flickerbulb

This is a bold charge against Rob Bell and other voices in the Emerging Church movement.People reading that should hear alarms sounding. MacArthur is purposely saying that Bell is a heretic—advocating a hazy, indistinct conception of truth that comes from an insidious desire to advocate worldly lifestyles, unholy minds, and ungodly behaviors.

rob bell is one of the best speakers i’ve ever heard, and i like both what he says and how he says it

Vanguard Church: Is Rob Bell a Godless Man, Condemned by God?

in john’s latest post, he ponders something that i struggled with before i left my christian faith behind.

i’ll quote him:

I am a practical atheist. Yes, I believe in God, but in practice, my life doesn’t always reflect that belief in God. As I asked the crowd this morning, what would be different about my life if I really took God at His Word? How would it affect my prayer life? My private life? My future? Do I really believe God is in control? That He is actively involved in the life of His creation? I say I do. The Bible says He is. But, I wonder why my daily life doesn’t always reflect what I profess to believe.

these were things i struggled with a lot in 2003 through 2005, leading up to my big decision.

i didn’t just think about it, though, i set about really finding out.

i set about really studying, and applying the bible to my life in a whole new way. i wrote, lots, about what i believed, hashing through ideas about evangelism, atonement, grace, emerging culture, hell, and lots of other subjects.

this led me to start reading the works of the church fathers, which led me to be interested in the early church, which led me to be interested in the culture behind the early church, and i ended up studying roman culture and the early church fit into it. i studied paul’s life, i studied basically everything i could get my hands on,

and, to be honest, i was uncomfortable with the things i was learning.

i ignored some what what i was learning, at first, but eventually couldn’t, and be honest with myself.

one of the hardest things to come to grips with was that the bible wasn’t perfect.

i had come to believe before that the bible was the inerrant word of god, reliable and trustworthy.

but i was learning that it was hobbled together by people with political agendas, stealing from older works (many of them not “christian” works, either).

and i was learning not to angrily stop reading the articles that pointed out drastic inconsistencies. inconsistencies that i had previously glossed over.

i was learning to recognize some of the awful awful things in there that i had candy-coated in order to believe this was a “good” book.

as i learned how the bible came to be as it is, i learned not to impose my own viewpoint on what it was, and eventually came to see it as a collection of writings from a wandering desert tribe barely out of the prehistoric age and a god-man myth built around those writings collected in order inspire a people to throw off an oppressive government.

and as i accepted this, i cam eto realize why i had always had such trouble reconciling my own lack of faith (in christian terms).

i came to realize that despite my giving myself over to god, why i was still not ever really “living for him”.

i came to realize why me and my christian peers were constantly struggling with things the holy spirit was supposed to be helping us overcome.

it was, simply, because there is no holy spirit that does any such thing.

Barna polls conducted between 2004 and this year, sampling 440 non-Christians (and a similar number of Christians) aged 16 to 29, found that 38% had a ‘bad impression’ of present-day Christianity. ‘It’s not a pretty picture’ the authors write. Barna’s clientele is made up primarily of evangelical groups.

Kinnaman says non-Christians’ biggest complaints about the faith are not immediately theological: Jesus and the Bible get relatively good marks. Rather, he sees resentment as focused on perceived Christian attitudes. Nine out of ten outsiders found Christians too ‘anti-homosexual,’ and nearly as many perceived it as ‘hypocritical’ and ‘judgmental.’ Seventy-five percent found it ‘too involved in politics.’

i’ve spent three years on a mission to decide about god.

i’m not done yet, but i’m a lot closer than i was when i started.

after thirty-two years on this rock, three of which i have been seriously, open-mindedly, truthfully searching for Truth (if there is such a thing) here’s what i have come up with as far as “what chris believes”:

god exists and created the universe(s)
of this i am fairly certain. i have studied enough physics to come to believe that someone made the rules, and makes sure that that which exists in the physical plane follows those rules.

this someone is “god”.

god is aware of my existence
i’m almost fully convinced of this. not 100%, but pushing eighty-eight maybe?

it seems unlikely to me that god is an non-person, a “thing”.

this does not mean i believe god is a super-human, or that god’s attributes are even approaching imaginability, but i do think it is very likely that what is possible to be known about god is made clear simply by watching the world around me and extrapolating.

having been doing this very carefully, i have come to believe that god does in fact know i exist.

god cares about me (and therefore, everyone else, too)
this one i’m less sure about. seventy-five percent or so.

it seems to me that god cares, because i care about god, and i care about people, and i think that reflects on (or reflects from) the person who created me.

this does not mean that god cares for me in the way i care for the people i love (but, admittedly, i don’t have kids, and i’m guessing that parent relationship comes closest to being analogous). rather, i think god cares for me and i have no idea what that really means.

in light of the above, i, then, also believe:

prayer works
since god exists, and cares about me (and others), prayers to god are heard and sometimes acted upon.

i have seen the evidence in my own life, and so have billions of people from all faiths that exist.

i ought to behave in a way that is god-pleasing
since i believe that i, and other humans, are god’s image-bearers, i believe it is important to behave in ways that seem like they would be pleasing to god.

there are thousands of years of religious thought put into deciding what exactly those sorts of behaviours are, but jesus seemed to hit the nail on the head: love god, love people.

when it comes to how one goes about loving god, and loving people, well, the jury is still very much out on that one, for me.

some people have gone to war over such minutiae, willing to kill to defend their (inherited, likely) ideas about these things.

as for me, i don’t claim to have a damn clue beyond this: i am pretty sure that it has nothing to do with how or what one eats, drinks, wears, or even believes.

rather, it seems, the idea is to be intentionally good to other people, as best as one can, and hope that god is pleased. this seems to fit in with what jesus taught, which pleases me, coming from a protestant background.

hey, speaking of jesus:

jesus’ teachings in the sermon on the mount are worthy of study in the attempt to work out what is god-pleasing
given my above statements, it is unlikely that i qualify as “a christian” anymore, at least to conservative evangelicals (who tend to claim, or at least believe, they’ve got the definition of “a christian” locked up), but i am still very much a fan (disciple?) of jesus and his teachings.

i spent eighteen months very seriously studying the sermon on the mount, and i still go back to it often for guidance on dealing with daily matters.

i suppose if a label must be applied to me, one could call me a “jesusist”.

what i do not believe
now, given the above, there are some things that are worth pointing out that i specifically do not, or no longer, believe in.

these would be things that i have abandoned in my quest for truth, as i find they are unworthy of believing in:

i do not believe hell exists
given my view of god, i believe the idea of eternally conscious torment for those to do not believe very specific things about the creator is, at the very least, extremely distasteful.

in fact, i believe the idea is evil. hell makes god into a monster, not a loving father. i think hell is a particularly nasty way to coerce people into falling into line, thought-wise, and it has had nasty consequences on religion and on how people behave.

if god hates, then i am one-hundred per-cent sure god hates that we humans invented the idea of hell.

i do not believe in the “authority of the bible”
i love the bible. i have memorized over half of the new testament. i am intimately familiar with lots of the old testament. i believe the bible (like all scripture) is useful for teaching, profitable for rebuking, and has lots of wisdom.

i do not believe the bible is “infallible”, “inerrant”, “authoritative”, nor “the word of god”.

as i’ve re-read the bible in the last three years (more than once) with an open mind, i have come to see it from an outsider’s perspective, and i now see it for what it is: a collection of myths, poetry, religious writings and “shared wisdom”.

i find it not at all internally self-consistent (which i had always been taught it was) nor particularly inspired, compared to some of the other religious texts i have bothered to study in the past few years.

it may well be “god-breathed” but, then, so is everyone who’s ever existed.

i do not believe the christian church is anywhere near what jesus had in mind
i think that many of the early “christians” got jesus message of love and peace all wrong, politicized it in order to throw off roman rule, and thus: jesus beautiful teachings ended up becoming romanized themselves.

i don’t think jesus had “an institution” in mind, and i think jesus would read the new testament the church has come up with and weep, saying, “no no no.. this is not at ALL what i meant.”

so, there we have it.

friends and family may wish to re-read the beginning, before freaking out.

go on, we have time…

done?, okay, so… now what?

how will i change in light of this?

guess what, you’ve already seen it.

the happier & healthier chris is a result of this thinking.

if you have seen a change in me, it is because of my beliefs about the above.

you will not see me go off the deep end and start murdering puppies, raping villages or pillaging women & children.

if my rejection of orthodox christianity was going to lead to such behavior, it would have done so already.

so, you’ll not see a change me, beyond the slow gradual one towards happiness that you’ve seen in the last six months.

don’t be scared: i’m not.

rejoice with me, cause i’m pretty sure i’m closer to “knowing” than i ever have been.

and, once again, i’ll say: friends and family may wish to re-read the beginning, before freaking out.

comments welcome, either below, or you can email chris at flickerbulb dawt com.

at what point do we say we, or any being, has acted “justly” ?

there is lots of chatter on this board — and particularly when my new favorite pet subject (hell’s lack of existence) comes up — about god’s justice.

but what do we mean by that?

at what point is justice fulfilled?

when i was a child (i remember this story clearly, though i was only abotu four), i thought a fishbowl full of candy at a store was inviting me to take one, free.

my mother did not see me take the candy, and when we were on the way out of the store and she asked where i got it, she made me go back in, apologize, she paid for it, AND i had to spit it out.

what was the point of my mother’s exercise?

punishment?

i submit it was restoration and learning.

were her actions just?

now when god acts in response to our selfness, what are his goals?

where does god’s love (and god IS love, don’t forget) come into play?

love is the core of god’s being — all his other attributes must stem from that core.

god’s justice must be loving.

god’s mercy must be loving.

even god’s hatred must be loving. indeed jesus taught us to love our enemies. was that just pretty words, or did he mean it?

so, then, with all this in mind:

what is justice?

is there some cosmic scale that must be fulfilled for each and every infraction, each and ever wrong?

did god find himself conscious in an existence where he simply can not cope unless such a system is perfectly in balance, and thus had to create a universe that allowed that balance to be maintained?

is that the point of justice?

to keep track of wrongs, and punish them so that the balance can be OK?

isn’t, like my mom’s actions, the point of god’s justice restoration, reconciliation?

news is always in the eye of the beholder.

when a bible sits there, holding information about the gospel, the gospel that it contains information about lays dormant.

perhaps in some sense we can say that’s the actual gospel, but it is a useless one.

the news jesus taught only begins to be useful when someone learns of it and starts to put it into practice.

when someone sets their life on a path of discipleship to him, with the goal of becoming like him.

when a person does this, the actual gospel is manifest.

the “fake gospel” most people have accepted or rejected differs depending upon which “side” of church it has come from.

the evangelical right’s gospel has been more or less: “if you die today, do you know you will go to heaven?”

it has been primarily concerned about the afterlife, and talks about “heaven” as a goal.

this is something jesus never did.

now, there is much talk of discipleship in these groups, but not the kind of discipleship that jesus would recognize.

rather, they are after head knowledge. they wish to ensure their students “believe the right things” about big words like sanctification, justification and atonement.

they are in the business of “sin management” — making sure people don’t “do wrong”, so that they can “get into heaven”.

the left side, the mainline churches and more liberal denominations, have turned the gospel into a social action message. that if we all work together, we cure society’s ills by taking care of the poor better.

personal growth is all but ignored in favor of being part of the team that “cares”. little attention is paid to how individuals actually do things, as efforts are focused around building institutions that make lots of noise about doing good.

they are in the business of “society management”.

the gospel jesus taught was: “come, follow me, for the kingdom of heaven is available today.”

he taught us to live well — to live in such a manor that we obtain peace with god and with each other.

the side effects of that kind of living is salvation and a better society.

they are not goals in and of themselves.

to fully expound on this would require 400 pages, so i’ll leave off there.

hopefully some of what i have in mind has been communicated.

i have been asked to post on my practice of exposing this board to beliefs or lines of thinking that i myself do not hold to.

this thread is meant to be an answer to that request.

in the interest of keeping it clear for those who won’t read more than a few sentences, i’ll make my main point up top, and flesh it out below:

the verses i have in mind, mostly are:

“…test everything; hold fast what is good.” (1 thes 5)

“…always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you”. (1 peter 3)

“Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is folly with God. For it is written, “He catches the wise in their craftiness,” and again, “The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are futile.” So let no one boast in men. For all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours, and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.” (1 cor 3)

my main point is this: all that is truth is god’s truth, and we are instructed in scripture to seek it out and claim it as our own.

all too often, christians take an anti-intellectual attitude. we tend to discourage critical , questioning, or creative thinking. we do this, i think, in a misguided attempt at “guarding the truth” — but the end result is that the truth is actually supressed, or more likely, never actually encountered.

many of us who grew up in christian homes, and almost all of us who grew up in western society, have heard some version of the gospel all our lives. it is impossible to get through life without encountering a version or other of it. the problem with this is that fimiliarity breeds contempt: as people have become accustomed to what they have heard is “the gospel”, and rejected or accepted that gospel, they then go through their lives thinking they have done just that: accepted or rejected the gospel.

in fact, i submit that they have done no such thing.

as paul makes clear, if it is not the actual gospel, it is really no gospel at all.

and the pop-culture version of the gospel is not the actual gospel that jesus preached.

i’ll make that point again, because i believe it is vitally important: the story that most people in western culture have accepted or rejected is not the gospel, but something else — something crippled and distorted.

i am not questioning the “salvation” of millions of people who hold some christian faith now or in times past (romans makes clear that god judges all people based on what they know and what they do with what they know — i believe we can trust the father in heaven to do the right thing with each and every human soul). rather, i am talking about something else: living life with jesus as mentor, for the good of those around us and to the glory of the father.

jesus asked no less than for people to abandon all they held dear, turn their lives in a new direction, and pursue love and justice.

thousands crowded around him because he taught with an authority they had never encountered on a subject they had heard all their lives: the message of god’s love.

the message he preached was that the kingdom of god was available in a way it never had been before, and that anyone and everyone would do so may enter into it.

some rejoiced at this, some balked.

a few turned very bitter, and eventually killed him for it — because his message was threatening the status quo, where they were comfortabely in power.

but he proved that he was who he claimed to be — the perfect revelation of the father — by not staying dead, and he turned the world on its ear by sending his students out to teach others what they had learned about how to live life: by loving people.

as a couple of generations passed, and it became clear that the story of this incredible news should be preserved in writing, some of these students set out to do just hat — and others set out to write to the groups of people who had started meeting together to encourage each other in this new faith.

a few of those letters of encouragement were saved, and eventually gathered together as part of the scripture.

the three verses i qutoed above are from some of those letters.

in it, we have clues from some of the earliest believes — some of jesus’ first stuents — about how to live this life he instructed us in living.

so little of jesus message had to do with holding to this or that theory about theology, or subscribing to any one system of belief.

rather, jesus message was about doing. about loving your neighbor, and about taking care of the poor, and about taking care of the single most important thing god ever created: the people around you.

and all of the letters to the early churches were geared towards encouraging people to that effort, and against allowing the ideas of the culture to invade and infect that pure message.

they were encouraged to try out the ideas that came along, and compare them to what they knew to be true, and to allow the spirit of the one true god to help them discern.

they were instructed to be thinkers: to be ready to give answers about this faith to questioners.

they were reminded that even when they think they know that they still don’t know what god knows.

in light of all of this, as society changes it is still our duty as people who are trying to be students of jesus the christ to test all things.

to truly think through issues and not simply cling to the thinking we have always held, but to constantly evaluate our heads and our hearts and the ideas we find around us so that we can grow in our faith.

i post ideas that some may dissagree with (and i may disagree with) to further this effort.

i believe that we as christians must think critically about the ideas that the world around us holds, so that we may meet those ideas head on: embracing what is true, rejecting what is false, and always doing so with the help of the spirit of god.

i believe that too few of us bother doing that, because we have grown up in a culture that discourages it, and that it is one of my duties to encourage right behaviour.

some of the ideas i present are not in line with scripture. some are.

we who are jesus’ disciples are under instruction to test them all, and to cling to those that are.

ignoring these ideas won’t make them go away, though. the world around us, the one we are called to be in, holds these ideas, and if we are to be the salt and light in this world, we are obligated to reach them in a gentle, understanding way.

i believe that by thinking through tough issues, and by evaluating more sides that we might be comfortable with, we can grow as a body of beleivers — we can gain a higher understanding of the truth.

i trust the holy spirit in the believer’s life to help them discern that which is false from that which is true.

it must be evident that “truth” is a funny sort of thing, since many of us here claim to have it, yet disagree on so very many things.

so let us approach ideas humbly, and with open minds, as we are instructed to. let us reason together. let us think critically and creatively about this faith.

“test everything; hold fast what is good.”

christianitytoday.com wrote:
As Americans set new records for charitable giving in response to Hurricane Katrina, some fundraisers are seeing a principle confirmed: when the suffers are perceived as innocent victims, donors respond generously.

On the other hand, giving patterns suggest donors are losing patience with chronic problems such as poverty, in which suffering is arguably exacerbated by questionable choices. Private donations are shrinking for homeless shelters, AIDS-related services and programs for troubled youth, to cite just a few examples.

read the full article here

what do you think?

who is “innocent” ?

who deserves to receive the dollars we give in compassionate causes?

how do you go about deciding where to give money?

are you positive that race and/or class issues aren’t in the back of your head as you make such decisions?

who is it that jesus said we were to be compassionate to?

is that who you are compassionate to?

i have heard it myself, many times, from people talking about the welfare system we have here.

statements like, “well, i don’t mind helping people out, but if they’d just get a job…”

i am wondering how much of the “innocence” of a person plays into how generous we are…

of course no one is truly innocent, but do we feel more compassion towards a middle-class white family who loses everything in a fire set by an arsonist than we do for a lower-class black family who loses everything in a fire set by a crack pipe?

are we more willing to give generously to the first example?

the article is saying that, by and large, we (americans) are, and that supposed christians are no different.

it ought to make one pause and relfect on one’s own heart, not argue over who’s right or wrong.

i got the idea from another website, but decided to try the idea, and found the results startling.

i would love to hear some of the questions raised by the text below, but first an explanation of what i’ve done:

a) substituted “Christian” for “Jew”
b) substituted “Muslims or Buddhists” for “Gentiles”
c) substituted “Baptism” for “Circumcision”
d) substituted “law of grace” for “law”

i’ll point out that i’m not trying to re-write romans here, just bring up some questions about this life of “being christians”.

anyway, onto the text:

For it is not the hearers of the law of grace who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law of grace who will be justified. For when Muslims or Buddhists, who do not have the law of grace, by nature do what the law of grace requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law of grace. They show that the work of the law of grace is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus.

But if you call yourself a Christian and rely on the law of grace and boast in God and know his will and approve what is excellent, because you are instructed from the law of grace; and if you are sure that you yourself are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of children, having in the law of grace the embodiment of knowledge and truth– you then who teach others, do you not teach yourself? While you preach against stealing, do you steal? You who say that one must not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? You who boast in the law of grace dishonor God by breaking the law of grace. For, as it is written, “The name of God is blasphemed among the Muslims or Buddhists because of you.”

For baptism indeed is of value if you obey the law of grace, but if you break the law of grace, your baptism becomes non-baptism. So, if a man who is not baptized keeps the precepts of the law of grace, will not his non-baptism be regarded as baptism? Then he who is physically not baptized but keeps the law of grace will condemn you who have the written code and baptism but break the law of grace. For no one is a Christian who is merely one outwardly, nor is baptism outward and physical. But a Christian is one inwardly, and baptism is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter. His praise is not from man but from God.

about one-third of the planet’s current population live in areas that have historical ties to the religion associate with jesus christ — and yet so very few people actually study and follow his teachings.

here in indiana, where i live, you’re hard pressed to find someone, anyone, who doesn’t believe in god in some capacity or another, and its is even tough to find someone who does not claim to be a christian.

but the way they behave proves out that they don’t really believe in him, or the power of his teachings.

we humans always act in accordance with what we really believe to be true about the universe.

this is what jesus meant when he spoke of a “good tree can not have bad fruit and a bad tree can not have good fruit”.

just because people claim to have opinions on things does not mean they actually believe those opinions to be Truth.

christians are taught, in the text held as god’s very word, that condemnation of others should never be part of our lives.

we are never to condemn, simply.

some of us who claim christ as lord DO, and it grieves him, and me, but none of us ought to.

and we are to never feel condemned, since we know that there is One Who Is True and who loves us, no matter what others who do not know us, say.

some of us forget this, too — and get very offended when opposing views are brought up.

again, god is grieved by this behaviour, too.

that’s one of the things about claiming to follow a god who asks for no less than perfect — we simply can not live up to that.

but, that is also what is so beautiful about jesus’ teachings: he shows that god is loving, and accepts us as we are — faults and all.

now, i am old enough, and been online long enough to know that none of us are going to change anyone’s mind here who doesn’t believe god exists.

be that as it may.

i hope my post has been able to show you a more accurate portrayal of how we who follow christ see the world — as opposed the the view imposed on us by movies, tv and popular culture in general.

we believe things far more mysterious than hollywood can imagine, and greater than you could believe.

there were both explicit and implicit conditions on being “accepted” by god.

god desires to accept us, but respects our opinion in these matters.

to those who have no desire to have anything to do with him, he respectfully backs off and waits, and hopes.

this is, of course, rather than simply coercing with a fire and light show so irresistible you’d have no real say in the matter.

the former, imo, is the better way to run the universe, if one is stuck with the job.

assume you live alone, and are home alone, in your apartment, asleep in bed, when you realize that your apartment is being broken into, downstairs.

what is the proper course of action for a follower of christ?

don’t assume you have, or don’t have, a gun, a bat, a tazer, or any other weapon: all of those choices that are made ahead of time play into your answer.

so?

the protection of one’s “belongings” are never worth violence.

we are warned, by jesus, against anger — let alone acting in anger against one who seeks to impose their will upon us.

we are instructed to treasure heavenly things (people, god, love) and not earthly things (dvds, tvs).

further, we are instructed to give to anyone who asks of us.

we are instructed to greet evil with kindness.

we are instructed to consider others as more important than ourselves.

i see no room in the scripture for “exceptions” to these instructions.

trying to improve one’s life through the accumulation of (let alone the violent protection of) “stuff” is antithetical to the very existence of one who follows christ.

if we are truly treasuring heavenly things, we will care more for the burglar than we will for our “things”.

it seems responsible, at first blush, to look out for our own safety.

but what is “safe”, really?

who holds our safety?

i can’t imagine the christ cowering in his bedroom, praying to god to help him stay alive.

rather, i imagine he’d call out, in some way that makes known that no harm is intended:

“hello there?

i have no plans to call the police. is there something you need?

i usually offer my guests something. can i get you a drink of water?”

we are told never to fear.

surely this isn’t just “pretty worlds”?

could jesus really mean to never, under any circumstances, fear anything, other than god?

i believe that is exactly what he means.

i think that jesus means, quite literally, that we are to greet a burglar in our home with kindness, not vengeful anger, or even the hope of retribution.

that if i am truly following christ, my thoughts will be on loving this person into the kingdom, somehow.

we are told explicitly to turn the other cheek.

are we to act out in a first-strike manner when our cheek has not even been struck?

we are simply instructed to turn our cheeks. this, i beleive, means to remain vulnerable to any and all attacks, not just physical, to our person, be they attacks on our ego, or on our our pride, or on our sensitive feelings, or, yes, even on our cheeks.

i don’t see room for exception to this, and, if you study the sermon on the mount as a whole, and look at “turning the other cheek” in its proper context, you’ll see that it is a major component of living a life in the kingdom.

we who follow jesus are, simply, to make it a habit of not meeting spite with spite, or sarcasm with sarcasm, or hate with hate, or force with force, but instead we are to treat all comers with love.

it is up to you whether you own a weapon, and it is up to you whether you think it is best to use that weapon against a human being.

my take is that the situations calling for violence against another human being (weapons or no) must be exceedingly rare.

i would think, perhaps, there’s been 1, ever. (when jesus himself drove people from the temple area)

like i said, i trust him with such acts, but never myself.

i do not believe i could ever be trusted to do it lovingly. i’m sure there’d always be some amount of selfishness driving my behavior.

of course, the idea of complete safety is absurd — if you are only considering what we can see.

but if you are living in the kingdom of god that jesus preached, the one where the father who created the universe and knows how many hairs are on your head, and who gives good gifts, and takes perfectly good care of the birds…

well, if you truly trust and serve such a god, and live in such a kingdom, then you can always walk unafraid.

for you are serving and laying up treasures where moth and rust do NOT destroy, and where thieves do NOT break in an steal.

fear god only. serve god only.

lord knows i could do better at this.

a friend of mine recently wrote:

This is the very reason I stopped attending my youth group. It was so unwelcoming.

And, there’s something else, too. It seems to me, that rejection from the church crowd holds a bigger emotional consequence than rejection from other crowds. These are, after all, the people with whom you are supposed to be sharing God, a very intimate experience. It’s like rejection from a lover, in a way. Not to mention the fact, that church crowds are so darn good at rejection, and doing it group-wide. I have found that many churches are like giant rumor mills. If you get rejected at all, you get rejected ALL THE WAY.

no disciple of jesus’ could agree that the above statement about “our people” is the way it should be.

rather, all would say it would be best not to be this way.

so, what is it that prevents us from being the grace-filled, friendly, welcoming crowd that jesus himself clearly was?

plankeye

Matthew 7:1:

Judge not, that you be not judged. 2 For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. 3 Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? 4 Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.

(most people stop quoting this little section there, but jesus didn’t stop there….)

“Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you.

i see a few things in there that, by and large, are missed, through lack of sheer studying, as far as i can tell.

first: judgment IS the plank in our own eye.

as soon as we stop trying to correct other people’s behavior, we are freed, by grace, to love them.

as soon as we stop trying to force them into doing what they can’t, they’ll stop feeling (and being!) judged.

as soon as we stop trying to “force feed” our “pearls of heavenly knowledge” to pigs…

you know that pigs can’t eat pearls, right?

…they’ll stop trying to bite us.

judgment is something that only ONLY only god can do.

but, we want people to change, right?

we want them to come to the place we are, where pearls are appreciated, and treasured, not rejected?

how do we do that, if not by judging?

Matthew 7:7:

Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. 9 Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? 11 If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!

asking for things is the key to obtaining what you want, in the kingdom of god.

you ask the father for things, so ask his kids.

simply turning your attitude from “demanding/shoving” to “asking” will make all the difference.

of course, to get rid of this judging and contemptive attitude, really, you need to go back to the passages of the sermon on the mount that lead up to it — the things where jesus teaches us how to be of his mind:

in reverse order:

do not be anxious
lay up treasures in heaven
fasting
how to pray
giving to the needy
loving your enemies
retaliation
oaths
divorce
lust
anger

…in all these little passages are deep deep mysteries of kingdom life — and the one follows the other: he put them in order for a reason.

once you have “worked out your salvation” in this order, and have (all with christ’s help) managed to lose judging, you are then, spiritually able to move on to:

the golden rule

the golden rule simply can’t be “done” apart from living out the sermon on the mount’s teachings.

but, through the spirit, if you seek to obey christ’s teachings in the sermon on the mount, by the time you’re ready to give up judging, you’re nature has changed so much that you are more than ready and willing to start doing to people — really and truly — what you wish they would do to you.

i could talk for hours about this, but i must get going on my day’s work.

remember, it is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.

i can’t stress enough: love, love, love, love, love, love, love,
love, love, love, love, love,
love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love,
love, love, love, love,
love, love, love, love, love,
love, love,
love

it is the holy spirit’s job to convict — it is your job to love and shine god’s love through that love.

when i was a baby, and brand new to the universe, i had specific things i could and couldn’t do.

i couldn’t walk, or run, or feed myself, or even not pee myself.

i didn’t need rules, i wasn’t aware enough to understand them.

this is sorta like adam and eve.

eventually, i grew up enough to need rules, but i needed VERY black and white ones: “do not play in the street”, “do NOT play with matches”, “never touch the stove”

these rules were for my own safety as i was not able to discern the difference between a “hot stove” and a “cool stove”, so the rule needed to be “NEVER”.

eventually, i grew up enough to understand the difference, and no rule was needed at all: i could tell for myself when to touch, and not touch, a stove, and it wasn’t because my parents say so, but because i understand enough about the universe and how it works to WANT to do the right thing.

this is roughly, i believe, similar to the OT and NT.

as we humans learned more and more about god, and eventually as jesus came and revealed god’s true ideas for our lives, we no longer needed “rules” as we now had enough knowledge about him to make informed decisions — ones that are good in their own right, and not just because “I SAID SO”.

at the time of early genesis, people were living almost 1,000 years — and a person who “got a taste for blood”, as it were, was able to do a LOT of “damage” — killing hundreds or multiple perhaps thousands of people.

people, before the flood, if you’ll recall, got to the point where their thoughts were “always on evil all the time” and, this was at a time when one of god’s main commands was to fill the earth.

recall, too, when able and cain had thier little altercation:

Genesis 4:8 Cain spoke to Abel his brother. And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him. 9 Then the Lord said to Cain, “Where is Abel your brother?” He said, “I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?” 10 And the Lord said, “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground. 11 And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. 12 When you work the ground, it shall no longer yield to you its strength. You shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth.” 13 Cain said to the Lord, “My punishment is greater than I can bear. 14 Behold, you have driven me today away from the ground, and from your face I shall be hidden. I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.” 15 Then the Lord said to him, “Not so! If anyone kills Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold.” And the Lord put a mark on Cain, lest any who found him should attack him. 16 Then Cain went away from the presence of the Lord and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden.

clearly, able was *so scared* of being killed, that god put some mark on him that told the other humans not to kill him.

it seems that murder was a HUGE problem, when people were supposed to be populating the planet.

so, god “started over” — and limited human’s lifespan to 120 years or so, and gave strict instructions about killing:

Genesis 9:3 Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. And as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything. 4 But you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood. 5 And for your lifeblood I will require a reckoning: from every beast I will require it and from man. From his fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life of man.

6 “Whoever sheds the blood of man,
by man shall his blood be shed,
for God made man in his own image.

7 And you, be fruitful and multiply, teem on the earth and multiply in it.”

so — we have, now, a new instruction from god that each death now requires a reckoning, where it did not before.

let’s jump the 15,000 or so years between gen 9 and the time of jesus: who paid the price for all man’s sin.

because of that sacrifice, a man who murders is able to be accepted by god, because god himself gave his own life as the recckoning.

if i murder, and then come to christ, and enter the kingdom of heaven, the penalty i would pay for the blood i shed becomes paid by jesus, rather than me.

god knew full well i would shed that blood, and gave himself up as the reckoning anyway.

my life was bought for a price!

now: when it comes down to the death penalty, then, i believe that in light of all of this, it is better to give a man or woman their entire natural lifespan to come to the creator and ask forgiveness.

if we send them to an early grave, we are doing to them what god was unwilling to do to us.

–

now, let me sum up:

god has been bringing humans along on a journey towards him — teaching us slowly, ever since we were booted from the garden, how to live in harmony with him again.

it has been a SLOW journey, as we are a stiff-necked people.

as we have learned more and more than human life is precious, and as we have stopped having murder as our number one way to go, or put another way, as we have matured as a people, the rules concerning how to deal with murder has been able to “relaxed” in such a way that we can recognize the life even of a murderer is precious in god’s site.

(remember, earlier in our history it seems NO ONE’s life was sacred)

i think god sent jesus at just the right time — teaching us a new way, a better way, than we were ready for with the law, and i believe jesus’ own words make this plain.