Understanding God through the flesh is ok

There are three people in the bible who show that using human concepts to filter doctrine or provide a foundation of faith is perfectly acceptable.

The first is the Centurion. Here is a man whose faith was greater than any found in Israel, that is, greater than the many people Jesus had met who were well versed in holy scripture. But, what was the practical rationale for the Centurion’s faith? Not scripture, but his job. A comparison between Jesus’ authority as the son of God and the Centurion’s authority as a soldier in command was not treated as blasphemy, as if the Centurion was saying he was Christ-like, but an amazing understanding of Jesus’ authority and love.

 The second is the Caananite woman. She was able to overcome Jesus’ reasoning for refusing (or delaying, as some God is the same today as he was yesterday Christians might argue) to help her daughter by arguing that even the scraps of his power were sufficient to provide for her needs. Did she argue scripture? No, she reasoned using her understanding of the world of flesh and relating that to the divine.

The third is Jesus. Jesus continually used parable to compare human realities to Godly principles, often enough to expose how the so called learned establishment had lost sight of the practical application of those principles to real life. Faced with a synagogue ruler who hated sin, and saw healing on the day of rest as watering down the law of keeping the Sabbath, Jesus showed how such an unloving approach didn’t bear scrutiny in the practical reality of people’s lives. Yep, he defeated a hard interpretation of law with livestock.

As we are not God the touchstones for understanding Godly principle, as expressed in our walk on earth, has to be, by definition, earthly. By extension, examining the application of doctrine in the church or our personal lives should similarly be open to comparison of flesh and blood principles. If we approach with open minds and hearts, the fruits can not only be a deeper appreciation for God’s love, but a deeper appreciation of each other.

Prescribing works for salvation can be dangerous

*See Galatians*

I think it also runs counter to the nature of our creation, which is an expression of diversity. If together we are a body of Christ it should follow that different people fill different functions. It should perhaps also follow that as the body learns and evolves that different organs learn to provide different utility.

It would be like humans only ever using rocks to hammer and never learning other motions to shape or even join objects. But what if doctrine had interfered with the development of tools and construction and dictated that only hammering was holy and that exclusivity was required for salvation? How might knowledge have been set back as a result?

The same goes for works of faith. At least I think this is what Paul is getting at here. It is not for us to ultimately judge or prohibit works with a view to measuring a person’s worthiness of salvation. I think there is always room to examine works in regards to their effectiveness in spreading love and being a testament to Jesus’ values of balancing loving God and loving your fellow human. But we need to stay away from casting aspersion on the faith that those works spring forth from, or having a restrictive idea as to what works bring glory to God.

The thing is, I think for a lot of humble people out there they don’t even see their best works as works as all. The left gives so secretly and humbly that the right has no concept of giving… in which case, how are others looking in from the outside ever to discern such works.

Doesn’t mean Jesus isn’t smiling down all the same just because we don’t see evidence.

The physical is only ever a symbol for the spiritual

Recently Christ’s physical ordeal leading up to and including his death came up in discussion. In a conversation of varying views one expressed the idea that Christ’s suffering is often exaggerated by believers. If Christ is God then Christ was able to save himself at any time from his ordeal. Indeed, Christ as God could have taken such a punishment and turned off the brain’s recognition of pain to ease his suffering.

As is often the temptation and case when discussing spiritual matters, the spiritual took a backseat to the physical. Jesus’ ordeal however shows us once again how the physical is just a facade, and holds little meaning without a spiritual underpinning.

Christ’s physical pain during torture and crucifixion weren’t the real punishment, it was the spiritual hate emanating from the very people he was there to save and provide a new way of life to. Never mind that his sacrifice was a fulfilment of prophesy, each *individual* member of the crowd who punished him or abandoned him represented a soul taking a choice where another was possible and could still see the prophesy fulfilled.

Imagine looking into the eyes of those you offered healing and salvation to and seeing hate in return for that offering. Anyone who has felt the sting of betrayal at the hands of loved ones can only imagine how such a feeling is magnified in effect for a being *of* love. This is why the bible exhorts us to be careful with even the most idle of our words, lest they betray a spiritual underpinning that lashes the heart of another in a way that cannot be easily healed. Physical words mean nothing on their own but in a spiritual context can make or break souls.

We must be careful how we weigh the physical matters of our lives. It can pain or uplift us deeply to see the scales physically tip in or out of our favour, but if we cannot measure the balance of what the physical means spiritually, we are trading in a false economy.

The physical always gives way. It is temporary. Jesus’ gave way physically so that we might see the spiritual matter of forgiveness and salvation. We do well to learn to make the physical give way in our own lives in order to give us better sight of the spiritual lessons that lie beneath.

In Response: “did God stop writing books and letters?”

This was the question as posed in a discussion recently:

“did God stop writing books and letters?”

the books and letters that make up The Holy Bible were written by men and women who were (allegedly) divinely inspired. in Sunday School i was taught God basically wrote those books and letters using the men and women as vessels.

if that’s true, have there been any others written since then? if so, why hasn’t the Holy Bible been updated to include the newer books and letters?

if there haven’t been any newer books and letters, why not? why did God stop communicating w/humans via the written word?

In Response:

No, God didn’t stop

As you alluded, we stopped uniting behind them.

The personalising of faith, the appeal that these books had towards allowing people to search for their own relationship with God, or without as is sometimes the result, rather than needing a group medium or a holy middleman, allowed for a plurality of faith to emerge. You could pray to the same God as another person but see God’s role in this world and your life as totally different to them. The principles of tolerance set out in some holy books have allowed for this to emerge.

As such, if you believe in God, there is room to believe that God’s imprint lives in parents who pray for inspiration when teaching their children about life and living with and loving those around them. God’s words can flow from the lips of a woman trying desperately to bring her brother back from a life of crime.

These aren’t the words that move us as a globe, but they do move the worlds for those people who are touched by them. Whether it is a physical manifestation of divine energy or just a mix of chemical reactions predicated by our current place in the evolutionary process, people are out there now authoring parables and principles that live in the hearts of those they touch long after the person who physically expressed them is gone. That’s the true beauty of a humble love in my opinion. It doesn’t blow it’s own horn, and lets the effect unite rather than set itself on a hill to divide.

Choosing Thriving in Righteousness Over Struggling with Sin.

Sometimes a struggle only serves to highlight and reinforce the negative aspects of our current situation. Focusing on sin in our life can give it more power and legitimacy, perhaps even leading to guilt. Guilt can weigh on the heart and undermine our acceptance of God’s forgiveness.

If one finds themselves dealing with sin without seeing a positive effect on their walk, a change of perspective may ease the burden.

Instead of viewing situations as necessary to avoid a sinful process, try to reinterpret each situation into a righteous process. It is the difference between a person who looks at their nutrition as a goal to avoid certain foods and face the consequences, and a person who sees it as an opportunity to learn more about new foods and cooking techniques.

The more one looks for righteous action their lives by interpreting each day through that frame first the more sin loses its grip on the mindset. Refusing to acknowledge sin denies its desire to announce its victory over lives.

Because we must remember than sin lost when Christ died for it on the cross. Ours is the mission to continue the victory of righteousness. Sometimes drowning sin out while we trumpet righteousness is the best strategy to do so.

Don’t Take a Human Measure of Mercy

The human measure of divine characteristics has always been interesting. Earthly expressions of damnation and wrath know no bounds. You’ll not struggle to find believers who will judge a person worthy of hell without equivocation if a particular sin goes without repentance or is committed too many times. No matter what the extenuation in circumstance, the conception of God’s punitive measures does not struggle to exceed imagination.

Unfortunately this abundance of imagination doesn’t tend to extend to God’s mercy in the same degree. Time and again religious wisdom reaches beyond even the cruelest levels of human sadism to warn others what God is capable of for punishment. These punishments can come in return for something as taking God’s name in vain inadvertently in the moment, or ascribing to the wrong religion despite an honest desire and attempt to be close to God.

Imagine what these religious leaders would deem as the Godly punishment for putting Jesus to death? Continuous physical and spiritual torture notwithstanding, the punishment for simply not believing is harsh enough let alone cruelly going after God in human form. If the punishment for blasphemy is eternal damnation what is the cost of killing God?

Fortunately for them Jesus’ divine standard of mercy deemed them worthy of forgiveness. As Jesus lingered close to death his final words regarding his tormentors was a plea for exactly that.

Dare to believe God’s love and mercy are more than you can express. Moreover, dare to share such s message with others. You may find your faith in your own salvation strengthened.

The Best Rebuke Can Be Aid Withheld

Compare God’s presence in the bible to how little divine will is witnessed in the world at large today.

Gone are the days of red seas parting and burning bushes. The more we develop as humans the more it seems that God steps back and lets our lives be the lesson.

Many prayers are sent up and many of those prayers are denied or go unanswered. Increasingly God’s greatest and loudest answer to us is no answer.

This is fitting for the way we live our lives. We are not the humans of old who lacked the knowledge of the world to do for ourselves what we would otherwise otherwise call on Godly assistance for. We are and continue to grow in our role as the chief if not sole architects of our own situations.

In this environment God’s lessons on righteousness are best taught through the consequences of our unrighteousness. Lessons on greed are taught through the consequences of obesity and financial meltdown.

A large part of teaching this lesson is not bailing us out of suffering these consequences. The lesson sticks to us through the way that the subsequent struggle stays in our memory. There’s little need on God’s part to actively dole out rebuke. The rebuke is in the consequences.

And so it should be with us. We don’t need to come on strong with rebuke or feel obligated to bail people out when they fall victim to themselves.
Like the Lord we can be a base of support spiritually but not a negative voice or an enabling source of aid.

Learn a little from God and step back from trying to erase people’s mistakes. Imagine where our spiritual self reliance would be if we called on God to rectify every mishap we brought on ourselves. From financial rescue to being locked out of the car, how much would we lose of ourselves for the sake of convenience? How long before we’d start the day with prayer to pre-empt any consequence we’d brought on ourselves?

Something to think about next time the temptation to get involved in someone’s self created calamity kicks in.

Jesus said blessed are the meek

Matthew 5

3Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

4Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.

5Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.

6Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.

There is much made in some Christian circles about people being strong in faith. A premium is placed on metaphors that convey power, even an endorsement of a sort of masculine potency that springs from the idea that we were made in His image. Such people are valued and held up as examples to be exalted and followed as believers who stand apart from others.

This flies in the face of these words from Jesus, and if anything tempts pride. It is all to easy to forget in the comfort of our faith the fortune we have in our lives.

Consider Christians who do feel secure in their faith and live lives apparently blessed by an abundance of support and financial security. Missed sometimes is the reality that none of these people is an island. For every person who appears righteous and a (wo)man apart in the Lord, is a multitude of people and the Lord who have built into that success. These people stand on a selection or all of a supportive congregation, family life, fortuitous upbringing, other favourable circumstances, and most of all God’s grace. Small success it is then that these people have such a leg up to the heights of forgiveness. Easy for their successes to be broadcast from such a height, at an advantage of position.

All the while there are the meek; poor in spirit and mourning. These people strain for grace through the tribulations of their lives without the same measure of support. They might be the people at the back of the church or at the backs of our lives who toil in humility. Their successes are not trumpeted at all because they do not acknowledge them or their sense of humility tells them they are not worthy. Even if they are noticed perhaps from their position they are lost in the noise of those trumpeting their success closer to or on the pulpit. They are sometimes even looked down upon by those who have something to stand on when these people have nothing but their faith, which may even seem poor in comparison.

I say, as one who stands on much provided by others to support his faith, that these silent others, reaching for forgiveness without that same support, are taller in stature because of it. Jesus’ words affirm that sentiment. These are the ‘last’ who shall be first, and I acknowledge I am lucky to be in line at all.

We do well to remember that when someone appears weak to us. We do not know how Jesus values their faith for the trials they work through that we do not understand.

Jesus said outward piety can be deceptive

Matthew 23

27Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness.

28Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.

The Pharisees were well versed in scripture and holy texts. They did many works according to the law, tithed, fasted, and generally conducted themselves in a manner that engendered deference from believers. There was much in their outwardly appearance that gave the impression of fruits by which you could know and have faith in them. But all was not well, for their inward nature could not match their pretensions to their piety and worth.

It is a warning against us as Christians becoming too bold with our proclamations of our exemplary behaviour and the righteousness of our orientation in any form of absolute. The truth is, no matter how righteous we may appear unto men, we must always be sure to disclaim our inner hypocrisy and iniquity. Let’s not forget that no matter how we grow with God and improve we are until the day we die in need of Christ’s forgiveness. That alone should quiet any statement from ourselves. Let the conduct speak for itself, and let us damp down any praise of our character when it fails to acknowledge that no good work reaches the full glory of God unless God is working through us. Which is not something we deserve praise for.

If we at any stage speak boldly about how we always speak in truth regarding faith or our conduct is exemplary we risk sounding much like the Pharisee in Luke 18: God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess.

How are we any different if we make similar remarks, especially as a defense against criticism? Much better perhaps to be as the publican, and never lose an opportunity to avert our eyes in humility, smite our breast and say: God be merciful to me a sinner. We may find when we speak from this place, allowing God to speak through us, the truth speaks that much louder because we have removed our ego and outward trappings from the equation.

We Christians are all Prodigal until we die

See: Luke 15:11-32, Romans 3:23.

We’re all on a journey. When it comes to the refinement of our spirit and understanding of love, we start a journey from birth that never completes during our living years. Our ability to express love through the mediums of compassion, empathy, honesty, humility and forgiveness never reaches an acceptable standard and in some cases has deteriorated from the highs it once enjoyed when we reach the end of our lives.

Love is what brings us home through the medium of forgiveness. It is only in accepting how we fall short and asking for mercy that the gate opens for us to be taken into a welcome home embrace. We do well to remember this fact with humility when peering into the lives of others. Considering they share our journey home, what right do we have to rebuke their mode of transport when our vessel for doing so is also in dire need of repair? Especially when you consider we walk as Christians, our imperfection arguably places us further from our destination because we already know that love yet still fail to make the necessary changes.

Rebuke and condemnation also fail to take a valuable lesson that Jesus taught through his actions in the bible. Healing and love always came first. Jesus went hard against the religious establishment, but understood how the average person didn’t know him, and that the best way to introduce himself was through love. He broke bread with them, healed them, and saved them from the condemnation that came through punishments like stoning. He didn’t seek to rebuke and condemn, certainly not as a way of winning hearts. If hearts is what Jesus wants to win, surely the way to the heart is love.

We who seek to be guides on this path, or who just want to be good examples of the love we receive, are probably best served to follow Jesus’ example. We should be providers of healing and compassion to warm other travellers on the colder stretches of road. If we cannot provide a welcoming atmosphere for people to break bread in, how can we expect people to stop for nourishment?

We never know how tough the road is home for other people. They walk different paths with different dangers with different personal weaknesses. Jesus explicitly said it is not for us to judge the distance a person is away from home, lest we lose sight of how far we have to go. It behooves us in our cries for mercy to remember this in the context of all the sin we never account for ourselves.