Weapons of Redemption

Deep in the bloody four-year american civil war Abraham Lincoln was already contemplating the task of putting the country back together once it was over.

One congressman with whom he was discussing his plans for a merciful reconstruction was incensed. "Mr.  President," he exclaimed, "how can you speak of extending mercy towards the south? They our enemies! We must destroy them and treat them as conquered territories when this war is ended!"

To which Lincoln is supposed to have replied, "Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?"

Jesus of Nazareth of course called on his followers to live in just this way:

You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies. Pray for those who treat you badly. If you do this, you will be children who are truly like your Father in heaven. He lets the sun rise for all people, whether they are good or bad. He sends rain to those who do right and to those who do wrong. 

If you love only those who love you, why should you get a reward for that? Even the tax collectors do that. And if you are nice only to your friends, you are no better than anyone else. Even the people who don’t know God are nice to their friends.

What I am saying is that you must be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.

(Gospel of Matthew 5.43 - 48, ERV)

Jesus himself lived this out all the way the end. Hanging from nails that had just been hammered through his hands and feet by hardened Roman soldiers, he famously prayed, "Father, forgive them. They don’t know what they are doing," (Gospel of Luke 23.34, ERV).

At this far a remove from the events of Jesus' execution we 21st century people tend to think of forgiveness in abstract terms, as an admirable ethical principal that we ought to apply in our lives. But for Jesus on his cross that day it was also something else.

Love -- praying for the Romans and extending forgiveness to them -- was more than a noble principle.

Love was a weapon.

Forgiveness as a Weapon

Jesus was not a philosopher, social gadfly, violent revolutionary or most of the other interesting but historically groundless things he has been described as. As his student Simon Peter recognized, he was the Messiah and he fulfilled the role of the Messiah (read a little more about that here and here). When he crisscrossed Galilee and Judah inviting everyone into the Kingdom of God,  rode triumphantly into Jerusalem, and cleansed the Temple, he was doing what most Jewish people expected the Messiah to do. And they knew that the next step would be destroying the enemies of Israel -- the Romans, of course. Who else could it be but the Romans?

But that's where the paths diverged. All the other "Messiahs" battled Rome (or before that the Seleucid

Triumphant Christ by Melozzo da Forli (1483)

Empire), the "obvious" enemy of Israel. Jesus saw a greater enemy though. Yes, it's true, we must face facts: Jesus was a firm believer in "he who must not be named" (because it's so unenlightened, you know): Satan the devil. As the focus of evil in the world Satan was the power behind the throne of Rome and the other nations. He was the true enemy of Israel and the Messiah was duty bound to attack and tear down his kingdom. "The Son of God came for this: to destroy the devil’s work," (1st Letter of John 3.8, ERV)

This cosmic battle took place not on the Plains of Esdraelon or the Kidron Valley but on Jesus' cross and his weapons were self-sacrificial love, trust in God's justice, the words of Scripture, prayer, and forgiveness.  Forgiveness even for a man who maybe a few days ago had been living as a criminal (Gospel of Luke 23.29-43). The triumph of love over the worst possible hatred, the nullification of the horrific disease of sin, and the forgiveness of all people conquered the devil and smashed to shivers his kingdom in the deep mystery of God's atonement for his children.

It's the same for us today. We in the Christian Movement fight the same battle against evil and to extend God's reign. Praying for your enemies, living out God's love in realtime, and making the Great Announcement of forgiveness to people still has the power to destroy the devil's work.

"I will let everyone who wins the victory sit with me on my throne. It was the same with me. I won the victory and sat down with my Father on his throne," (Book of Revelation 3.21, ERV).


Note: FYI, this is a re-write of an earlier article

What Does Faith Feel Like?

Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee (1695)

Painting by Ludolf Backhuysen

When Jesus of Nazareth talked about faith, what did he mean? Did he mean positive thinking? Did he mean warm, comforting thoughts that help you get through life? Did he mean the definition skeptics and atheists frequently quote, "Believing something without any proof?"

Later on I'll post something about the actual nature and definition of the faith Jesus talked about. But in this article I want to give you my favorite practical example of what Jesus' faith was like for him personally -- the inside view so to speak. He constantly tried to hammer this kind of faith home and was surprised it was so hard for his students to get.

There are dozens of examples I could use, of course, but this one hit home with me one day a few years ago during a period of joblessness. This is the story of Jesus asleep in a fishing boat. It can be found in Luke 8.22-25, Matthew 8:23-27, and Mark 4:36-41

Boat

Try to enter into this picture in your mind:

After a long day of teaching the crowds Jesus decides to cross to another area on the Sea of Galilee. The disciples's boats were there so he hopped into one of them and instantly fell fast asleep on the cushion used by the man steering the boat. We know exactly what these boats were like because, remarkably, one from that same time period somehow survived to the present day and now is in a museum in Galilee. While great for fishing, these boats were very narrow and shallow. During a storm in the middle of the lake they could easily fill with water and go down.

Sea of Galilee Boat

Photo by Berthold Werner

So, sure enough, a storm does blow up. Rain pours down in sheets, the wind screams, lightning shoots down like hungry dragons, violent waves pour over the side and smash the little boat against other waves. The crew struggles just to keep their craft from flipping over and pitching them all into the lake. To seasoned fishermen it looks like they are goners (“Master, Master, we are about to die!”).

Meanwhile, Jesus is still peacefully sound asleep on the completely drenched cushion. Finally, as their last chance, they wake Jesus up -- rather accusingly as Mark tells it: “Teacher, don’t you care that we are about to die?!”

"Cowards"

Jesus seems a bit irritated. Or perhaps disappointed. He stands, essentially tells the storm to 'shut up' (which it does), then turns on whichever of his students had been able to cram into that particular boat and says...

Now, my trusty NET Bible translates this correctly but I'm using the obscure God's Word version here because in addition to being accurate it totally nails the meaning.

...and Jesus said,

Matthew: “Why do you cowards have so little faith?” (GW)

Mark: “Why are you such cowards? Don’t you have any faith yet?” (GW)

He calls them "cowards," (deiloi in Greek).  Jesus rebukes his apostles quite a bit in the gospels if you haven't noticed, but this is the only time he uses the term "coward" with these manly men. Seasoned fishermen though they were, they were terrified, while Jesus, with little practical fishing experience so far as we know, was completely unworried. And he was startled, even annoyed, that they weren't unworried too. Not that he expected them to lay down their oars and stop bailing the boat, but that they ought to have been unworried that God would let them -- and Jesus -- die.

The lesson I draw from this adventure is that for Jesus, faith (at least in part) = trust.  He had complete, robust, implicit trust in his Father, to the point where he could lay down in the center of a raging storm and fall sound asleep without a care in the world. Jesus' followers sometimes call this "childlike faith." If you had the good fortune to grow up in a loving home and ever curled up in your parent's arms and fell asleep while they read you a story, you have experienced something very close to what the faith Jesus described and lived feels like.

If you or I were on that boat with him would he have been incredulous that we didn't have it by this time too?

Why Do We Struggle in Our Lives as Christians?

"The Prodigal Son"

by Rembrandt

Another question from my "Quora ministry."

Q: Why is it that I have a struggle in my relationship with Christ?I have my high and lows. I follow after God and love Him. I want to honor and glorify his name. Then, there are periods of my life I commit habitual sin. I repent. Turn. Then later go back to it. I am disgusted in myself.


A: You are going through the same struggle that all Christians go through — even the ones who seem to be paragons of virtue. I’m certainly still going through it and I’ve followed Jesus for some time. As Jesus said, “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak,” (Mark 14.38), and that struggle is still there even after we receive the Holy Spirit (Galatians 5.16–17). We have been justified -- made right -- by Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross so (and this is important) God does not condemn us for our sins anymore (Romans 8.1–2). This means that shame is not part of the cycle anymore. If God doesn’t condemn us, then who are we condemn ourselves?

There is a stage after being justified, of course, usually called sanctification. This is the work of the Holy Spirit and, quite frankly, it takes all of your life. This is what Paul is referring to in the Galatians scripture I mentioned above, and what you and I are going through right now. Sanctification is an act of God just as justification is. Our part is to cooperate with the Spirit within us. How? By focusing not on our many sins but on love, because, “the whole law is fulfilled in one word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself,’” (Galatians 5.13–15, Matthew 22.36–40). Our motivation for everything should become love more and more because as Paul says, the only thing that counts really is “faith working through love,” (Galatians 5.6). And God himself “is love,” (1 John 4.8, 16).

 But becoming like God — which is what sanctification really is — is a lifelong project. Nobody does it right away — or even over decades. And as you say, there are habitual sins and faults and weaknesses that all of us have. So what if we have a moment of weakness and commit a sin? What if we slip back into committing some sin several times in our lives? Does God condemn us? No, he himself says that he does not. Should we be overcome by shame and disgust with ourselves? No, we are justified, forgiven of our sins and have been adopted as God’s own children.

 So what do we do about it? As soon as you realize it, do this: “Confess [y]our sins, [for] he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1.5–9). No drama, no shame. Just acknowledge you messed up, then go back to growing in love and working with the Holy Spirit in becoming more and more like Jesus.

A Story About John the Apostle

"Apostle John the Theologian" 

by A.N. Mironov

A new commandment I give you: love each other. Just as I have loved you, you also must love each other. This is how everyone will know you are my disciples, by your love for each other.

Gospel of John 13.34-35

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The blessed John the Evangelist lived in Ephesus until old age. His disciples could barely carry him to church and he could not muster the voice to speak many words. During individual gatherings he usually said nothing but, "Little children, love one another." 

The disciples and brothers in attendance, annoyed because they always heard the same words, finally said, "Teacher, why do you always say this?" 

He replied with a line worthy of John: "Because it is the Lord's commandment and if it alone is kept, it is sufficient."

Jerome (AD 347- 420)
Fathers of the Church, Commentary on Galatians 6.10, Andrew Cain Jerome, CUA Press, 2010

Last Words

End of the Line

Photo by Willy Volk

Synchroblog is a little community of mostly Christian bloggers who write about "post-modern faith and life," posting on a particular subject each month. Bad news though: Synchroblog is on its last legs and this will be its last set of essays ever. So this post is part of the October 2015 Synchroblog  whose theme is, appropriately enough,‘If this was my last blog post, here’s what I would want to say’.

See the list at the end to read everybody else's final missives.

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I haven't been a very good Synchroblogger, I admit. I joined in October 2013 with a post called The Gospel Truth About Social Justice, which actually became one of the more popular posts I've written here. But as encouraging as that was, I've only posted four more: (Jesus Christ Superstar Saved My Soul, Going Home, The Year of Reading Scripture for the First Time, and Law of Liberty). And this one if I get it done before the deadline.

This time the writing prompt invites me to imagine that this is my final blog post.  Actually I've written final posts for several blogs so it's easy to tell you what those look like: Nothing. Usually I've written until I got sick of it and just stopped.

I did do a little more with a sister blog of this one. My immortal last words there were:

I can't think of a use for this blog. And really I haven't used it a lot anyway.

Pretty moving, huh?

So I'm going to take our theme as not just my last words for this blog, but my last words ever. What if I knew that 5 minutes from now I would be dead? What words would I write on this page then?

Actually, I had an entirely different set of words I was going to include here. But as I thought about it that way -- as the final few sentences I want to leave the world with after my passing -- different words came to mind. And now they seem like the only thing important enough to say.

As you know if you read Authentic Light a lot, I am rather obsessed with the early Christian movement -- the first 300 or 400 years. I am what is called a Paleo-orthodox theologian. Jerome, the ancient Christian scholar from that era, reports an old tradition (in his Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians, 6.10) about the Apostle John once he got up in years.

When John was too weak to deliver full sermons anymore, he still insisted on being carried into Christian meetings where he would invariably hoist himself up on his stretcher and deliver this short message:

Little children, love one another.

After a while of course this became monotonous and a few of the people asked him why he didn't change it up a little.  His answer was: "This is the Lord’s command, and if this alone be done, it is enough."

I always liked that story, so that is the last thing I want to say in my last Synchroblog: Love one another, the way Jesus loves you.

"Everyone will know by this that you are my disciples—if you have love for one another."

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This is a list of the Synchrobog contributors for this final month. Read them all and leave a comment!

K.W. Leslie – Synchrobloggery

Glenn Hager – Parting Shot

Clara Mbamalu – What is love?

Carol Kuniholm – A Final Synchroblog

Peggy Brown – Abi and The Last Synchroblog

Leah Sophia – Synchroblog: Creation One More Time

Jeremy Myers – If this were my only blog post, I would invite you to do one thing

J. A. Carter – Last Words

Tony Ijeh – Sharing Jesus

Liz Dyer – Last words about love

Siblings

When we started out all those years ago, this is what members of the Christian movement were known for. Is it still?

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So then, whenever we have an opportunity, let us do good to all people, and especially to those who belong to the family of faith.

 Letter to the Galatians 6.10

The Christians love one another. They do not neglect widows. Orphans they rescue from those who are cruel to them. Every one of them who has anything gives without reserve to the one who has nothing. If they see a traveling stranger they bring them under their roof. They rejoice over them as over a real brother or sister, for they do not call one another brothers and sisters after the flesh, but they know they are siblings in the Spirit and in God.

If one of them sees that one of their poor must leave this world, they provide for their burial as well as possible. And if they hear that one of them is imprisoned or oppressed by their opponents for the sake of their Christ’s name, all of them take care of all that person's needs. If possible they set them free.

If anyone among them is poor or comes into want while they themselves have nothing to spare, they fast two or three days for them. In this way they can supply any poor person with the food they need.

Apology of Aristides, Chapter 15 (c. AD 124)

Jesus and the Toads

A vile toad

Photo by Paul Henjum

I ran across this passage by Richard Baxter, famous puritan teacher, and it just made me laugh with his picture of Christ holding himself back from making fun of all us toads in our little swamp. Sorry, this is what happens to old theology students: we find ourselves snickering at 17th century preachers.

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As a sinner, you are far viler than a toad. Yet Christ was so far from making light of you and your happiness that He came down into the flesh, and lived a life of suffering, and offered Himself a sacrifice to the justice which He has provoked, that your miserable soul might have a remedy. It is no less than miracles of love and mercy that He has showed to us.


Richard Baxter (AD 1615 - 1691),
From his sermon Making Light of Christ and Salvation

Never Out

The Lord is loving to humans beings, and swift to pardon, but slow to punish. Let no one therefore despair of his own salvation.

Cyril of Jerusalem (AD 313 - 386)
Catechetical Lectures of S. Cyril, Archbishop of Jerusalem

Or as the Salvation Army says, "A man may be down, but he is never out."

Bottom Line

Some people think Pope Francis is a marxist, socialist, radical for his idea of restructuring the global economy so that it revolves around human need rather than "the bottom line." This may be true, but he is in good company.

A girl in India

Courtesy of Varun Chatterji

Those who enact unjust policies are as good as dead,
those who are always instituting unfair regulations,
to keep the poor from getting fair treatment,
and to deprive the oppressed among my people of justice,
so they can steal what widows own,
and loot what belongs to orphans.
What will you do on judgment day,
when destruction arrives from a distant place?
To whom will you run for help?
Where will you leave your wealth?

(Book of the Prophet Isaiah 10.1 - 3, NET)

Real

Photo by Poojagupta21

If someone claims, “I love God,” but hates his brother or sister, then he is a liar. Anyone who does not love a brother or sister, whom he has seen, cannot possibly love God, whom he has never seen. He gave us a clear command, that all who love God must also love their brothers and sisters.

1st  Letter of John 4.20-21, Voice


Many people prefer to be "spiritual," not "religious," and given religion's reputation there is some justification for that. But there is a true religion. John, Jesus' best friend, says having an inner sense of being spiritual or connected with the infinite isn't quite enough. The authenticity of our relationship with God is tested and proven in the crucible of rugged, real life lived with our fellow humans. God, for all his virtues, is invisible most of the time. Love for an invisible God -- no matter how real inwardly -- can easily delude us, becoming a love for ourselves and an image of God we're comfortable with. Our love for God only becomes visible through our love for the people we meet.

There is a true religion, one that demonstrates its reality. Jesus' little brother once wrote,

Real, true religion from God the Father’s perspective is about caring for the orphans and widows who suffer needlessly and resisting the evil influence of the world.

Letter of James 1.27

"Thy Will Be Done"

Where I go to church we always have a point where we pray the "Lord's Prayer" together. This is a very old custom for the Christian movement, incidentally. An ancient church manual from about AD 110 called The Didache prescribes that it should be prayed 3 times a day.

In the this prayer, after beginning by asking that God's reputation (his "name") be kept holy, Jesus teaches that the next thing to pray about is the theme of all his teaching: The Kingdom of God. He links our request for the Kingdom to come with another request that explains a little more about what that would mean: "Manifest Your will here on earth, as it is manifest in heaven," (Gospel of Matthew 6.9-13, Voice).

Remember that citizenship in God's Kingdom isn't something we get in the great by-and-by. We are already citizens here and now. The Kingdom comes as we live it on earth, in our daily lives. And the action of the Holy Spirit within us, particularly as he 'floods our hearts with his love,' brings us closer and closer to manifesting it 'as it is in heaven.'

The idea for this post, though, actually occurred to me when I read the BibleGateway's verse of the day, which is a famous Old Testament scripture.

He has told you, mortals, what is good in His sight. What else does the Eternal ask of you But to live justly and to love kindness and to walk with your True God in all humility?

Book of Micah 6.8, Voice

What does it look like for the Kingdom to come in our lives, as we "manifest" it? It looks like that.

Infinite Power, Infinite Compassion

"Gentleness"

Etching by Chaim Koppelman

It is the prerogative of great strength to be gentle. Always remember that you are linked with the Infinite God, and that all things are possible to you. There must also be infinite pity. We must be tolerant and pitiful to those who abuse us, or have been embittered by disappointment, or have been ill-used.

It must be our aim to make allowances for such, and always to be sweetly reasonable towards any brusqueness, rudeness and bad manners of their behaviour. Let us be willing to admit that much is due to congenital moroseness. Therefore, we bear gently with the erring, and with those who are out of the way, because we also are encompassed with infirmity.

F B Meyer

Law of Liberty

This is my Synchroblog for July. Synchroblog is a little community of Christian blogs that post on a particular subject each month. Unfortunately I've been bad and not done one of these since January! This month our topic is "Liberty." The bloggers who posted this time are listed at the bottom of this page. Please visit us all! We're an interesting and eclectic group!

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Maybe you've heard of the book The Year of Living Biblically, in which an agnostic New York reporter tries to, "follow every single rule in the Bible as literally as possible." He did it mainly for laughs at the expense of fundamentalists, but there are Christians in the world who do their best to live according to the Law of the Old Testament. And once upon a time I was one of them.

Just a brief bit of background: As I've mentioned in past posts, my family was Catholic. Regrettably though, I didn't pick up much about Christianity there. Then my mother who had always been a seeker, deeply interested in God, left the Catholic Church to join a small, quasi-fundamentalist group called the Worldwide Church of God (or WCG for short), and a few years later I followed her.

When I was 16 I'd had a very intense spiritual experience and I came away from it "on fire for God." I yearned to find a group that was passionately serious about following and obeying whatever he wanted humans to do, and if there is one thing that this church was, it was passionately serious, particularly about the Bible.

Focus

There is a lot I could say, good and bad, about my experience with the WCG but what I want to focus on here is their teaching that Jesus' true followers would be observing the Old Testament Law of Moses (or as we called it without fail, "God's Law.")

We understood that Jesus' sacrifice on the cross had fulfilled the bloody sacrifices of bulls and goats the ancient Israelites observed.  But that still left not only the 10 Commandments, which most Christians like, but hundreds of other statutes, ordinances, and laws about such things as fasting, what to eat, what to do about certain diseases, fabrics you can't wear, the problem of mildew, and how long a woman has to wait after having a baby before she can go back to the temple (or in our case, back to church).

And what was in some ways most important of all, rules on keeping the 7th day Sabbath and religious festivals. The Sabbath especially was seen as a special sign from God that identified who his true people were:

The Lord said to Moses, “Tell the Israelites, ‘Surely you must keep my Sabbaths, for it is a sign between me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I am the Lord who sanctifies you.

Book of Exodus 31.12-17, NET

Many fundamentalist Churches think (or if you go back far enough, all protestant Churches thought) the Roman Catholic Church is a false, corrupted, pagan organization and the real followers of Jesus were little groups hiding in "the wilderness" through the years. My church believed that too but our contribution was the idea that you could tell the true Christians in history from not-so-true Christians by which ones had the sign of the 7th day Sabbath. If they also kept "God's Holy Days" (nicely summed up in the 23rd chapter of the Book of Leviticus), so much the better.

Interpretation

During my time in the WCG I learned one of the same lessons that the author of Year of Living Biblically learned: everybody interprets. Even though our ministers constantly preached against interpreting the Bible ("The Bible interprets itself!"), you really can't apply the Law to your life without interpreting it. A random example: part of the instructions for the holy day called the Feast of Tabernacles (or 'booths' or 'shelters') is to,

Go out into the hill country and get branches from different kinds of olive trees. Get branches from myrtle trees, palm trees, and shade trees. Use the branches to make temporary shelters. Do what the law says!

Book of Nehemiah 8.15 & Leviticus 23.39 - 43, ERV

I understand that Orthodox Jews in New York still faithfully build these shelters on fire escapes and places like that every Fall. But for us? Nah! The leafy shelters were interpreted into nice hotel rooms (without ever using the pagan I-word, of course).

We diligently ate kosher, although it was our own version: the story was that supposedly a rabbi could "bless" almost anything and declare it kosher, so you couldn't trust their kosher. We applied Leviticus 11 (where the kosher laws are) our way. On another subject, no intimate relations during your wife's period (Leviticus 20.18). And if she ever gave birth to a boy she couldn't go back to church for 40 days -- twice that for a baby girl (Leviticus 12).

We observed a particularly strict interpretation of the tithing (old English for "tenth") laws, largely based on some things the Jewish historian Josephus said (Antiquities 4.205 and 4.240 - 243) and so gave 30% of our income: 10% for the church, 10% so we could attend the Feast of Tabernacles (having 10% of your income to blow in 7 days at some vacation spot was pretty cool, I must admit), and 10% for the poor, widows and orphans.

All these laws were originally written for shepherds and farmers so we found ourselves (or more likely the minister) trying to apply the deep inner principles of laws like,

A man might take a cover off a well or dig a hole and not cover it. If another man’s animal comes and falls into that hole, the man who owns the hole is guilty.

Book of Exodus 21.33, ERV

And so on.

Experience Good and Bad

Now you might think that living with all these strictures would be unbearable, especially for a 20th century (then) american with our individualism deeply ground into us, and it could rankle at times. But really, in a way, it was rather comforting, because you always knew what you were expected to do. I can see the attraction of living by an expanded Talmud, as the Jewish tradition is. Besides, these were Bible rules we were keeping! You weren't supposed to smoke but we had nothing against "drinkin', dancin', and goin' to the movie show" that old-time puritans used to inveigh against.

Plus I was among people who, for the most part, were zealously doing their best to obey and serve God to the best of their understanding. Since we were a small and non-mainstream group we depended on each other, which gave it a warm family atmosphere.

For the most part my experience living this way was pretty benign, but I can't and won't pretend that that was true for everybody. The full-throated legalism we espoused hurt a lot of good people. Although the WCG loosened up later on, for many years we broke up second marriages and told the wives to go back to their first husbands. People went bankrupt or just barely scraped by under the weight of those 3 tithes. Specious interpretations of the Book of Genesis bred a strain of racism in the church,  and while we did have non-white ministers and administrators interracial marriage was forbidden.

Worse in a way were the intense feelings of guilt so many had. Because, after all, "The heart is deceitful above all things, And desperately wicked; Who can know it?" (Prophecy of Jeremiah 17.9, KJV). Although we taught that God would forgive sins we also insisted that you had to obey Old Testament Law to please God. A christian that didn't was a false christian. How could you know, with your evil, desperately wicked heart, that you had done enough? If you hadn't, no matter how sincere you may have been, your only destination was The Lake of Fire (Book of Revelation 20.15).

Somehow, this horrific fear never bothered me much (which, I suppose, meant I was a shoe in for that Lake). I just never thought a God who said,

There is no condemnation now for those who live in union with Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit, which brings us life in union with Christ Jesus, has set me free from the law of sin and death (the first scripture I ever read and understood, when I was a very young Christian)

Letter to the Romans 8.1 - 2, GNT 

would toss me into a Lake of Fire if he could possibly avoid it. God has a bias, I believe. But I know that there are thousands, some very close to me, who were scared deeply by this church and cannot get free from their chains of guilt.

Liberation

Eventually, I realized that I had let other people do my thinking for me. I started over from the beginning, trying to read the scriptures with no preconceived notions. What were the Gospels and the Apostles really trying to say? There were too many things in the theology is learned that didn't make sense to me anymore, among them being how the Law, given by God, relates to the Messiah (who is God as it turns out) and has the perfect right to revamp it as he pleases. Even abolishing it entirely, as a law, and replacing it with a law 'placed in our minds and written on our hearts,' (Hebrews 8).

What I found turned out to be ordinary, everyday, garden-variety Christianity -- which was also some of the most explosive, counter-cultural dynamite the world has ever seen.

"Love, then do what you will," said St. Augustine. I don't live by the Law of Moses anymore. I am free of it. Now I, "peer into the perfect law of liberty and fix my attention there," (James 1.25) the Law of love.

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Here is the list of contributors this month. Go read them all and leave a comment!

• Jerry Wirtley – Liberty …
• Bobbi Ann Allen – My Allegiance Has Changed
• Justin Steckbauer – The Topic Of Liberty
• MinnowSpeaks – The Talk
• Jeremy Myers – Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death?
• Carol Kuniholm – Liberty and Constraint
• K.W. Leslie – Why I Don’t Want Go To Church: No Freedom
• Jesus Without Baggage – Where The Spirit of The Lord Is, There Is Liberty
• Glenn Hager – Rebel
• James Carter – Law of Liberty
• Mallory Pickering – Don’t Give Up
• Leah Chang – Free To Be
• Liz Dyer – Fighting For Freedom & Equality

Theologian Thursday: Wesley on The Secret of Perfection

John Wesley

Jesus of Nazareth was perfect -- sin-free -- and we are supposed to be like him (1st Letter of John 2.6, Gospel of Matthew 11.29, and 1st Letter of Peter 2.21 - 24). But how can we possibly become perfect like that? How can we fallible and, frankly, very weak humans become holy, just as Jesus was? There must be a way because Jesus himself ordered his students to be perfect (Matthew 5.48) and the Apostle Peter wrote that we must be holy (1st Peter 1.14 - 16).

Yes, God very kindly forgives our sins, but that's not what we're talking about here. How can our deeds, our words, and our very motivations become perfect and holy -- or as close to it as possible in this life, before the resurrection happens?

Many Jesus-followers down through the ages have thought that the secret lies in a strict, rigorous, austere life of self-denial and discipline. John Wesley, our guest theologian for today, believed that himself in his younger days. And throughout his life he was one of the most disciplined, self-controlled men you could ever meet, if you ever read about his life. But Wesley came to realize that strict austere rigor or adherence to a list of rules does not, and cannot, make you holy.

So how do you live a life that is "perfect as your father in Heaven is perfect?" How do we become like a holy God... a God who defines himself as love (1st John 4.8, 16)?

Here according to Wesley is the secret.

What is then the perfection of which man is capable while he dwells in a corruptible body? It is the complying with that kind command, "My son, give me thy heart." It is the "loving the Lord his God with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his mind." This is the sum of Christian perfection: It is all comprised in that one word, Love. 

 The first branch of it is the love of God: And as he that loves God loves his brother also, it is inseparably connected with the second: "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself:" Thou shalt love every man as thy own soul, as Christ loved us. "On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets:" These contain the whole of Christian perfection.

John Wesley
On Perfection

Theologian Thursday: Harkness on the Personal God

Dr. Georgia Harkness

Christians have a concept, taught by Jesus of Nazareth in places like Matthew 6.25 - 34, called "providence." This is the idea that God is not an inactive, remote, unconcerned being, but rather cares about and is involved in our everyday lives. Theologian Georgia Harkness talks about what that implies.

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Only a personal God can know or care what happens to persons. A deity conceived to be an impersonal force or process, or an abstract principle, or the totality of all that exists, or the sum total of human ideals cannot be personally concerned with individuals or their destiny. Such a God may be worshiped in the sense of being held in reverence; to such a deity some form of human adjustment can be made. But such a God cannot be prayed to or trusted to give providential guidance to any person's life.

A personal God is one of supreme intelligence, supreme goodness, and supreme creative and controlling power. One who grants the presence of an infinitely complex, yet ordered structure in the universe and the predominance of value of good over evil in human existence may be ready to affirm the existence of a personal God upon these grounds. Yet this is not foundation enough for a doctrine of providence. The Christian's faith in providence requires a further and to many minds a more difficult affirmation, for it roots in the conviction that the God who guides the stars and atoms in their courses also guides and cares for you and me.

Georgia Harkness
The Providence of God (Abingdon Press, 1960), pg. 18

Praying for Enemies

Anselm, a philosopher who lived in the 11th century, was one of the most profound and deeply spiritual minds the Christian Movement has ever produced. Here is how he taught that we should pray for our enemies.

Tomorrow we'll talk about one reason loving your enemies and forgiveness are so important in the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth.

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Almighty and tender Lord Jesus Christ,

I have asked you to be good to my friends,

and now I bring before you what I desire in my heart

for my enemies...


You alone, Lord, are mighty;

you alone are merciful;

whatever you make me desire for my enemies,

give it to them and give the same back to me,

and if what I ask for them at any time

is outside the rule of charity,

whether through weakness, ignorance, or malice,

good Lord, do not give it to them

and do not give it back to me.

*


Your slave begs you for his fellow slaves,

lest because of me they offend

against the kindness of so good and great a lord.

Let them be reconciled to you and in concord with me,

according to your will and for your own sake.

*

This is the punishment

that in the secret of my heart

I want to exact

for those who serve with me and those who sin with me –

this is the punishment that I ask

for those who serve with me and hate me –

let us love you and each other

as you will and as is expedient for us,

so that we may make amends to the good Lord

for our own and for each other’s offences;

so that we may obey with one heart in love

one Lord and one Master.

This is the revenge your sinner asks

on all who wish him evil and act against him.

Most merciful Lord,

prepare the same punishment for your sinner.



I have prayed as a weak man and a sinner;

you who are mighty and merciful, hear my prayer.



(From Ward, Benedicta. Prayers and Meditations of St. Anselm With the Proslogion. New York: Penguin, 1973)

Expanded Kindness

Lord, your patience exceeds our comfort. We pray to step beyond the boundaries of what we call kindness. Expand our notion of mercy and enable us to turn toward our enemies even when they do not turn toward us. Amen.

(CommonPrayer.net)

"...Radically Unlimited Liberality..."

Karl Barth

Sixth Sunday of Lent

"Dear friends, we should love each other, because love comes from God. Everyone who loves has become God’s child. And so everyone who loves knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love to us: He sent his only Son into the world to give us life through him. True love is God’s love for us, not our love for God." 

First Letter of John chapter 4 verses 7 - 10

Lent is about humbling one's self and taking on the nature of Christ. Each Sunday during this time I am letting wise Christians speak on these subjects. This week we have the thoughts of the great Protestant theologian Karl Barth on Christian love.

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What we have here -- in Christian love -- is a movement in which a man turns away from himself. In the continuation love turns wholly to another, to one who is wholly different from the loving subject. Christian love turns to the other purely for the sake of the other. It does not desire it for itself. In Christian love the loving subject gives to the other, the object of love, that which it has, which is its own, which belongs to it. It does so with a radically unlimited liberality.

Karl Barth
Church Dogmatics, Vol. 4 Part 2, p. 733

"...Faith comes not through pondering..."

Fifth Sunday of Lent

"Come near to God and he will come near to you. You are sinners, so clean sin out of your lives. You are trying to follow God and the world at the same time. Make your thinking pure." 

Letter of James chapter 4 verse 8, ERV


Lent is about humbling one's self and taking on the nature of Christ. Each Sunday during this time I will let wise Christians speak on these subjects. In this post the Orthodox writer Tito Colliander describes how to begin the Christian journey.

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It is for us to begin. If we take one step towards the Lord, he takes ten towards us -- he who saw the prodigal son while he was at a distance, and had compassion and ran and embraced him... Faith comes not through pondering but through action. Not words and speculation but experience teaches us what God is. To let in fresh air we have to open a window; to get tanned we must go out into the sunshine. Achieving faith is no different; we never reach a goal by just sitting in comfort and waiting, say the holy Fathers. Let the prodigal son be our example. He arose and came.

Tito Colliander, 

The Way of the Ascetics, p. 74

Advent - "...Determined to Exalt Us..."

Meditation for an Advent Sunday Morning


"This is the record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham."

Gospel of Matthew chapter 1 verse 1

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Early Christian leader and theologian John Chrysostom describes the amazing transaction that occurred when God became a man -- all to our benefit.

Hearing these things [i.e., that God would become a man], arise, and conclude nothing low: because of this very thing most of all should you be amazed, that being Son of the uncreated God, and His true Son, He allowed Himself to be called also Son of David, that He might make you son of God. He permitted a slave to be father to Him, that He might make the Lord Father to you, a slave.

Do you see now from the beginning of what nature the Gospels are? If you doubt concerning the things that pertain to you, from what belongs to Him believe these also. For it is far more difficult, judging by human reason, for God to become man, than for a man to be proclaimed a Son of God. So when you are told that the Son of God is Son of David and Abraham, doubt not anymore that you too, the son of Adam, shall be son of God. For not at random, nor in vain did He lower Himself so greatly, for He was determined to exalt us. Thus He was born after the flesh, that you might be born after the Spirit. He was born of a woman, that you might cease to be the son of a woman.

And so the birth was twofold, both made like us and also surpassing ours. For to be born of a woman indeed was our lot, but to be "born not of blood, nor of the will of flesh, nor of man,” but of the Holy Spirit, was to proclaim beforehand the birth surpassing us, the birth to come, which He was about freely to give us of the Spirit. And everything else too was like this. So His baptism also was of the same kind, for it partook of the old, and it partook also of the new. To be baptized by the prophet marked the old, but the coming down of the Spirit shadowed out the new. And just as if someone were to place himself between two persons standing apart, and stretching both his hands out were to lay hold on either side and bind them together, that is what he has done -- joining the old covenant with the new, God’s nature with man’s, the things that are His with ours.

John Chrysostom (AD 347 - 407)
Second Homily on the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 3