A RELIGIOUS COMA IS NOT FOR YOU

From time-to-time observations in the non-Godly world become parables for the Godly realm of Believers. Particularly relevant to the ‘unbelieving–believer’ they point us towards our fullness in Jesus while relieving us of the baggage and myths that have become our religion.
 
AN ADVENTURE OR SLEEP-WALK
 
Our Christian journey can be one of continual revelation – revelation of how wonderful Father is, how gracious Jesus is and how complete we are personally with Jesus as our life. Or not. Our journey can be the non-journey of walking up and down in the one spot. Like this we are as those whose eyes do not see and whose ears do not hear.
 
Jesus said, ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit because they will see God. He was saying that He is the ultimate Poor-In Spirit Man and that in Him we would see God and know Him for Himself.
 
MYTHS DISOLVED
 
To know God, we must be willing to know the Christ – to know Him as He is and not as we may have imagined Him to be. The Christ of God is the Messiah. False christs made from our own image are not. Neither are gospels that negate and diminish the finished work of Jesus, our completeness in Him and our certainty of salvation and fellowship in the gospel of the Kingdom. Any gospel that posits our separation from God as the normal state of being and puts the onus on us to undo this separation is not Christ’s gospel of the Kingdom.
 
START FROM WHERE HE HAS PLACED YOU – IN HIMSELF
 
Joy Castle (not her real name) desired intimacy with God. So she set about to make herself worthy of such intimacy by overcoming personal sins and adopting a program of Bible Study and prayer. But Joy was striving religiously for what she had already been given, courtesy of the divine enterprise of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Not only did Joy’s efforts not achieve the intimacy she desired. Her efforts actually blocked it.
 
On top of this her performance improvement was only marginal if improvement at all. Joy had been working to get what she already had: Union with God. Your life in God is based in union. Gospels that assume separation and offer ‘a way’ of their own making did not come from God.
 
Paul’s words. ‘Christ our life,’ mean that we are graced with His intimacy and the fellowship of Father and the Spirit. Not only this but His life is our life. The cross paved the way for the incarnation – the mystery of God living in us to be our companion and our life.
 
OLD HAS GONE, NEW HAS COME
 
We have returned to the reality of the new covenant again. This is the reality in which we and Father are one – where we are in our Father and He in us; where God in three persons is with us and in us. Here we are sons in spirit and in truth – not disembodied sons, fragmented sons or estranged sons, but one with God. As Christ was with His Father so are we. As a result Jesus had the Spirit without limit. So in His life do we. As Jesus became the new Adam, so in Him do we become the new humanity who in our everyday lives multiply the new creation that Jesus began on Sunday morning.
 
I read yesterday in the paper about climate change deniers. Many deny that it is happening. Others allow that it may be happening but humans didn’t cause it. (Maybe the dog did it – the one who ate the homework). The writer of the piece observed that we will never change the minds of those who have adopted climate change denial regardless of the evidence. Presenting evidence will not convince such people. They have their view regardless of evidence and are sticking to it. Even though it is the elephant in the room. It’s the same with the law-stuck Believer. They are tied to their log of impoverishment.
 
PARABLE OF THE BLIND
 
This is the parable I alluded to at the start. It’s the parable of those who are sticking to their ‘other gospel,’ because they are. They have made up their mind. But this is not the mind or accomplishments of Christ. Like the imprisoned dwarfs in in Lewis’s Last Battle, they refuse the banquet brought to them and call it slops. By living in the old covenant when God has given us the new.
 
NOT FAR ENOUGH
 
Some will follow Jesus to the boundary of their long-held notions and beliefs but no further. ‘I’ll follow you Lord wherever you lead, so long as I don’t have to admit that my theology is a ‘woosy’ and a lie.’ Not amenable to evidence they are glued to their ‘alternative facts’ and will not concede that there is a new and living way that negates the delusions they have followed as truth all their lives. Meanwhile their life drains away and they become a DEAD MAN WALKING. But there is hope. With the extinguishing of their un-life they are now positioned for their resurrection.