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.

Jesus relates better to us than vice versa

Sometimes it is tempting to rest on a rationale of Godly perspective when we insist people listen to us despite an apparent failure of logic in our spiritual conjecture. This approach tends to come in the form of a get on my level, or get on God’s level, if you hope to understand what I’m saying perspective. In some worse cases it is used to look down on people who fashion more ‘worldy’ rationales for how they practice their faith.

Consider Jesus’ example though. One of his greatest legacies as a teacher was parable. He didn’t insist that people get on his level of understanding. In many cases, he got down to their level and gave them the understanding of Godly principles through examples they lived and understood in their daily lives. Living in a world of false prophets and knowing there were more to come, Jesus sought to show how the principles of faith were easy to grasp and easily accessible no matter how humble ones education or grasp of concepts might be.

The question of sabbath observance was reduced to an issue of saving livestock. The kingdom of heaven with the question of worthiness was reduced to an issue of wages for labourers. Many were the times that Jesus looked into peoples’ lives and hearts for the answers to their questions, rather than draw from his vast Godly perspective.

Jesus understood that making the simple values of love with its compassion, humility, and forgiveness as accessible as possible was true wisdom. Rather than insisting that people trust his Godly wisdom without understanding for themselves, he reverse engineered his wisdom so that people could firmly grasp the wisdom in the context of their daily lives. All the better to protect the people from false prophets who can fool with complexity.

We live in a world already filled with those whose lack of education towards independent thought leads to violent fundamentalism. These people follow their leaders because they trust implicitly the words of their leaders regardless of whether those words make sense. Sometimes the problem is these people haven’t been encouraged to try to make sense of wisdom themselves in the first place.

Perhaps look at it this way, from Jesus again. Sometimes walking with wisdom in this world has to come from this world if we are to better understand God. “The second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” For how else are we to understand how to love God and accept God’s love of us if we do not learn to love and accept love from others?

We need new parables to articulate these positions for new generations who relate to the world from a different perspective. Rather than insist they see it our way, shouldn’t we perhaps call on the Holy Spirit to provide them with the perspective to see the wisdom their way?

Surely it behooves us as Jesus exhorted to at least knock on that door.

Cries for religious conformity mock our diversity

We are many peoples on this planet. While we are united in our humanity there is much about us to distinguish one from another as individuals, right down to the most uncannily alike twins. A combination of genetics and the passage of time with experience mold not just the image we present superficially to the world but also the spirit that infuses life around us.

Why, when God has created this diversity not only in our genetics but also in our possible experiences in the world, is there an insistence on a uniformity in our relationship with God? People argue not just across lines of faith but also between denominations. It seems that even praying to the same God isn’t enough for people, the prayer, worship, and behaviour has to conform to some preset norm.

Even discounting our diversity, look at what the bible shows us. The leading lights of faith are all so different. They had their own ways of expressing their love of God, their own ways of practising their faith, their own ways of acknowledging and working, or not working on, their weaknesses. Why would we insist on a conformity of faith from others?

It also goes against the idea of a strong body of Christ ready to serve in a variety of ways. Sometimes God needs a Moses when a Gideon won’t do. Sometimes a situation calls for a Samuel more than a David. As the world continues to grow along with the challenges we face, surely there is a need for new leaders that do not fit the mold of anyone in the bible save Jesus.

Furthermore, when God is such an infinite being of love, surely the greater the spectrum of perspective the stronger our fellowship. We all look on God with different eyes and can see facets of the infinite in ways those around us do not. Allowing for a free sharing of these ideas gives much fuel for further prayer and personal growth that isn’t possible if we’re all reading from the same book with the same interpretation.

Part of God’s joy in our individual relationships must come from their uniqueness. If God wanted a homogeneous faith relationship the creation process could have stopped at the first person.

So why do we take away from the integrity of the individuality that God created? Especially when the practical result is the suppression of anothers individual faith in favour of our own individual perspective?

Love is faith at its purest

There is audible concern among many Christian circles that these days faith is being watered down. It’s a shame that one of the casualties of this line of thinking is love. Far from the unequivocal words of 1 John 4:8 that God is love and singularly love, God’s being is now equated more and more with values of vengeance and wrath. Love even suffers devaluation as a weak virtue lacking true strength of character.

There’s little faith involved in visiting wrath and vengeance on someone. In fact it’s the clear judgement that a person is incapable of redemption that leads to it. Contrary to some beliefs, it is the easier option in comparison to love. A greater strength of character is required to see behind a person’s flaws to see a being worthy of mercy. A greater strength of character is required to calmly respond to heated opposition rather than match like with like. A greater patience and wisdom is required to meet rebellion with a love that uplifts towards the path of right than seek to beat it from the path of wrong.

Furthermore, Jesus’ time on earth, particular his sacrifice on the cross, go against everything ideas of vengeance and wrath stand for. If anything, it is the approach of the Pharisees that promotes such an approach, as evidenced in how they brought about Jesus’ end. Think on that end. Jesus’ has suffered at the hands of people he showed nothing but love to, the people he came to save by showing the error of their ways. What are his last words? Not words of judgement, wrath or condemnation, but “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.”

Even in the face of violently unrepentant people, people visiting a far more wicked end on Jesus than many others who contemporary Christians seek to rebuke sternly, Jesus’ thoughts were of mercy. What strength! Why would we seek change through division and rebuke where Jesus in the face of dire circumstances chose mercy? Indeed, when we do act this way, perhaps it is Jesus who confesses *us* to the father because it’s we who do not know what we do.

That was Jesus at his most emblematic, and his purest. Suffering at our wickedness to bring a message of forgiveness. Surely we could suffer to move the wrath and judgement from our testimony in deference to this approach from who is supposed to be the head of our faith.

Christians should remember well their spiritual roots

You can never appreciate how far you’ve come in any sense in life without a look back to and acknowledgement of your past.

Each of us has moments when we weren’t Christians, perhaps had a real enmity with Christians, or moments when we held certain illusions about faith we had to later revisit. We do well to remember these moments when we become too sure of ourselves in our Christian walk. How far can we hope to come in the refinement of our walk if we insist it is perfect at each stage of development? Even if we are choosing to compartmentalise parts of our walk and stand on them as perfect, particularly using them as a platform to launch rebuke from, what have we profited from our own mistakes?

Particularly if one is born again from having an enmity with Christians, what does one profit from moving from a place of friction with Christians to having friction with non-Christians? If anything, all that happens is one takes the same attitude before they were a Christian and use it from the opposite perspective. Where is the spiritual growth in that? Just slapping a Christian label on the same attitude doesn’t make it righteous because it is proclaimed in Jesus’ name.

Remembering our humble spiritual roots is important. They should always remind us that no matter how far we’ve come, we have so far to go, and that our righteousness is never so complete that we can refuse to listen to those who disagree with us. Because, as certain as we were that we were once right on things we had to change, we are certain about what we think is right now.

However far we come, we are spiritual children before God. The walk is a continual process of doing away with childish ways, the first of which should be the assumption that we will ever be more than this.

The Lord’s First Lesson in Serving is Listening

Usually, ideally, once we’ve begun to establish a relationship with God and we start to see the benefits of that love impact on our lives, the natural progression is to want to start serving to bring this positivity to others.

Now there are visible positions in the church that gain a lot of attention and praise. They can appear to be very desirable because they carry with them an implicit stamp of righteousness for the person simply by virtue of holding that position. Those positions can be a long way off, so where do you start?

Serving at its purest is humble, and often enough, won’t go noticed by anyone. Sometimes you won’t even know what you’ve done and what seeds you’ve planted. Jesus is the best judge of these things, and the best example to follow. How did he do it? Listening first.

More than injecting himself into peoples’ lives, Jesus let his love shine and draw people to him. They came to him with their prayers and questions, and first of all, he listened. Even now, when we approach Jesus in prayer and he looks to serve us, what does he do? He listens.

It is the greatest, and, once you are in touch with your humility, easiest thing to do in service of another. It’s not just a passive silence though, it is an active absorption of the other person’s thoughts and feelings for the sake of connecting and feeling an empathy from which you may be able to act on. There are so many in this world who are poor in means and poor in spirit, and so often the first obstacle is simply to be heard at all. The best way you can introduce the idea of a caring, serving God is to be a reflection of that open ear and heart that first provided comfort to you.

Sometimes this will mean listening to a critique of your beliefs too. Again, be a listener. Really take in their points and respond in a way that is as helpful as possible, even if you find the assertion in some way offensive. Resist the temptation to rely on proclamations of how they lack in learning compared to you or to belittle in any way. It certainly wasn’t Jesus’ way for anyone other than the Pharisees or the disciples, who should have known better anyway.

The end hope is that people learn how to openly, honestly express themselves to you, which is a gateway for them to God. How much more will God listen to them with compassion and love than the humble, yet faithful example you are to them? In a world where people struggle to be heard and prayer goes unanswered or even unspoken because people aren’t confident God is open to listen, the best thing you can perhaps do is be the smaller example of God’s greater ability. You may not ever receive earthly credit, but trust that Jesus looks down and smiles.

Beware of connecting with Biblical wrath

People often talk about being true to the whole bible when they start reaching for a message of wrath and judgement. In an effort to justify speech and action that breeds social friction and an eschewing of fellowship, passages featuring Jesus’ words of love and mercy are continually ignored.

It’s a question of priorities that goes to the heart of of how much of ones self a person puts into their message. Continually picking passages that justify self proclamations of righteousness and good works ignores the humility that Jesus stressed regarding the left hand not knowing what the right hand does, and not doing works so that others can see. What does the placing of ones spiritual reputation, regardless if it is suffixed with a “glory to God,” above the Jesus’ express cry for humility say about pride? Continually picking passages that justify throwing words of condemnation of others ignores Jesus’ parable of the pointing out the mote in a person’s eye in ignorance of the beam in ones own. What does placing the desire to put wrath and judgement above mercy and forgiveness say about a judgemental nature?

What does it say about how important Jesus really is to a person who always draws on passages not quoting him to prop up such an agenda of wrath and judgement in taking the gospel to people. If one finds themselves questioned as to why they can’t give effect to Jesus’ message of love and forgiveness in their own, that ought to give a moment of pause.

If Jesus is the head of the Christian faith, surely his words stand at the head of the doctrine and any message. If two passages clash in tone and effect, surely the passage that quotes Jesus is the choice above the one that does not. If it doesn’t, it means the person is making the call, which means they are placing themselves in the bible. If the choice is wrath, it perhaps says more about what their spiritual walk has become, rather than what God’s love really is.

Beware that connection, and if you see it, do not be afraid to question it. You may give voice to misgivings that others might hold, but quell because they are inclined defer to the authority that the person purports to hold.