days prior was overshadowed by God's real power and the true nature of God's universe. They had seen, felt, and eaten, and now they finally understood. This world was not what they had thought. So they spoke out, they challenged, they called people, and they healed people ... and then many of them were killed as well. But they knew death was just the pathway of God's world.
For us, we get to choose. We don't choose who God is. That question is answered by Jesus. The world now holds Jesus in proper place with God - even if they reject Him. Jesus is overcomer of death and world and inheritor of life... God is ruler of all - or each person can choose to reject it all. We can live in disobedience and selfishness. We get that free-will to choose. But whether we believe or not, it simply happened. Our belief is now only ours - we no longer have the power to deny God's being and person as the entire world once did systematically. This is why Christianity took the world by storm. It was never about a Jewish carpenter who taught a little and then died. It was God's grand display of what the world really is, who God really is, and what it all means for humanity.
Within us each is the capacity to see, to sense, that there is more than there appears to be in this life. Superficiality is soul crushing. God burst through that curtain in the person of Jesus and atoned, made right, the offense of our blindness toward Him and our fixation on ourselves and our misunderstanding of how big and strange and supernatural this thing really is.
So what about sin? Do you need to pay a price? Well you, I, we definitely need to change our minds. He commands first and foremost to love God with the fulness of our mind, spirit and strength. We need to choose to see the big God picture. We need to not dwell in the reality of paychecks and denim styles and disease COMPLETELY. We get to choose what sort of resurrection life we lead. Do we have faith to live a God-sized life? He also commands to love one another. Do we have faith to ask forgiveness from others, treat with kindness and mercy? Do we have courage? Can we boldly accept that this world is overcome, our bodies mean little, our blood is but a vapor - but there is so much more - and treat ourselves, God, and others accordingly? That is resurrected living. That is atonement with God.
Love saturated, blood disregarded, world overcome.
Breaking Open
I love to eat eggs for breakfast - eggs over-easy and rye toast - unquestionably one of my favorite meals.
I am thinking a lot about breaking through shells these days - my own. I am trying through some prayerful honesty to break through the hardness that seems to form over my heart and soul when it comes in contact with the world, and encourage the truth to get out.
I think we all probably adapt by necessity to be 'functional' as adults. I was a very soft kid - the type of kid that cried when other kids cried. Suffice to say that did not get me very far. I actually hated that amount of well, feeling. It was burdensome. And so I rejected that way of being and chose to be different.
I think I retained much of the essential empathy, but it is run through a social filter. What was unnatural in childhood - to choose a different way of being has become primary. Now I am primarily NOT feeling. But I believe God asks me to change that.
God asks us to be like children, to react instinctually with joy, love, even anger to what is good and lovely, or unrighteous.
It is like deconstructing an egg and trusting the gooey middle to stand on its own through faith.
I am thinking a lot about breaking through shells these days - my own. I am trying through some prayerful honesty to break through the hardness that seems to form over my heart and soul when it comes in contact with the world, and encourage the truth to get out.
I think we all probably adapt by necessity to be 'functional' as adults. I was a very soft kid - the type of kid that cried when other kids cried. Suffice to say that did not get me very far. I actually hated that amount of well, feeling. It was burdensome. And so I rejected that way of being and chose to be different.
I think I retained much of the essential empathy, but it is run through a social filter. What was unnatural in childhood - to choose a different way of being has become primary. Now I am primarily NOT feeling. But I believe God asks me to change that.
God asks us to be like children, to react instinctually with joy, love, even anger to what is good and lovely, or unrighteous.
It is like deconstructing an egg and trusting the gooey middle to stand on its own through faith.
Leadership
I am interested in leadership. At every step of my post-collegiate professional life, I have led. Sometimes I have sought those roles, other times the role has been inherited without pursuit. I have never invested in anything long-term that did not evolve into leadership.
This makes me sound power-hungry - even to me! However, I am truly a servant-leader. I am the hardest working staff member. I work the longest hours. When I am not working, I am working - evaluating, assessing, planning. I work at home. I work while I drive. I take vacations in order to work in a way that I cannot WHILE at work.
I delight in encouraging and promoting people. I work with people, and I work for people. People work for me. In all three relationships, I garner the greatest benefit by pursuing others' success. This requires honest assessment, correction, & encouragement of myself and the other people involved. They are relationships though, and I have had many people that chose to not participate in a positive work relationship. I do not tolerate negativity, pettiness, or personal attack. I simply do not have to. I give multiple corrective interactions - documented. If no improvement is made, I sever the relationship.
Assessment is what I do: staff, projects, routines, systems. I get inside a situation, I learn how it operates, and I work to improve its functionality. I am efficient, excellent, honest, and caring - none of those attributes are mutually exclusive though in business they are often shaded to be.
I make decisions through research. I ask people who are in the know. I ask people who have opinions. Then I discern through the options and make the call. Then I implement. Then I assess. Then I adapt. Nothing is ever final.
I have almost no desire for prominence. No, I do not want my 'ideas + time + effort' equation to be dishonestly assigned to someone else. However, I am uncomfortable when honored. It is all part of the daily grind of who I am. Work is what I do.
I do not care to be political. Ever. In any way. I do not want to garner support - it is manipulative. I do not want to rally against - it is subversive. I just want to get things done, respectfully & efficiently.
I have been awarded and promoted. I accept that as a function of my personal pursuit of excellence. People that care about making things more functional appreciate my way of working. There have been situations where I have met hostility and resistance. I understand that not all entities desire growth & development. Typically - they are failing organizations. Now that I reflect, every single place that I encountered institutional negativity has already failed and closed/ sold out to a competitor. Huh.
I am currently leading in a church setting. Suffice to say it is VERY different from a secular professional environment. It is just not as...'professional'. I find this very disheartening considering the word I would have rather replaced in that statement is 'secular'. I am exercising grace and patience though, and I am attempting to retain joy and hope that the environment will shift. I have been involved in positive organizational shifts before for far less important a vocation. Christ's church is certainly worth any value I can contribute.
This makes me sound power-hungry - even to me! However, I am truly a servant-leader. I am the hardest working staff member. I work the longest hours. When I am not working, I am working - evaluating, assessing, planning. I work at home. I work while I drive. I take vacations in order to work in a way that I cannot WHILE at work.
I delight in encouraging and promoting people. I work with people, and I work for people. People work for me. In all three relationships, I garner the greatest benefit by pursuing others' success. This requires honest assessment, correction, & encouragement of myself and the other people involved. They are relationships though, and I have had many people that chose to not participate in a positive work relationship. I do not tolerate negativity, pettiness, or personal attack. I simply do not have to. I give multiple corrective interactions - documented. If no improvement is made, I sever the relationship.
Assessment is what I do: staff, projects, routines, systems. I get inside a situation, I learn how it operates, and I work to improve its functionality. I am efficient, excellent, honest, and caring - none of those attributes are mutually exclusive though in business they are often shaded to be.
I make decisions through research. I ask people who are in the know. I ask people who have opinions. Then I discern through the options and make the call. Then I implement. Then I assess. Then I adapt. Nothing is ever final.
I have almost no desire for prominence. No, I do not want my 'ideas + time + effort' equation to be dishonestly assigned to someone else. However, I am uncomfortable when honored. It is all part of the daily grind of who I am. Work is what I do.
I do not care to be political. Ever. In any way. I do not want to garner support - it is manipulative. I do not want to rally against - it is subversive. I just want to get things done, respectfully & efficiently.
I have been awarded and promoted. I accept that as a function of my personal pursuit of excellence. People that care about making things more functional appreciate my way of working. There have been situations where I have met hostility and resistance. I understand that not all entities desire growth & development. Typically - they are failing organizations. Now that I reflect, every single place that I encountered institutional negativity has already failed and closed/ sold out to a competitor. Huh.
I am currently leading in a church setting. Suffice to say it is VERY different from a secular professional environment. It is just not as...'professional'. I find this very disheartening considering the word I would have rather replaced in that statement is 'secular'. I am exercising grace and patience though, and I am attempting to retain joy and hope that the environment will shift. I have been involved in positive organizational shifts before for far less important a vocation. Christ's church is certainly worth any value I can contribute.
Closing In - Prayer
God is not really elusive at all. We act as though we cannot draw close mostly, I think, to excuse our lack of interest and effort at drawing close. But it is really available to us all. Set aside arrogance and ignorance and:
Pray - God is our 'ever-present companion'. Act like it. Talk with the Lord about everything you see, are confused by, are hurt by, are delighted in. The Lord is right with you and sees it all - why ignore Him?
Grow in your prayer life - start listening for God to talk with you. If it wasn't available, then scripture would not repeatedly teach about God's INTENSE desire for that relationship & communication with us. That's God's desire - not just ours.
We don't even have to use words. It is hard to articulate the true condition of our spirits. God already knows all that is inside of you, so do not worry about how you say it, simply bring it to God. The most honest expression of grief is wailing and gnashing of teeth, of joy, laughter. Share it all with God. We REALLY can't fool Him anyway or impress Him with our insight or vocabulary.
Be open to the Spirit leading your communication with God. Eventually, as we are able to pray openly and without inhibition (and that is key), the Spirit will lead us into new ways of prayer: intercession, healing, overcoming evil, speaking the mysteries of the Spirit. It is not weird, it is God using us in the natural to affect the spiritual through our role as His person. Eventually even prayer is less about us, and more about being God's tool. That is the goal for those that follow God. Be open to God's use.
Pray - God is our 'ever-present companion'. Act like it. Talk with the Lord about everything you see, are confused by, are hurt by, are delighted in. The Lord is right with you and sees it all - why ignore Him?
Grow in your prayer life - start listening for God to talk with you. If it wasn't available, then scripture would not repeatedly teach about God's INTENSE desire for that relationship & communication with us. That's God's desire - not just ours.
We don't even have to use words. It is hard to articulate the true condition of our spirits. God already knows all that is inside of you, so do not worry about how you say it, simply bring it to God. The most honest expression of grief is wailing and gnashing of teeth, of joy, laughter. Share it all with God. We REALLY can't fool Him anyway or impress Him with our insight or vocabulary.
Be open to the Spirit leading your communication with God. Eventually, as we are able to pray openly and without inhibition (and that is key), the Spirit will lead us into new ways of prayer: intercession, healing, overcoming evil, speaking the mysteries of the Spirit. It is not weird, it is God using us in the natural to affect the spiritual through our role as His person. Eventually even prayer is less about us, and more about being God's tool. That is the goal for those that follow God. Be open to God's use.
My whack at Genesis
This is using the Hebrew, from a scientific worldview (which they did not have in the traditional translations to English).
Source: http://interlinearbible.org/genesis/1.htm
__________
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
The breath/ spirit of God moved over the surface of the deep which was dark and formless void.
God said, let there be light, and there was light. God separated the darkness and the light. The separation of light from darkness was the first era.
God separated the expanse. God made the expanse above different from the expanse below, substances were separated from substances. The aggregation into waters and firmament(solids) occurred in the second era.
God gathered the waters together and separated them from dry land, seeing it was good.
Plants and seeds and fruit and trees began to sprout from the earth each seed yielding its kind of plant. And this emergence of separate land and time of vegetation abundance was the third era.
God separated in the expanse, lights, seasons, signs of night and day. God gave the greater light over the day and the lesser light over the night. And the emergence of the sky and its features occurred during the fourth era.
The fifth era was an explosion of living creatures. The seas teemed with life, the air was full of wings, and God saw the great good. And God blessed the creatures to multiply.
Next came the living creatures of land, mammals of all kinds from small to beasts. And God saw it was good.
And then God made humans, to rule the land, and everything in it. God created human in the image of God, men and women, God blessed and created them. God gave them the earth to multiply and become dominant over, to take from for food plants, and animals. And God saw it was very good. That was the sixth era.
And the seventh era he rested from his work of creation.
___________________
Source: http://interlinearbible.org/genesis/1.htm
__________
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
The breath/ spirit of God moved over the surface of the deep which was dark and formless void.
God said, let there be light, and there was light. God separated the darkness and the light. The separation of light from darkness was the first era.
God separated the expanse. God made the expanse above different from the expanse below, substances were separated from substances. The aggregation into waters and firmament(solids) occurred in the second era.
God gathered the waters together and separated them from dry land, seeing it was good.
Plants and seeds and fruit and trees began to sprout from the earth each seed yielding its kind of plant. And this emergence of separate land and time of vegetation abundance was the third era.
God separated in the expanse, lights, seasons, signs of night and day. God gave the greater light over the day and the lesser light over the night. And the emergence of the sky and its features occurred during the fourth era.
The fifth era was an explosion of living creatures. The seas teemed with life, the air was full of wings, and God saw the great good. And God blessed the creatures to multiply.
Next came the living creatures of land, mammals of all kinds from small to beasts. And God saw it was good.
And then God made humans, to rule the land, and everything in it. God created human in the image of God, men and women, God blessed and created them. God gave them the earth to multiply and become dominant over, to take from for food plants, and animals. And God saw it was very good. That was the sixth era.
And the seventh era he rested from his work of creation.
___________________
What is FAITH?
So after years of living as a non-believer (and an adamant one), and now years living as a sold-out believer in Christ, I have to talk about faith. Faith faith faith - the thing that this whole deal revolves around - but seems so intangible to so many! What is faith? How can we apply faith? Does it matter? After all, we stood up in front of the church and got dunked in the baptismal, right? Isn't that all that counts?
Well I guess it depends on what you want. Or better said, what you expect. When I read the Gospels, I get hungry for what Jesus taught! He rebukes His disciples for their lack of faith when they cannot heal, admonishes them for not calming a deadly storm, assures them that they will do greater things than He with faith & the Holy Spirit. Yet we seem content with just knowing that our ordinary secular lives won't end in a lake of fire. Personally, I think He was hoping for more for us - a WHOLE LOT MORE.
So what can faith in Christ do? What does having faith make possible? Well according to Christ, with faith like a mustard seed, we could send obstacles into the sea. We could heal the sick, give sight to the blind, cast aside the darkness of the world, free captives...even ourselves...or our family members. Think for a minute, what if you could overcome disease through faith in Christ? What if you could protect your family from evil? What if you could overcome fear & self-doubt? Would you want to be able to do that?
It sounds so impossible doesnt it? Well that is because the simple fact is that you and I have a LOT of faith. Most of our existence is defined by what we believe in. And easier way to understand this is to ask ourselves, 'what do we expect?' Expectation is just another name for faith, and it reveals that we TEND TO NOT be placing our faith in Christ. We believe that murderers and rapists could get us or our kids, and we expect that we and they are at risk. We believe or expect that cancer is in our future since it was in our mom's. We believe that when the doctors say terminal, that is the end of the story - we expect to die as they describe. See our faith is very strong - rock solid - cut and dried. It is just placed in something other than Christ's promises, Christ's teaching, Christ Himself.
So get down and dirty and analyze your thinking about fear. Why do you EXPECT to be rejected by other people? Why do you EXPECT your husband or wife to be unfaithful? Why do you EXPECT harm to come to you or your family? Isn't it really because you believe the lies of the enemy, that you are worthy of nothing good? Isn't it really because you DO NOT BELIEVE God is capable of working here, today, in your life and in your situation?
God is so explicit about the consequences of our unbelief, of our skepticism, of our fear. How many times are we admonished to 'Fear not!'? How many times did Christ ask an individual if they believed He could heal them before He did anything? This position of our thinking, of our expectations, REALLY matters in how God impacts our reality! Could Christ have healed, raised the dead, if they had denied His ability to do so? The Gospels answer that question and tell us explicitly that where he was denied, in His hometown, He could not work!
Wow. Think about that for a second. Does our expectation of rejection, disease, harm, impede Christ from working in our lives? Why would we ever expect it be any different?
But instead we get all 'spiritual' about the matter and try to cite God's 'will' as the reason we fail, die, lose family, lose battles. Seriously? Do we pretend to be so insightful of God's heart that we can live failing unbelieving lives and then blame God when we have explicitly refused to give Him access and power over our own hearts, souls, and circumstances?
So how do we live it out differently? How do we claim & exercise FAITH in CHRIST and all that offers? Well for starters we have to get educated. What does God want for God's people? If you cannot answer that without hesitation, do some research. God wants God's people to claim Him, to love Him, to rely on Him and to put down ALL OTHER things we believe in more than Him. Yep, it's the first commandment. And only after that come the promises of what will happen when we do this seemingly simple (but more complicated) thing. Get into the Word - read it - get excited by it. Yes, it is for you, today, now. God can do more now than ever if we believe - if we expect it!
And yep, you've got a part to do too. You cannot feed the lies of the enemy! You can't watch a bunch of tv shows about anorexic models and then blame God for not giving you a positive body image. You can't devour porn and concurrently challenge God to work in your marriage. You can't watch/ read murder mysteries and wonder why God hasn't taught you about His protection. We have a VERY peculiar notion that our relationship with God is quarantined into places we like it to stay - church, when we have company over, want to look pious etc etc.
So suck it up, and get with God now IF YOU WANT WHAT GOD IS OFFERING. Every minute that you struggle, simply return to God. Choose what you believe and then pursue it as though everything depended on it - because it really does. That, my friends, is called worship. It isn't a time, it isn't a church service. It is an attitude of the heart towards the righteous, eternal King of creation. And it is a choice. For whatever reason, God saw fit to make us free. Free to live with our weakness and misery or free to surrender to His incredible power and become His follower. As a parent I wonder about His logic on this one, but I don't have to understand it to know that it is true. And I for one, am ALL IN on worshiping the risen King by believing the my life is His great delight, that He works all things together for good, and that He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.
Well I guess it depends on what you want. Or better said, what you expect. When I read the Gospels, I get hungry for what Jesus taught! He rebukes His disciples for their lack of faith when they cannot heal, admonishes them for not calming a deadly storm, assures them that they will do greater things than He with faith & the Holy Spirit. Yet we seem content with just knowing that our ordinary secular lives won't end in a lake of fire. Personally, I think He was hoping for more for us - a WHOLE LOT MORE.
So what can faith in Christ do? What does having faith make possible? Well according to Christ, with faith like a mustard seed, we could send obstacles into the sea. We could heal the sick, give sight to the blind, cast aside the darkness of the world, free captives...even ourselves...or our family members. Think for a minute, what if you could overcome disease through faith in Christ? What if you could protect your family from evil? What if you could overcome fear & self-doubt? Would you want to be able to do that?
It sounds so impossible doesnt it? Well that is because the simple fact is that you and I have a LOT of faith. Most of our existence is defined by what we believe in. And easier way to understand this is to ask ourselves, 'what do we expect?' Expectation is just another name for faith, and it reveals that we TEND TO NOT be placing our faith in Christ. We believe that murderers and rapists could get us or our kids, and we expect that we and they are at risk. We believe or expect that cancer is in our future since it was in our mom's. We believe that when the doctors say terminal, that is the end of the story - we expect to die as they describe. See our faith is very strong - rock solid - cut and dried. It is just placed in something other than Christ's promises, Christ's teaching, Christ Himself.
So get down and dirty and analyze your thinking about fear. Why do you EXPECT to be rejected by other people? Why do you EXPECT your husband or wife to be unfaithful? Why do you EXPECT harm to come to you or your family? Isn't it really because you believe the lies of the enemy, that you are worthy of nothing good? Isn't it really because you DO NOT BELIEVE God is capable of working here, today, in your life and in your situation?
God is so explicit about the consequences of our unbelief, of our skepticism, of our fear. How many times are we admonished to 'Fear not!'? How many times did Christ ask an individual if they believed He could heal them before He did anything? This position of our thinking, of our expectations, REALLY matters in how God impacts our reality! Could Christ have healed, raised the dead, if they had denied His ability to do so? The Gospels answer that question and tell us explicitly that where he was denied, in His hometown, He could not work!
Wow. Think about that for a second. Does our expectation of rejection, disease, harm, impede Christ from working in our lives? Why would we ever expect it be any different?
But instead we get all 'spiritual' about the matter and try to cite God's 'will' as the reason we fail, die, lose family, lose battles. Seriously? Do we pretend to be so insightful of God's heart that we can live failing unbelieving lives and then blame God when we have explicitly refused to give Him access and power over our own hearts, souls, and circumstances?
So how do we live it out differently? How do we claim & exercise FAITH in CHRIST and all that offers? Well for starters we have to get educated. What does God want for God's people? If you cannot answer that without hesitation, do some research. God wants God's people to claim Him, to love Him, to rely on Him and to put down ALL OTHER things we believe in more than Him. Yep, it's the first commandment. And only after that come the promises of what will happen when we do this seemingly simple (but more complicated) thing. Get into the Word - read it - get excited by it. Yes, it is for you, today, now. God can do more now than ever if we believe - if we expect it!
And yep, you've got a part to do too. You cannot feed the lies of the enemy! You can't watch a bunch of tv shows about anorexic models and then blame God for not giving you a positive body image. You can't devour porn and concurrently challenge God to work in your marriage. You can't watch/ read murder mysteries and wonder why God hasn't taught you about His protection. We have a VERY peculiar notion that our relationship with God is quarantined into places we like it to stay - church, when we have company over, want to look pious etc etc.
So suck it up, and get with God now IF YOU WANT WHAT GOD IS OFFERING. Every minute that you struggle, simply return to God. Choose what you believe and then pursue it as though everything depended on it - because it really does. That, my friends, is called worship. It isn't a time, it isn't a church service. It is an attitude of the heart towards the righteous, eternal King of creation. And it is a choice. For whatever reason, God saw fit to make us free. Free to live with our weakness and misery or free to surrender to His incredible power and become His follower. As a parent I wonder about His logic on this one, but I don't have to understand it to know that it is true. And I for one, am ALL IN on worshiping the risen King by believing the my life is His great delight, that He works all things together for good, and that He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.
Protein, mineral, fat
This is our basic composition as a living organisms. We are lumps of muscle, skin, fat, nerve, bone, hair etc. But more basically still, bits of lumpy, bumpy protein, fat, and minerals.
Reflect for a moment on the importance we place on these 'stuffs.' Isn't attraction really just a statement of, 'I really like the arrangement of your protein' ?
Now think about the consequence - the sometimes devastating consequence - of having protein fat and mineral arranged in a manner others do NOT find attractive...or worthy...or capable.
We honor some protein, mineral, and fat lumps with praise, money, power, titles. And from others we demand subservience, disgrace, scorn, and invisibility.
Chemically, we are all within minutia of being identical...identical. And by portion still interchangeable. Your heart can serve me, my liver you, our protein, mineral, fat, the same.
Now think of the beauty of the spirit, the soul. Truly here is beauty worth honoring. Here is the delicacy of uniqueness. Here is the tender lamb within us each - the lamb designated by the great creator for whatever life and purpose the mighty and tender I AM intends alone. Unfettered unlimited by the likes of organic molecules. Of organs. Of flesh.
Testes, ovaries, muscle, skin, beauty, pale. None of it is real, & none of it life!
Jesus in John 4:
23Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth."
Be not enamored with the arrangement of protein, mineral & fat! And be not dismayed by those who are, they are wrong, base. But those that use it as a criterion of true relationship & calling from God - mourn them! But do not be crippled by them, they are powerless and empty - as their protein, mineral and fat! For these chemicals are but collections of atoms - nearly entirely composed of vacant space, void. Those that stand upon such to reach God, or impede another's reach, stand entirely upon a house far emptier than one of cards.
So be not fettered by such nonsense. Dance. Dance regardless of your fleshly composition! With each movement in praise your spirit, delicate, beyond comparison, rejoices mightily in its kinship with divinity! And are you ever beautiful! Oh my! The likes of you have never been seen before! A beauty of the ages indeed! Fearfully & Wonderfully Made! Rejoice!
Reflect for a moment on the importance we place on these 'stuffs.' Isn't attraction really just a statement of, 'I really like the arrangement of your protein' ?
Now think about the consequence - the sometimes devastating consequence - of having protein fat and mineral arranged in a manner others do NOT find attractive...or worthy...or capable.
We honor some protein, mineral, and fat lumps with praise, money, power, titles. And from others we demand subservience, disgrace, scorn, and invisibility.
Chemically, we are all within minutia of being identical...identical. And by portion still interchangeable. Your heart can serve me, my liver you, our protein, mineral, fat, the same.
Now think of the beauty of the spirit, the soul. Truly here is beauty worth honoring. Here is the delicacy of uniqueness. Here is the tender lamb within us each - the lamb designated by the great creator for whatever life and purpose the mighty and tender I AM intends alone. Unfettered unlimited by the likes of organic molecules. Of organs. Of flesh.
Testes, ovaries, muscle, skin, beauty, pale. None of it is real, & none of it life!
Jesus in John 4:
23Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth."
Be not enamored with the arrangement of protein, mineral & fat! And be not dismayed by those who are, they are wrong, base. But those that use it as a criterion of true relationship & calling from God - mourn them! But do not be crippled by them, they are powerless and empty - as their protein, mineral and fat! For these chemicals are but collections of atoms - nearly entirely composed of vacant space, void. Those that stand upon such to reach God, or impede another's reach, stand entirely upon a house far emptier than one of cards.
So be not fettered by such nonsense. Dance. Dance regardless of your fleshly composition! With each movement in praise your spirit, delicate, beyond comparison, rejoices mightily in its kinship with divinity! And are you ever beautiful! Oh my! The likes of you have never been seen before! A beauty of the ages indeed! Fearfully & Wonderfully Made! Rejoice!
Salvation & Authority
A consistent theme throughout Jesus' teachings in the Book of John is the concept that God draws those that God would to God -that God calls the flock. That salvation is IN FACT up to God & God's leading. I like the implications of this teaching. Somewhere along the line, we all get this notion that we can proceed with our lives, live in sin when we want, then return to God at our own choosing. 'I was blind, but now I see' - because I chose to see. We all believe - BELIEVE - in our own Free Will to faith or refusal. It is up to us...on our own authority. Christ teaches the exact opposite. It is NOT up to our timing, discretion, or will to come to faith. God calls those that God would call. None come to God except those that God calls.
It is interesting, the implications of this for evangelism, for revival, for individual reformation. I was listening to a sermon on the way back from Minnesota about people who harden their necks against God - that was the phrase - hardening the neck against God. That resonated with me because it was in fact such an accurate description of rebellion - as in the rebellion I practiced in my own life, and the rebellion I had witnessed in others. All of us fell lower and deeper into vice and distress. This rebellion did not advance any of them or me but to the contrary cost us much. This rebellion is the living death that Christ teaches about in John, in it we are as dead, spiritual husks, self-centered, spiritually aimless, given to vice and shackled by the needs and wants of the flesh.
I know in my life, while living as an atheist, I was clearly called by God, ignored it, forsook it for the promise of atheistic freedom, felt the strangulation of distress, shackled firm in my own emptiness, and was then given a beautiful son, whose life was in fact, the sunrise of my faith. A gift too beautiful and too divine to ignore - the subtle calls lifted to an aria that surrounded me with its majesty. I trot freely through life now, submitting, as best as I am able, to the Holy Spirit and delightedly so.
Our individual will is a troubling thing. Striking out against God and the leading of the Holy Spirit we live in that death rebellion, in concert with Them we live in submission. Many - of Neitzschian persuasion find any submission to be intolerable, delighting in the promise of the superman, resulting in their own steady reduction to walking husks, dead, empty. Even while knowing that God desires for them more goodness than they are ever capable of imagining for themselves, they would have none.
Submission is the only path to life, even to freedom, certainly to goodness. Some will stubbornly harden their necks, and will God call them to life? That is what I want to know. Will God call my friend? My foe? The man on the street for whom I prayed? Yet, we can only know for our own hearing, our own story. We are only authors of our own submission and only hearers of our own call from God. Of course we can be led by the Holy Spirit to evangelize to someone, or pray for someone to be called...or to intercede on behalf of someone...the key is to submit to being led in those and all matters.
A beautiful passage in Job describes :
God heals the afflicted by their affliction,
and opens their ear by adversity.
And he also allured you out of distress,
into a wide open place, with no cramping.
And what was set on your table was full of fatness.
I think of the woman at the well, and how Jesus reveals Himself to her - replacing her shame with infinite worthiness. Her freedom was granted in that calling, that revelation broke her bondage of death in empty vice. Her future instantaneously wide open, with no cramping. And she became a prophet.
It is interesting, the implications of this for evangelism, for revival, for individual reformation. I was listening to a sermon on the way back from Minnesota about people who harden their necks against God - that was the phrase - hardening the neck against God. That resonated with me because it was in fact such an accurate description of rebellion - as in the rebellion I practiced in my own life, and the rebellion I had witnessed in others. All of us fell lower and deeper into vice and distress. This rebellion did not advance any of them or me but to the contrary cost us much. This rebellion is the living death that Christ teaches about in John, in it we are as dead, spiritual husks, self-centered, spiritually aimless, given to vice and shackled by the needs and wants of the flesh.
I know in my life, while living as an atheist, I was clearly called by God, ignored it, forsook it for the promise of atheistic freedom, felt the strangulation of distress, shackled firm in my own emptiness, and was then given a beautiful son, whose life was in fact, the sunrise of my faith. A gift too beautiful and too divine to ignore - the subtle calls lifted to an aria that surrounded me with its majesty. I trot freely through life now, submitting, as best as I am able, to the Holy Spirit and delightedly so.
Our individual will is a troubling thing. Striking out against God and the leading of the Holy Spirit we live in that death rebellion, in concert with Them we live in submission. Many - of Neitzschian persuasion find any submission to be intolerable, delighting in the promise of the superman, resulting in their own steady reduction to walking husks, dead, empty. Even while knowing that God desires for them more goodness than they are ever capable of imagining for themselves, they would have none.
Submission is the only path to life, even to freedom, certainly to goodness. Some will stubbornly harden their necks, and will God call them to life? That is what I want to know. Will God call my friend? My foe? The man on the street for whom I prayed? Yet, we can only know for our own hearing, our own story. We are only authors of our own submission and only hearers of our own call from God. Of course we can be led by the Holy Spirit to evangelize to someone, or pray for someone to be called...or to intercede on behalf of someone...the key is to submit to being led in those and all matters.
A beautiful passage in Job describes :
God heals the afflicted by their affliction,
and opens their ear by adversity.
And he also allured you out of distress,
into a wide open place, with no cramping.
And what was set on your table was full of fatness.
I think of the woman at the well, and how Jesus reveals Himself to her - replacing her shame with infinite worthiness. Her freedom was granted in that calling, that revelation broke her bondage of death in empty vice. Her future instantaneously wide open, with no cramping. And she became a prophet.
The HIGHEST Bar
Well I have been thinking about Christians...being a Christian...and the altogether too common tendency of non-believers to hold up our failings as cause for their disbelief. I have known MANY atheists - agnostics - AND pure heathens who cite the misbehavior of Christians to refute the existence of God or to distance themselves from and justify their refusal to pursue a life of faith. Whenever something bad happens with a Christian - the priest pedophilia, a televangelist's affair or embezzlement - whatever - I hear the talkers talking. It is the exposed hypocrisy they delight in, the downfall of the ones who seemed to have been lifted high.
I used to have a little saying: 'You can't judge Christ by Christians.' It is a little like Isaac Newton's school classes. He was always scoring top marks. BUT if the class score was averaged it would always fall well below his individual grades. And no one would consider judging Issac Newton, mathematician & physicist extraordinaire, on the marks attained by the LEAST functional kid in the class. Or for sports geeks, think of Michael Jordan's teams. He is not remembered for their worst performance! Nor should he be remembered through the lens of the lowest performer's statistics. It simply makes no sense.
Yet this is the popular mindset toward Christianity. Yes there are idiots, criminals, philanderers, and cretins abounding in this world. EVERYWHERE. Some are drawn to Christianity as a means to their salvation, as we all should, but many others use it to advance their own devices...and vices. That fact has no bearing on the person, the Deity, or the perfection of the Christ! Nor should it cause vacillation in the vast movement of individuals towards spiritual growth and development through relationship with the Christ!
No, WE are no God-incarnate. We simply recognize who was and how desperately we need Him to get through our days, our lives. No, WE will NEVER attain Christlikeness, and that is simply how why we need Him so. He is the highest bar, one that we will only leap for and fail to reach, but arise ready to leap again! If you should happen to see a glimmer of Him in us it is simply in spite of ourselves, and it will not remain, but will fade as we remember ourselves, unsustainably selfless. We are not the Christ, but maybe through our tears, our worship, our prayers, our cries, His voice will sing to your soul, His laughter delight your spirit, His tears wash clean your wounds. That is at best our aspiration.
I used to have a little saying: 'You can't judge Christ by Christians.' It is a little like Isaac Newton's school classes. He was always scoring top marks. BUT if the class score was averaged it would always fall well below his individual grades. And no one would consider judging Issac Newton, mathematician & physicist extraordinaire, on the marks attained by the LEAST functional kid in the class. Or for sports geeks, think of Michael Jordan's teams. He is not remembered for their worst performance! Nor should he be remembered through the lens of the lowest performer's statistics. It simply makes no sense.
Yet this is the popular mindset toward Christianity. Yes there are idiots, criminals, philanderers, and cretins abounding in this world. EVERYWHERE. Some are drawn to Christianity as a means to their salvation, as we all should, but many others use it to advance their own devices...and vices. That fact has no bearing on the person, the Deity, or the perfection of the Christ! Nor should it cause vacillation in the vast movement of individuals towards spiritual growth and development through relationship with the Christ!
No, WE are no God-incarnate. We simply recognize who was and how desperately we need Him to get through our days, our lives. No, WE will NEVER attain Christlikeness, and that is simply how why we need Him so. He is the highest bar, one that we will only leap for and fail to reach, but arise ready to leap again! If you should happen to see a glimmer of Him in us it is simply in spite of ourselves, and it will not remain, but will fade as we remember ourselves, unsustainably selfless. We are not the Christ, but maybe through our tears, our worship, our prayers, our cries, His voice will sing to your soul, His laughter delight your spirit, His tears wash clean your wounds. That is at best our aspiration.
Politics = Vice
Well now that is a hefty title. HOWEVER, I arrive at the point with no lightness or farce. I was visiting my dear dear friend last week, and we were talking about the candidates...and their wives. Her husband took affront to my statements and joined in with rebuttals and we embarked on a 2 1/2 hour late night conversation that transitioned from venom to respect in pretty short order. HOWEVER...it did start with venom.
Upon much reflecting, I realized that we are, in this fine nation, embarking on a voyage of nonsense, lacking pith, and only engendering disrespect and generalized nonsense. I am quite sure that many people spend their political efforts wisely, attempting to get educated about the issues, the players, the positions, so that they can land in a place that sits rightly with them. I certainly have. However, the problem is all of the above. The issues are fabricated at worst and hyper-simplified at best. The players are mere caricatures of the movements that dominate the landscape at the moment, the wind that blows their party at the time, and at worst they attempt to ride all winds all the time. The positions are invented, and sans all the nuance and subtlety that dominate that actuality of the human experience.
When one does consider the nuance and is mindful of subtlety, there is PER THE NORM no black and no white, only shades of grey that must be discussed over long hours before it is apparent that while your grey may be slightly different than mine it is still quite similar.
Years like this attempt to only highlight the differences - like clicking contrast on a digital portrait until the image becomes a Warholian grid of extremes - certainly no longer the true likeness of a human face...hardly human at all.
All this is to say that we are responsible for our path, for our choices, for our beliefs. But we are not to be held in the palm of an other's hand, told what we appear to be, when in fact we are far far different. So I am retreating from such positioning, holding gently that which I know like a baby bird in palm, relaxing into the experiences that make me unique, and trusting, trusting.
The spirit is like the wind blowing where it wants while no one knows where it comes from or where it is going. I will be like a spiritual kite, politically, blown precisely where God wills, nowhere landing but where it takes me. And it will be ours together, this truth. None different, none other, no more, no less.
Upon much reflecting, I realized that we are, in this fine nation, embarking on a voyage of nonsense, lacking pith, and only engendering disrespect and generalized nonsense. I am quite sure that many people spend their political efforts wisely, attempting to get educated about the issues, the players, the positions, so that they can land in a place that sits rightly with them. I certainly have. However, the problem is all of the above. The issues are fabricated at worst and hyper-simplified at best. The players are mere caricatures of the movements that dominate the landscape at the moment, the wind that blows their party at the time, and at worst they attempt to ride all winds all the time. The positions are invented, and sans all the nuance and subtlety that dominate that actuality of the human experience.
When one does consider the nuance and is mindful of subtlety, there is PER THE NORM no black and no white, only shades of grey that must be discussed over long hours before it is apparent that while your grey may be slightly different than mine it is still quite similar.
Years like this attempt to only highlight the differences - like clicking contrast on a digital portrait until the image becomes a Warholian grid of extremes - certainly no longer the true likeness of a human face...hardly human at all.
All this is to say that we are responsible for our path, for our choices, for our beliefs. But we are not to be held in the palm of an other's hand, told what we appear to be, when in fact we are far far different. So I am retreating from such positioning, holding gently that which I know like a baby bird in palm, relaxing into the experiences that make me unique, and trusting, trusting.
The spirit is like the wind blowing where it wants while no one knows where it comes from or where it is going. I will be like a spiritual kite, politically, blown precisely where God wills, nowhere landing but where it takes me. And it will be ours together, this truth. None different, none other, no more, no less.
SELF-consciousness
I have been thinking about self-consciousness. It all started a few days ago when I was doing some research on the art of small-talking. A close friend is in a socially demanding professional position while being an introvert and admitted to having major difficulty in connecting in the short time frames of passing conversation. I too am an introvert, but do to several years in sales/ management positions have become (almost) totally fearless in striking up conversations. As I was trying to find a resource to assist in this process I read something that TOTALLY fascinated me and sent my mind meandering down the implications trail. The article said something about how successful small talk was based in EMPATHY. This resounded with me because I have always been empathetic - crying when other kids cried in school etc. And I recognize that my social mode is based in combating somebody else's discomfort. So I tend to act more accessible, less intellectual, and more friendly, smiley or silly than I am naturally when I first meet people in order to lessen the threshold of their communication comfort. My sisters find it horrifically awkward. And I remember the first time my husband saw me in action (a couple of college girls were working as Miller Lite promoters, and I struck up a conversation and we bonded over their college plans) and mentioned something about how it was like a different person was sitting next to him.
Well I recognize this is good and bad. While able to connect with people on THEIR level...I often feel like I am not connecting on MY level. I have had entire relationships where people did not know I was an artist, musician, science aficionado, etc etc. And that is difficult for me still to work from point A - the comfort threshold, to point B - real interpersonal relating. BUT I have also had MANY passing meetings and longer relationships where people point out that they do not connect with others the way they do with me. A good friend once was passing in the hall and we started a nice faith conversation, and she exclaimed that she did not have those with other friends. And that was validating. That is what I want - imperfect but worthwhile.
But I digress. My point is that I am fascinated by the idea that self-consciousness competes with empathy. I was HORRIFICALLY self-consciousness during undergrad. I remember early-on being invited to a bowling outing and I went down to the lobby where we were supposed to meet and became so disabled by fear that I hid in the bathroom until I heard everyone leave. At the root of that experience was a real and dishonest self-obsession. I was so worried about myself (appearance composure etc) that I could not set myself aside to connect with others. Fortunately, life removed me from that role. In speaking to my friend about how they were feeling, I recognized that old familiar sensation of self-consciousness. They were not seeing past themselves to others...they were stuck in themselves and therein paralyzed.
As Christians we are asked (well demanded really) to get outside ourselves and connect with others. When I committed to Christ a couple of years ago I realized that I needed to get to know Him. One of the things I had trouble finding in my readings and the sermons I heard was a sense of Christ's necessary charisma. Christ looked at people and their lives were changed. I can imagine what that felt like...how I wish I could have been there to see Him! He said a simple thing and they left their life and followed him all over their known countryside. They left behind family, society, wealth...and followed him through danger and hunger and their own shortcomings. The Bible describes that they did so because they felt connected to Him as though they could not survive without that look, that presence, those words.
As Christians, we must understand the requirement to adopt, accept and fill this role with others inside and outside our community. When Christians are coldly judgemental and tell others they cannot belong to Christ because of their mistakes or lack of belief or differences from Christ, I am saddened because we are not being the eyes, words and presence of Christ. When Christians are introverted, and come and go defensively in the world I am again reminded that we are not being the eyes, words, and presence of Christ. Christ challenged, and called and touched and loved and EMPATHIZED and therefore so must we.
So when you pass somebody in the hall and say something like "good morning", say it with the heartfelt empathy of desiring their blessing. And if conversation is allowed to develop with someone, make it known that you care for them and their well-being. Do not be self-centered in your self-consciousness. Adopt the role of the Christ and light up their moment in love.
Well I recognize this is good and bad. While able to connect with people on THEIR level...I often feel like I am not connecting on MY level. I have had entire relationships where people did not know I was an artist, musician, science aficionado, etc etc. And that is difficult for me still to work from point A - the comfort threshold, to point B - real interpersonal relating. BUT I have also had MANY passing meetings and longer relationships where people point out that they do not connect with others the way they do with me. A good friend once was passing in the hall and we started a nice faith conversation, and she exclaimed that she did not have those with other friends. And that was validating. That is what I want - imperfect but worthwhile.
But I digress. My point is that I am fascinated by the idea that self-consciousness competes with empathy. I was HORRIFICALLY self-consciousness during undergrad. I remember early-on being invited to a bowling outing and I went down to the lobby where we were supposed to meet and became so disabled by fear that I hid in the bathroom until I heard everyone leave. At the root of that experience was a real and dishonest self-obsession. I was so worried about myself (appearance composure etc) that I could not set myself aside to connect with others. Fortunately, life removed me from that role. In speaking to my friend about how they were feeling, I recognized that old familiar sensation of self-consciousness. They were not seeing past themselves to others...they were stuck in themselves and therein paralyzed.
As Christians we are asked (well demanded really) to get outside ourselves and connect with others. When I committed to Christ a couple of years ago I realized that I needed to get to know Him. One of the things I had trouble finding in my readings and the sermons I heard was a sense of Christ's necessary charisma. Christ looked at people and their lives were changed. I can imagine what that felt like...how I wish I could have been there to see Him! He said a simple thing and they left their life and followed him all over their known countryside. They left behind family, society, wealth...and followed him through danger and hunger and their own shortcomings. The Bible describes that they did so because they felt connected to Him as though they could not survive without that look, that presence, those words.
As Christians, we must understand the requirement to adopt, accept and fill this role with others inside and outside our community. When Christians are coldly judgemental and tell others they cannot belong to Christ because of their mistakes or lack of belief or differences from Christ, I am saddened because we are not being the eyes, words and presence of Christ. When Christians are introverted, and come and go defensively in the world I am again reminded that we are not being the eyes, words, and presence of Christ. Christ challenged, and called and touched and loved and EMPATHIZED and therefore so must we.
So when you pass somebody in the hall and say something like "good morning", say it with the heartfelt empathy of desiring their blessing. And if conversation is allowed to develop with someone, make it known that you care for them and their well-being. Do not be self-centered in your self-consciousness. Adopt the role of the Christ and light up their moment in love.
Fragile - Handle with Care
I am sitting this morning listening to some Christian rap, by accident. I started out with Isis by Bob Dylan - real good stuff, but then it advanced to my son's LaCrae album. And in a flash of completely unrelated musing I realized how deeply fragile we all are. Our culture does everything conceivable to deny this element of our being. From demanding conformity of body to denying spirituality to insisting that we are expendable and consumptive even to the most personal things we engage in, our sexuality. It is such an opposite of reality it is a difficult thing to think about. Why would it ever be considered that two of us (let alone all people) should be a certain size or shape? Why would people of vastly different capacities and talents be interested in the same areas? Who began affirming that we are disposable and interchangeable, and who looked at their children, their siblings, their parents and bought it? Why did we all buy into this nonsense?
When I look at individuals today, living the life that is socially set forth, I see a big group of people who are nearly totally emotionally steamrolled. Consumptive lifestyles, conformist thinking, and trash culture leave no room to become the person God created each to become. Our lives are being lived out as shadows of others lives, others faces, others bodies, others beings.
When I look at individuals today, living the life that is socially set forth, I see a big group of people who are nearly totally emotionally steamrolled. Consumptive lifestyles, conformist thinking, and trash culture leave no room to become the person God created each to become. Our lives are being lived out as shadows of others lives, others faces, others bodies, others beings.
Thoughts on Evil, Thoughts on Good
I have met only one person who asserted that evil does not exist. I agreed with her when my life was at its most analytical. Evil as a force or an entity does not make any rational sense at all. I thought then that it was at most something that we could define as synonymous with 'chaos', the effect of losing control or life's non-conformity with the will of the individual.
But when one confronts the acts of evil, such as the goings on of Nazi Germany, Darfur, or the sex trade, and I will spare us all the descriptions that belong with those few of many available references, one cannot state that evil is something abstract, toothless, or even natural.
Nature is indubitably cruel at times. One need only spend an evening in front of a syndicated PBS show to see the predators of the world devouring their prey. But human evil surpasses this feeding interaction and opens a new category. Subjugation, torture, murder, etc. are somehow connected to the pleasure of the transgressor. But it is certainly a perverse pleasure. And though the pleasure of the one would justify its perpetration of injustice on another in Natural Selection, no matter what strain of Darwinism one adheres to, there is something unnatural in it. All natural drives could be satisfied without the deviant transgression. It is not responsible for food, shelter, or sexual perpetuation of the species. It feeds somethings else, something fundamentally unnourishing and destructive.
Science has taught us that stress actually contributes to the demise of cells, to their inability to accept nutrients and their inability to heal. Stress, as such deviant transgressions would cause, would actually be contributing to the demise of the deviant individual. And indeed this is certainly supported on the macro level with a cursory history review. Infamous deviants have not lived peace-filled lives, by their own choosing, and have died violent, troubled and typically premature deaths. Their engagement in evil did not further their own existence.
So if evil causes the demise of not only the victim, but also the perpetrator, what is it and why is it so pervasive in the world?
We all know that there is a spiritual element to the world. (If you deny it experientially, you are in the distinct minority of humankind, and if you deny it theoretically, you are unscientifically ignoring the evidence.) The matter is there is some kind of void that presents and becomes cancerous in the human experience. Humans require a high level of positive interaction not only with other humans, but also with the spiritual. Research has shown positive health connections to prayer, meditation, a peaceful life, and positive relational conditions. These things are nurturing, and one can assert that the converse are detrimental. Again, when those engaging in evil are examined, there is often a history of violence, negative relationships, and a disconnection from the spiritual.
It is not difficult to extrapolate that these negative conditions would lead to a lack of interest to the true well-being of the self, and the exploration of detrimental and dangerous pleasure seeking. And without self-consideration of well-being, the golden rule loses its meaning. Doing unto others..., when the thing one would have done to oneself is itself depraved, is an open door to depravity.
While knowing little if anything at all about psychology, this progression puts vital importance on the experiences the developing self is taken through and taught about. Peace, positive relationship building, and spiritual connectedness must be demonstrated and encouraged if a child is to develop without the internal door opened to depravity to inflict on itself and others.
This highlights Jesus' insistence that children must be allowed to come to Him, and that any that taught children about sin are condemning themselves.
This condemnation moves beyond the self and is placed on the entire human experience. It places a choking grip on the potential of individuals to be successful and even to survive. With burgeoning birthrates, we are creating more and more individuals to live this experience. And in the last 50 years we have seen several new and devastating courses of widespread annihilation emerge. Nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, unstoppable (and behavior-facilitated) diseases, the globalized endorsement of oppression - these put a highlight on an ever-increasing scale and scope of destruction. We are not solving the problems. We are not eliminating the negative factors that contribute to depravity. And we are arming the depraved with more potent, powerful and pervasive arsenals.
So there is little positive to end on. We are tasked with a nearly insurmountable bulk of lives to affect in a positive long-term manner while only a single negative engagement could start the domino effect of self-loathing. But try we must. Speak truth and love to all you encounter. Avoid petty negativity. Reflect goodness to those you know and those you contact. Begin within your own family. Begin with yourself. Speak love and peace and prayer internally so that modelling it externally will be genuine. You may not condemn yourself and meaningfully endorse others. Cast a wide net of these truths that reach wherever your influence can take you. In these far reaches, speak hope. It may have been the first time it is heard, or the time it is finally understood.
But when one confronts the acts of evil, such as the goings on of Nazi Germany, Darfur, or the sex trade, and I will spare us all the descriptions that belong with those few of many available references, one cannot state that evil is something abstract, toothless, or even natural.
Nature is indubitably cruel at times. One need only spend an evening in front of a syndicated PBS show to see the predators of the world devouring their prey. But human evil surpasses this feeding interaction and opens a new category. Subjugation, torture, murder, etc. are somehow connected to the pleasure of the transgressor. But it is certainly a perverse pleasure. And though the pleasure of the one would justify its perpetration of injustice on another in Natural Selection, no matter what strain of Darwinism one adheres to, there is something unnatural in it. All natural drives could be satisfied without the deviant transgression. It is not responsible for food, shelter, or sexual perpetuation of the species. It feeds somethings else, something fundamentally unnourishing and destructive.
Science has taught us that stress actually contributes to the demise of cells, to their inability to accept nutrients and their inability to heal. Stress, as such deviant transgressions would cause, would actually be contributing to the demise of the deviant individual. And indeed this is certainly supported on the macro level with a cursory history review. Infamous deviants have not lived peace-filled lives, by their own choosing, and have died violent, troubled and typically premature deaths. Their engagement in evil did not further their own existence.
So if evil causes the demise of not only the victim, but also the perpetrator, what is it and why is it so pervasive in the world?
We all know that there is a spiritual element to the world. (If you deny it experientially, you are in the distinct minority of humankind, and if you deny it theoretically, you are unscientifically ignoring the evidence.) The matter is there is some kind of void that presents and becomes cancerous in the human experience. Humans require a high level of positive interaction not only with other humans, but also with the spiritual. Research has shown positive health connections to prayer, meditation, a peaceful life, and positive relational conditions. These things are nurturing, and one can assert that the converse are detrimental. Again, when those engaging in evil are examined, there is often a history of violence, negative relationships, and a disconnection from the spiritual.
It is not difficult to extrapolate that these negative conditions would lead to a lack of interest to the true well-being of the self, and the exploration of detrimental and dangerous pleasure seeking. And without self-consideration of well-being, the golden rule loses its meaning. Doing unto others..., when the thing one would have done to oneself is itself depraved, is an open door to depravity.
While knowing little if anything at all about psychology, this progression puts vital importance on the experiences the developing self is taken through and taught about. Peace, positive relationship building, and spiritual connectedness must be demonstrated and encouraged if a child is to develop without the internal door opened to depravity to inflict on itself and others.
This highlights Jesus' insistence that children must be allowed to come to Him, and that any that taught children about sin are condemning themselves.
This condemnation moves beyond the self and is placed on the entire human experience. It places a choking grip on the potential of individuals to be successful and even to survive. With burgeoning birthrates, we are creating more and more individuals to live this experience. And in the last 50 years we have seen several new and devastating courses of widespread annihilation emerge. Nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, unstoppable (and behavior-facilitated) diseases, the globalized endorsement of oppression - these put a highlight on an ever-increasing scale and scope of destruction. We are not solving the problems. We are not eliminating the negative factors that contribute to depravity. And we are arming the depraved with more potent, powerful and pervasive arsenals.
So there is little positive to end on. We are tasked with a nearly insurmountable bulk of lives to affect in a positive long-term manner while only a single negative engagement could start the domino effect of self-loathing. But try we must. Speak truth and love to all you encounter. Avoid petty negativity. Reflect goodness to those you know and those you contact. Begin within your own family. Begin with yourself. Speak love and peace and prayer internally so that modelling it externally will be genuine. You may not condemn yourself and meaningfully endorse others. Cast a wide net of these truths that reach wherever your influence can take you. In these far reaches, speak hope. It may have been the first time it is heard, or the time it is finally understood.
Sin and the tragedy we all have lived.
I was doing a little e-research today because I am thinking about sin. I found that the concept as written in the Gospel of John is rooted in the Greek 'hamartia'. The translation is 'missing the mark', as in missing the target entirely in archery, and is an Aristotelian term that describes the type of life course of the tragic heroes of Greek plays.
I know very little about the Greek language, but thanks to my father, I was subjected to a solid dose of Greek tragedy fairly early in life. I had studied the Cliff Notes and sat through Medea, Oedipus Rex, Antigone (am I forgetting any?) by the time I had finished going through puberty. You will notice that I say that I 'sat through them', rather than using enlightened descriptions of participatory theatrical attendance. This is because they are Greek tragedies. They are intended to display suffering and character 'hamartia' to the extent that viewers experience the catharsis of emotional collapse. Viewership is more about an exercise in survival and mourning than it is any kind of delightful theatrical play-going (I am sure there will be some dissent among my more learned readership - so feel free to discuss). I, however, distinctly remember walking out with gut pains from the sickening demise these characters suffered, and I remember lying down in the backseat the whole way home feeling bad. And such is the root of our Lord's concept of sin.
I am also personally an expert on 'missing the mark' in life. Not to the extent of being buried alive with my children, or killing my mother and marrying my father, but to a far lesser degree I am well acquainted with 'hamartia'. (You may pause for a moment and read the title of this blog.) I have to say that 'hamartia' is a brilliant illustration of the experience of sin. In my life, I have been faced by divergent paths and have usually chosen the one that might have been more attractive or even less difficult and have found myself farther away from the life I have known in my gut I should to be living.
In my church we discuss sin very rarely - and when we do it is in abstract terms like 'separation from God.' (Which gives my Dad fits because how can one separate oneself from God?)
These descriptions are not adequate. I work with high schoolers and talking about 'separation from God' to a group intrinsically already separated from most things godly is not illustrative. But 'hamartia' gives another way around this conversation - quite literally. To be missing the point is a concept that anyone can directly relate to. So often we choose and go awry...and for some it does take the course of tragedy. However, in my experience, God moves the target back into our path and gives us another go...and another....and another.
The benefit to not missing the mark is that we get to live the life God created us to live. What a wonderful thing! And the benefit to getting or staying personally connected to God is that even when we do miss (and I believe we all have and will again), we get another go. 'Hamartia' can be a gracious description. I feel it is necessary to reconcile a concept often used to inspire fear, legalism, and retribution with a Savior who modelled and taught grace.
When I think of the Samaritan woman at the well, to whom Jesus witnessed, or the adulteress brought to Jesus for stoning and literally pardoned while her accusers were shamed, I see a Christ committed to refilling the sheath of arrows and encouraging the archers - us - to 'take a better shot'.
I believe that part of our reunion with God will be to see our lives - our missed potentialities -and that will be a truly mournful and cathartic moment for us. But I have lived a life of renewing hope, grace bestowing beauty through pain, and the outpouring of blessings over proud transgression after transgression. And once again now I am reminded and I believe that God is sovereign. God sees and knows us in full. We do not see ourselves in any more than this moment and the moments that we have already come past. Perhaps what looks to us in our limited vision like an unclean miss, is just God routing us towards God through whatever obstacles are coming, in a dance so beautiful and complex that we will weep with joy at the beauty of it all as we reunite with God in the great ever after.
If the woman had not been brought for justice after committing adultery, if she had not so missed the mark, she would never have met God, looked God in the eye, and heard the words spoken from God's own lips, 'Then I will not judge you, either.'
They shamed her
trapped alone,
condemned
surrounded by a crowd of hatred
to die at their hands.
With a simple question
he demanded
shamed them in kind
requiring each to judge themselves
worthy of the same death
they had so willingly charged to her.
One by one they left
alone in their recognition.
And again she found herself
alone
but this time God was standing near.
Is there no one left to condemn you, God asked?
No one sir, she said.
Then I do not condemn you, said the Lord
... and God set her free.
I know very little about the Greek language, but thanks to my father, I was subjected to a solid dose of Greek tragedy fairly early in life. I had studied the Cliff Notes and sat through Medea, Oedipus Rex, Antigone (am I forgetting any?) by the time I had finished going through puberty. You will notice that I say that I 'sat through them', rather than using enlightened descriptions of participatory theatrical attendance. This is because they are Greek tragedies. They are intended to display suffering and character 'hamartia' to the extent that viewers experience the catharsis of emotional collapse. Viewership is more about an exercise in survival and mourning than it is any kind of delightful theatrical play-going (I am sure there will be some dissent among my more learned readership - so feel free to discuss). I, however, distinctly remember walking out with gut pains from the sickening demise these characters suffered, and I remember lying down in the backseat the whole way home feeling bad. And such is the root of our Lord's concept of sin.
I am also personally an expert on 'missing the mark' in life. Not to the extent of being buried alive with my children, or killing my mother and marrying my father, but to a far lesser degree I am well acquainted with 'hamartia'. (You may pause for a moment and read the title of this blog.) I have to say that 'hamartia' is a brilliant illustration of the experience of sin. In my life, I have been faced by divergent paths and have usually chosen the one that might have been more attractive or even less difficult and have found myself farther away from the life I have known in my gut I should to be living.
In my church we discuss sin very rarely - and when we do it is in abstract terms like 'separation from God.' (Which gives my Dad fits because how can one separate oneself from God?)
These descriptions are not adequate. I work with high schoolers and talking about 'separation from God' to a group intrinsically already separated from most things godly is not illustrative. But 'hamartia' gives another way around this conversation - quite literally. To be missing the point is a concept that anyone can directly relate to. So often we choose and go awry...and for some it does take the course of tragedy. However, in my experience, God moves the target back into our path and gives us another go...and another....and another.
The benefit to not missing the mark is that we get to live the life God created us to live. What a wonderful thing! And the benefit to getting or staying personally connected to God is that even when we do miss (and I believe we all have and will again), we get another go. 'Hamartia' can be a gracious description. I feel it is necessary to reconcile a concept often used to inspire fear, legalism, and retribution with a Savior who modelled and taught grace.
When I think of the Samaritan woman at the well, to whom Jesus witnessed, or the adulteress brought to Jesus for stoning and literally pardoned while her accusers were shamed, I see a Christ committed to refilling the sheath of arrows and encouraging the archers - us - to 'take a better shot'.
I believe that part of our reunion with God will be to see our lives - our missed potentialities -and that will be a truly mournful and cathartic moment for us. But I have lived a life of renewing hope, grace bestowing beauty through pain, and the outpouring of blessings over proud transgression after transgression. And once again now I am reminded and I believe that God is sovereign. God sees and knows us in full. We do not see ourselves in any more than this moment and the moments that we have already come past. Perhaps what looks to us in our limited vision like an unclean miss, is just God routing us towards God through whatever obstacles are coming, in a dance so beautiful and complex that we will weep with joy at the beauty of it all as we reunite with God in the great ever after.
If the woman had not been brought for justice after committing adultery, if she had not so missed the mark, she would never have met God, looked God in the eye, and heard the words spoken from God's own lips, 'Then I will not judge you, either.'
They shamed her
trapped alone,
condemned
surrounded by a crowd of hatred
to die at their hands.
With a simple question
he demanded
shamed them in kind
requiring each to judge themselves
worthy of the same death
they had so willingly charged to her.
One by one they left
alone in their recognition.
And again she found herself
alone
but this time God was standing near.
Is there no one left to condemn you, God asked?
No one sir, she said.
Then I do not condemn you, said the Lord
... and God set her free.
The Problem of Evil, The Problem of Good
How can a loving and powerful God allow the deep and profound suffering that seems to pervade life on earth? What is the real fabric of this world given that there are so many instances of evil? Since there obviously IS evil, is there still room for a good & gracious God?
According to a fully scientific worldview, most examples of evil, theft, assault, rape, murder, gang behavior, and social power struggles, are TOTALLY NATURAL so long as they offer satisfaction to the self. Biological drives lead the behavioral way. In order to preserve, satisfy, or advance the self, there is no 'sin' that is not allowed in the name of 'survival of the fittest', no psychology that is deviant so long as it serves its owner's survival and advancement. The advancement of the self and its progeny is the only standard of success. Group organization offers some buffer to deviant individual drives by containing them within a social contract that requires consequence for action that injures another. But as we witness daily, significant occurrences of these transgressions still occur because the natural behaviors of individuals has not been altered.
The other category often referred to as evil are natural disasters and diseases. These are not only explicable, but as ordinary and anticipated as the tumult of nature playing out its surrender to force and chaos. It is simply the illustration of mechanism tumbling upon mechanism. A materialistic world is a world glued together by meaningless cause and effect relationships. Chaos is the only constant with the drive towards entropy ever plodding onwards and only marginally stayed by the mechanisms of organization, complexity, and life.
So where is the problem? Suffering at the hands of these 'evils' is explicable, and even necessary, in the world because the self is immersed in a chaotic place and wholly responsible for itself, its progeny’s, or sometimes its society's survival and advancement. Anything that comes in conflict with that goal must be dispatched! Action as it is carried out to that end does not 'matter'. It is not problematic in a moral sense when it falls into the categories of preservation and advancement.
And this is the world that God created. The science describing this natural condition is describing nothing less than the handiwork of God. Its reality cannot be ignored or denied nor can God's relationship to it be severed unless one asserts atheism.
And to that end, suffering at the hands of evil -and evil itself- only ‘matters’ qualitatively if the extent, the entirety, of the human experience is contained between birth and death, as the atheist contends. If that were fact, then it would indeed matter very much the manner in which one encountered their demise, or the quality with which they experience their days. But regardless of suffering, the fittest must survive, while the demise of the unfit remains the 'natural order'.
Contrarily for the theist, there is far more to the story of God's sovereignty than the time that elapses between birth and death. We exist only partially in the universe God created. Suffering within its (the physical world's) framework is wholly minimized and negated by the glory that one becomes immersed in when one transcends the physical. Earthly life and conflict is not a final statement, not primary, so the manner in which it is engaged or dispatched is only able to be genuinely understood from the perspective of hindsight.
And for the Christian, there is an additional dimension. The God a Christian follows is a suffering God, a God who confronted and was consumed by the world at its worst. Jesus, was created to heal those who suffered and then to suffer an excruciating extermination himself. He told his followers that his demise was imminent and reiterated that death and suffering were to be expected. He explained that life in this world was going to include inherent conflict with evil, but that it was only a passing phase. Jesus was a willing sacrifice of socio-political 'survival of the fittest' because he knew that his ultimate survival was not dependant on humans or nature but was entirely dependent on his spiritual transcendence into the reality of God.
And he taught a different message than 'survival of the fittest.' He named the meek, the oppressed, and the suffering as those who were farthest along the path towards being spiritually fit. He demanded a social order that was not focused on the advancement of the self, but on the love of those who needed most and were most difficult to love.
The follower of Christ is therefore present in and around, but aware of being wholly transcendent of the suffering of this world. This physical world is just a tent, the physical body is nothing more than a shell... its ailments are of no eternal consequence. Ultimately Christ is therefore a triumphant God.
The life experience of the Christian includes tangible tastes of this glory, so it is anecdotally enforced as well as doctrinally encouraged. These experiences of God in life lead towards growth, redemption, and eventual eternal understanding of the 'big picture' of that individual's thread in God's tapestry.
So what then is the quality of God’s presence in this world? Actually it says something quite unexpected, that the real philosophical problem is not evil at all. The illogical condition of the world is not the natural condition of selfishness, rather it is selfLESSness! God presents a much needed problem of good! You see, Darwinism/ materialism cannot explain agape...charity... sacrifice...or valour. There is no biological instinct to selflessness towards a stranger, no 'herd' that would leap to protect its predator should the opportunity arise. And yet the human experience is riddled with as many tales of redemptive grace doled out from within the ranks as there are horrific examples of depravity. How and why, I ask of the atheist? How does the fittest survive to spread its progeny when it lays down its own life for another? Where is the biological impetus to love the contagious, the depraved, the ostracized? A God-less world simply cannot produce these things.
So where is God in this world? God is visible in the world through the defiant actions of God’s people - defiant against the natural condition of this world. The world is a horribly turned-around place, depraved, violent, unsafe. But each day God reaches into the lives of many through the venue of unexpected grace, truth and love. These things are supernatural. These things are Godly. People serve as God’s portal into this place, turning on its head the natural way, and replacing it with a higher standard of being.
Is God still both good and powerful? Yes - but the standard of goodness is not human. And the standard of power is also not selfish. The sovereignty of something other than our selves present NOT to serve our selves is a very difficult, almost impossible thing to understand....because it is so entirely unnatural.
According to a fully scientific worldview, most examples of evil, theft, assault, rape, murder, gang behavior, and social power struggles, are TOTALLY NATURAL so long as they offer satisfaction to the self. Biological drives lead the behavioral way. In order to preserve, satisfy, or advance the self, there is no 'sin' that is not allowed in the name of 'survival of the fittest', no psychology that is deviant so long as it serves its owner's survival and advancement. The advancement of the self and its progeny is the only standard of success. Group organization offers some buffer to deviant individual drives by containing them within a social contract that requires consequence for action that injures another. But as we witness daily, significant occurrences of these transgressions still occur because the natural behaviors of individuals has not been altered.
The other category often referred to as evil are natural disasters and diseases. These are not only explicable, but as ordinary and anticipated as the tumult of nature playing out its surrender to force and chaos. It is simply the illustration of mechanism tumbling upon mechanism. A materialistic world is a world glued together by meaningless cause and effect relationships. Chaos is the only constant with the drive towards entropy ever plodding onwards and only marginally stayed by the mechanisms of organization, complexity, and life.
So where is the problem? Suffering at the hands of these 'evils' is explicable, and even necessary, in the world because the self is immersed in a chaotic place and wholly responsible for itself, its progeny’s, or sometimes its society's survival and advancement. Anything that comes in conflict with that goal must be dispatched! Action as it is carried out to that end does not 'matter'. It is not problematic in a moral sense when it falls into the categories of preservation and advancement.
And this is the world that God created. The science describing this natural condition is describing nothing less than the handiwork of God. Its reality cannot be ignored or denied nor can God's relationship to it be severed unless one asserts atheism.
And to that end, suffering at the hands of evil -and evil itself- only ‘matters’ qualitatively if the extent, the entirety, of the human experience is contained between birth and death, as the atheist contends. If that were fact, then it would indeed matter very much the manner in which one encountered their demise, or the quality with which they experience their days. But regardless of suffering, the fittest must survive, while the demise of the unfit remains the 'natural order'.
Contrarily for the theist, there is far more to the story of God's sovereignty than the time that elapses between birth and death. We exist only partially in the universe God created. Suffering within its (the physical world's) framework is wholly minimized and negated by the glory that one becomes immersed in when one transcends the physical. Earthly life and conflict is not a final statement, not primary, so the manner in which it is engaged or dispatched is only able to be genuinely understood from the perspective of hindsight.
And for the Christian, there is an additional dimension. The God a Christian follows is a suffering God, a God who confronted and was consumed by the world at its worst. Jesus, was created to heal those who suffered and then to suffer an excruciating extermination himself. He told his followers that his demise was imminent and reiterated that death and suffering were to be expected. He explained that life in this world was going to include inherent conflict with evil, but that it was only a passing phase. Jesus was a willing sacrifice of socio-political 'survival of the fittest' because he knew that his ultimate survival was not dependant on humans or nature but was entirely dependent on his spiritual transcendence into the reality of God.
And he taught a different message than 'survival of the fittest.' He named the meek, the oppressed, and the suffering as those who were farthest along the path towards being spiritually fit. He demanded a social order that was not focused on the advancement of the self, but on the love of those who needed most and were most difficult to love.
The follower of Christ is therefore present in and around, but aware of being wholly transcendent of the suffering of this world. This physical world is just a tent, the physical body is nothing more than a shell... its ailments are of no eternal consequence. Ultimately Christ is therefore a triumphant God.
The life experience of the Christian includes tangible tastes of this glory, so it is anecdotally enforced as well as doctrinally encouraged. These experiences of God in life lead towards growth, redemption, and eventual eternal understanding of the 'big picture' of that individual's thread in God's tapestry.
So what then is the quality of God’s presence in this world? Actually it says something quite unexpected, that the real philosophical problem is not evil at all. The illogical condition of the world is not the natural condition of selfishness, rather it is selfLESSness! God presents a much needed problem of good! You see, Darwinism/ materialism cannot explain agape...charity... sacrifice...or valour. There is no biological instinct to selflessness towards a stranger, no 'herd' that would leap to protect its predator should the opportunity arise. And yet the human experience is riddled with as many tales of redemptive grace doled out from within the ranks as there are horrific examples of depravity. How and why, I ask of the atheist? How does the fittest survive to spread its progeny when it lays down its own life for another? Where is the biological impetus to love the contagious, the depraved, the ostracized? A God-less world simply cannot produce these things.
So where is God in this world? God is visible in the world through the defiant actions of God’s people - defiant against the natural condition of this world. The world is a horribly turned-around place, depraved, violent, unsafe. But each day God reaches into the lives of many through the venue of unexpected grace, truth and love. These things are supernatural. These things are Godly. People serve as God’s portal into this place, turning on its head the natural way, and replacing it with a higher standard of being.
Is God still both good and powerful? Yes - but the standard of goodness is not human. And the standard of power is also not selfish. The sovereignty of something other than our selves present NOT to serve our selves is a very difficult, almost impossible thing to understand....because it is so entirely unnatural.
Is Jesus subordinate?
Is Jesus Subordinate to God?
This is an issue that I was not directly aware of until recently. I had been reading some blogs written and commented on by some very thoughtful and well-educated individuals. One of the comments that was made and agreed to was something to the effect that ‘Jesus was subordinate to God, surely we can all agree on that.’ Well, in typical Mcfashion, I could not, but my being responded more adamantly and thoroughly than my mind. In fact I could understand their statement rationally, but not accept it nor refute it. So over the last few weeks I have held the statement in my thoughts, mulling it over while continuing my routine of studying the Gospel of John.
God has always been difficult to define. Naming Itself with the verb ‘to be’, Yahweh, and from the first interactions with a plural, Elohim, we can determine little but mystery from God’s revelation. From the interaction of God with humanity again we are met with mystery. Destruction, argument, terrifying strength and majesty, execution, pestilence, and legalism are tempered by tender songs, passionate commitment, impossible promises kept, and ultimate care given to those who would follow God.
Knowing God and honoring God was sanctioned by the learned. Education was a strictly managed commodity that split the community into those few that had, and the many that had not. The educated keepers of the law were the elite, allowed access to knowledge and approval of the historical God that could not be had by all. These elite were the judges, the mediators, the ones who approved of whether a human lived, married, worked, was killed or cast out of society, and was given their approval to congregate in worship, sacrifice, and offering with God.
There were always those that took another path to God – prophets and individuals who met God personally and wildly. But these individuals were few.
When Jesus came, He came differently than God’s previous revelations of Itself. He can subtly, from within, rather than in fire and brimstone from on high. He came armed with words of truth, knowledge superseding the ordinary and even the learned, and a desire to connect not with the kings and teachers, but with the ordinary, sin-seeped people. He came that they might worship God as God intended, in spirit and truth.
God has always been difficult to define. Naming Itself with the verb ‘to be’, Yahweh, and from the first interactions with a plural, Elohim, we can determine little but mystery from God’s revelation. From the interaction of God with humanity again we are met with mystery. Destruction, argument, terrifying strength and majesty, execution, pestilence, and legalism are tempered by tender songs, passionate commitment, impossible promises kept, and ultimate care given to those who would follow God.
Knowing God and honoring God was sanctioned by the learned. Education was a strictly managed commodity that split the community into those few that had, and the many that had not. The educated keepers of the law were the elite, allowed access to knowledge and approval of the historical God that could not be had by all. These elite were the judges, the mediators, the ones who approved of whether a human lived, married, worked, was killed or cast out of society, and was given their approval to congregate in worship, sacrifice, and offering with God.
There were always those that took another path to God – prophets and individuals who met God personally and wildly. But these individuals were few.
When Jesus came, He came differently than God’s previous revelations of Itself. He can subtly, from within, rather than in fire and brimstone from on high. He came armed with words of truth, knowledge superseding the ordinary and even the learned, and a desire to connect not with the kings and teachers, but with the ordinary, sin-seeped people. He came that they might worship God as God intended, in spirit and truth.
The Gospel of John describes as follows:
1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
2He was with God in the beginning.
3Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.
4In him was life, and that life was the light of men.
5The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.
(The Hebrew is Denar – the same means both word and deed. Symbol, Articulation, Action all three in one.)1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
2He was with God in the beginning.
3Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.
4In him was life, and that life was the light of men.
5The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.
And from later in the first chapter of John:
16 From his abundance we have all received one gracious blessing after another.
17 For the law was given through Moses, but God’s unfailing love and faithfulness came through Jesus Christ.
18 No one has ever seen God. But the unique One, who is himself God, is near to the Father’s heart. He has revealed God to us.
God had been historically segregated from ordinary people; God’s relationship was not known or understood by a personal connection with them. Rather God was connected to the people by rigid lines drawn through laws and obedience and mediated by the legalistic religious rulers-such as the Pharisees. In Jesus, God became recognizable as genuine and personal, a God committed to each who reach to embrace God.
So is Jesus subordinate? No. Jesus entered into the medium of the world in a way God had not previously. Jesus completed a mission of living among people reaching out to them where they were, in the moments of their lives that He intersected, and calling them forth to Truth. Was Jesus fully human? No. If you believe, then you already know that none of us are. Was Jesus fully God? Yes. God in the medium of the world is Jesus. God in this medium demonstrated ‘unfailing love and faithfulness’. Is that subordinate? I think not.
Wise and learned
In that same hour he rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said, “I thank thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hidden these things from the wise and learned and revealed them to babes; yea, Father, for such was thy gracious will. All things have been delivered to me by my Father; and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, or who the Father is except the Son and any one to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”
Luke 10:21-22
Luke 10:21-22
Mary, Mary...Quite Contrary...
Ladies and gentlemen, I am tired. I am tired of listening to debate on the presence of women in the ministry of Jesus Christ. I am tired of only hearing a certain line from a certain letter, and NEVER hearing Christ cited on the matter (because yes, His actions and words reveal a great deal more on the topic).
Jesus Christ - God incarnate - is a spiritual revolutionary.
Jesus Christ revealed Himself as God first to a woman, his mother Mary. When God commissioned Mary, God asked her to do something not only seemingly impossible physically but additionally devastating socially. Imagine the impact on a young woman! Yet she consented with grace and joy. So Mary birthed Jesus and she raised Him. And then as a young man just beginning His ministry she fetched Him to help a friend out with a problem with some wine. He dissented at first but conceded. His first miracle, changing the water to wine, was to appease Mary, His mother, who obviously knew before ANY others that her son was capable of eliciting the miraculous, of circumventing the natural order, at will! What had Mary seen in all those years of raising her son? What did she know that she demanded of Him to do this beloved miracle. We can only imagine but blessed, certainly, was she.
Jesus named Himself the Messiah first in His public ministry to the Samaritan woman taking water from the well. The first time He revealed His place and sovereignty publicly, it was to a sin-seeped woman! The Gospel describes that the Disciples were surprised when they returned to find Him talking to the woman at all, but they dared not say a word. The woman went from Jesus and told what she had witnessed, calling the people of the town to Jesus. Because of her witness, Jesus stayed in the town for several days and many believed in Him. As the people came to Him, Jesus reminded the Disciples that the it was no work of theirs that had ripened that spiritual harvest!
Another wonderful illustration of Jesus' opinion of woman is the story of Martha and Mary(again with the name Mary)! As her sister rushed to tend to the housework and hosting, Mary sat and listened to Jesus' teachings. Martha appealed to Jesus to influence her sister to attend to her duties with the household chores. Rather than encouraging Mary to fulfill the role demanded of her by both her sister and her society, Jesus admonished Martha that Mary was attending to the matter of real importance in just being with Him. Focusing on Jesus was more important for a woman than satisfying social convention or gender roles.
And there are other beautiful examples of Jesus singlehandedly upsetting the gender apple cart; the adulteress that was condemned to death, the woman who perfumed his feet, the hemorrhaging woman and the woman who argued with Him and demanded that He heal her daughter. Jesus revealed Himself as 'the resurrection' to Martha, and wept with Mary before he raised Lazarus from the dead. Each of these interactions demonstrate Jesus' respect, care, and investment in the spiritual lives of these women in spite of the social conventions that demanded something far different of Him.
The most significant female interaction with Christ, however, is His appearance to Mary Magdelene at the tomb, revealing His resurrection and commissioning her to reveal it in turn to the Disciples. This instance is often used in apologetics to confirm the legitimacy of Jesus' resurrection because a woman in Jewish culture would be such a 'poor' and 'inconclusive' witness. If it was faked, scholars suggest that certainly the authors would have chosen a more credible witness, ie: a man. But it was Mary, the one from whom He cast 7 demons that He gently called to go forth and tell the good news. Jesus had His own criterion for credibility and authority, and He admonished His disciples that wanted to see for themselves rather than believe His witness that He commissioned. One would think that if Christ Himself found a woman so worthy...
Modern Christians are a hypocritical lot in choosing which rulings they adhere to. During the Sermon on the Mount, Christ specified that He was not going to abolish any of the Law...not even the smallest letter. Yet we, as modern Christians, have completely forgone the Law of Moses. We do not measure our worship spaces, select the color of our tunic or ritually sacrifice. We do not even uphold the most basic of the Law, the 10 Commandments. We covet, covet, covet and covet some more, citing economic strength and credit scores. We leave our mothers and fathers to perish in solitude in expensive facilities...and rebellion has become almost passe it has been so embraced by youth for the last several decades. And adultery? Taking the Lord's Name in Vain? Whew...Our house is indeed divided...
Most importantly of all, Jesus only cited Himself and God as authority. He did not mention the laws or dictates that were to come after. He did not even mention teachers that were to come after. He was the Way the Truth and the Light. Period. Knowledge of Him is to be found from Him and from the Comforter, the Holy Spirit that He sent to His people - nothing more is required than God!
Despite the many amazing and uplifting contributions ANYONE since Christ has made to the practice of Christianity, absolutely no one is entitled to make rulings that contradict the practices of the Christ, or limit the access of ANY to Christ, or determine in what manner Christ is allowed to commission His lambs. Regardless of circumstances, only Christ WAS the truth. And when I read contradiction, when I hear adherence to a law that was not established by God incarnate, that is selectively practiced OVER and instead of what Jesus himself advocated, I MUST reject it. I am a Christian. I follow the Christ. All other things fall aside if they stand in opposition to the lessons Jesus offers me. And as a woman, I am very deeply thankful.
A final thought to ponder: What does 'Mary' mean in Hebrew?
Rebellion.
Jesus Christ - God incarnate - is a spiritual revolutionary.
Jesus Christ revealed Himself as God first to a woman, his mother Mary. When God commissioned Mary, God asked her to do something not only seemingly impossible physically but additionally devastating socially. Imagine the impact on a young woman! Yet she consented with grace and joy. So Mary birthed Jesus and she raised Him. And then as a young man just beginning His ministry she fetched Him to help a friend out with a problem with some wine. He dissented at first but conceded. His first miracle, changing the water to wine, was to appease Mary, His mother, who obviously knew before ANY others that her son was capable of eliciting the miraculous, of circumventing the natural order, at will! What had Mary seen in all those years of raising her son? What did she know that she demanded of Him to do this beloved miracle. We can only imagine but blessed, certainly, was she.
Jesus named Himself the Messiah first in His public ministry to the Samaritan woman taking water from the well. The first time He revealed His place and sovereignty publicly, it was to a sin-seeped woman! The Gospel describes that the Disciples were surprised when they returned to find Him talking to the woman at all, but they dared not say a word. The woman went from Jesus and told what she had witnessed, calling the people of the town to Jesus. Because of her witness, Jesus stayed in the town for several days and many believed in Him. As the people came to Him, Jesus reminded the Disciples that the it was no work of theirs that had ripened that spiritual harvest!
Another wonderful illustration of Jesus' opinion of woman is the story of Martha and Mary(again with the name Mary)! As her sister rushed to tend to the housework and hosting, Mary sat and listened to Jesus' teachings. Martha appealed to Jesus to influence her sister to attend to her duties with the household chores. Rather than encouraging Mary to fulfill the role demanded of her by both her sister and her society, Jesus admonished Martha that Mary was attending to the matter of real importance in just being with Him. Focusing on Jesus was more important for a woman than satisfying social convention or gender roles.
And there are other beautiful examples of Jesus singlehandedly upsetting the gender apple cart; the adulteress that was condemned to death, the woman who perfumed his feet, the hemorrhaging woman and the woman who argued with Him and demanded that He heal her daughter. Jesus revealed Himself as 'the resurrection' to Martha, and wept with Mary before he raised Lazarus from the dead. Each of these interactions demonstrate Jesus' respect, care, and investment in the spiritual lives of these women in spite of the social conventions that demanded something far different of Him.
The most significant female interaction with Christ, however, is His appearance to Mary Magdelene at the tomb, revealing His resurrection and commissioning her to reveal it in turn to the Disciples. This instance is often used in apologetics to confirm the legitimacy of Jesus' resurrection because a woman in Jewish culture would be such a 'poor' and 'inconclusive' witness. If it was faked, scholars suggest that certainly the authors would have chosen a more credible witness, ie: a man. But it was Mary, the one from whom He cast 7 demons that He gently called to go forth and tell the good news. Jesus had His own criterion for credibility and authority, and He admonished His disciples that wanted to see for themselves rather than believe His witness that He commissioned. One would think that if Christ Himself found a woman so worthy...
Modern Christians are a hypocritical lot in choosing which rulings they adhere to. During the Sermon on the Mount, Christ specified that He was not going to abolish any of the Law...not even the smallest letter. Yet we, as modern Christians, have completely forgone the Law of Moses. We do not measure our worship spaces, select the color of our tunic or ritually sacrifice. We do not even uphold the most basic of the Law, the 10 Commandments. We covet, covet, covet and covet some more, citing economic strength and credit scores. We leave our mothers and fathers to perish in solitude in expensive facilities...and rebellion has become almost passe it has been so embraced by youth for the last several decades. And adultery? Taking the Lord's Name in Vain? Whew...Our house is indeed divided...
Most importantly of all, Jesus only cited Himself and God as authority. He did not mention the laws or dictates that were to come after. He did not even mention teachers that were to come after. He was the Way the Truth and the Light. Period. Knowledge of Him is to be found from Him and from the Comforter, the Holy Spirit that He sent to His people - nothing more is required than God!
Despite the many amazing and uplifting contributions ANYONE since Christ has made to the practice of Christianity, absolutely no one is entitled to make rulings that contradict the practices of the Christ, or limit the access of ANY to Christ, or determine in what manner Christ is allowed to commission His lambs. Regardless of circumstances, only Christ WAS the truth. And when I read contradiction, when I hear adherence to a law that was not established by God incarnate, that is selectively practiced OVER and instead of what Jesus himself advocated, I MUST reject it. I am a Christian. I follow the Christ. All other things fall aside if they stand in opposition to the lessons Jesus offers me. And as a woman, I am very deeply thankful.
A final thought to ponder: What does 'Mary' mean in Hebrew?
Rebellion.
The longer way around is sometimes the shortest way home.
This simple truth, better articulated in the Tao Te Ching, has served as a constant whisper of hope as I have found myself all too frequently lost in the circuitous path, seeking but not finding. I have explored, dabbled, and fallen - mired in the world's half-truths and misleading promises. Only when I realized the certainty of being lost did the glimmer of light begin to appear in the distance. Still I found myself many times moving perpendicular to the way, and again, the recognition of wandering astray was the only means of identifying the true path. The way is straight, the path is narrow. In my experience, though, it is also beautiful beyond expression, redemptive, seeped in care and mercy.
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