FAR BETTER THAN ANYONE THOUGHT
07/01/23 14:27
Not a few of us were raised in the cultural climate of - if not a mean God - not a generous one. The religious atmosphere was a kind of ‘poverty mentality’ that was and remains in many places, the spiritual equivalent of an austerity regime. Devotional books I read were tainted with a stain of ‘God is ever alert to expose the ways of our ‘inner malefactor.’ The books were old covenant/legalism and inspired by a different spirit than was supposed. One of the books I read could have been summed up in the words, ‘All of them should have tried harder.’ This is a more cumbersome version of ‘keeping close to Jesus.’ Aka the self-earned christ.
THE LIVING WAY
Christ has come to you and has drawn us in Himself into His life in God. Sons and daughters of God are included in the Holy Family.
CHRIST IS LIFE
God is not a stuffed shirt or a kill joy. God is joy because God is love. Every occasion of laughter and fun that is seen at a party or a holiday is a testimony to the real nature of our Father.
I was at a pre-concert lecture once. The artist was giving a humorous account of the works he would be playing. Some of the audience gained very long faces – a kind of cartoonish Presbyterian look, signifying that they were not amused. Because such levity had no place in such occasions. Be assured that if these people ever get to be in control of heaven it will be a place of morbidity not so different from hell.
LIFE IS SUBTLE AND WILD
God invented sex and the wildness of life. God is not boring. Neither is He half dead or a half-wit. He has nothing in common with Christians who elect incompetent leaders because the latter are conservative. His righteousness and sense of justice is far more expansive than an obsession with abortions, disgust at homosexuals or taking side with Israel over the land from which Palestinians were expelled. He is not blind to an economic system based on greed and exploitation or oblivious to the wickedness of destroying the land, the sea and the atmosphere for the sake of The Economy.
FORGIVENESS
God is not about favouring the self-entitled and will not forever excuse the kind of attitudes that put Jesus on the cross. But He is about forgiveness and reconciliation. Baxter Kruger observes that, “Reconciliation is not about Jesus suffering punishment so that the invisible, faceless and nameless god up there somewhere can forgive us. It is about the Father’s forgiveness in action, entering into our estrangement and its hell, and penetrating the fundamental problem of sin. As James Torrance would say, “The Father does not have to be conditioned into being gracious.” There is no sense in which He needs coercing to forgive. Forgiveness is first, overflowing out of the way the Father, Son and Spirit love one another. With this forgiveness rises passion for it to be known and received.” (1)
The point is, are we going to receive it or are we going to attach some condition of our own, some reversion to the law, some undoing of the new covenant, some new excuse and fiction to justify burying our head in the sand once more so we can retain that supposed identity, that ersatz status that too us is too precious to exchange for the pearl of great price?
(1)Kruger, C. Baxter. Across All Worlds: Jesus Inside Our Darkness (Kindle Locations 767-771). Perichoresis, Inc. Kindle Edition.
THE LIVING WAY
Christ has come to you and has drawn us in Himself into His life in God. Sons and daughters of God are included in the Holy Family.
CHRIST IS LIFE
God is not a stuffed shirt or a kill joy. God is joy because God is love. Every occasion of laughter and fun that is seen at a party or a holiday is a testimony to the real nature of our Father.
I was at a pre-concert lecture once. The artist was giving a humorous account of the works he would be playing. Some of the audience gained very long faces – a kind of cartoonish Presbyterian look, signifying that they were not amused. Because such levity had no place in such occasions. Be assured that if these people ever get to be in control of heaven it will be a place of morbidity not so different from hell.
LIFE IS SUBTLE AND WILD
God invented sex and the wildness of life. God is not boring. Neither is He half dead or a half-wit. He has nothing in common with Christians who elect incompetent leaders because the latter are conservative. His righteousness and sense of justice is far more expansive than an obsession with abortions, disgust at homosexuals or taking side with Israel over the land from which Palestinians were expelled. He is not blind to an economic system based on greed and exploitation or oblivious to the wickedness of destroying the land, the sea and the atmosphere for the sake of The Economy.
FORGIVENESS
God is not about favouring the self-entitled and will not forever excuse the kind of attitudes that put Jesus on the cross. But He is about forgiveness and reconciliation. Baxter Kruger observes that, “Reconciliation is not about Jesus suffering punishment so that the invisible, faceless and nameless god up there somewhere can forgive us. It is about the Father’s forgiveness in action, entering into our estrangement and its hell, and penetrating the fundamental problem of sin. As James Torrance would say, “The Father does not have to be conditioned into being gracious.” There is no sense in which He needs coercing to forgive. Forgiveness is first, overflowing out of the way the Father, Son and Spirit love one another. With this forgiveness rises passion for it to be known and received.” (1)
The point is, are we going to receive it or are we going to attach some condition of our own, some reversion to the law, some undoing of the new covenant, some new excuse and fiction to justify burying our head in the sand once more so we can retain that supposed identity, that ersatz status that too us is too precious to exchange for the pearl of great price?
(1)Kruger, C. Baxter. Across All Worlds: Jesus Inside Our Darkness (Kindle Locations 767-771). Perichoresis, Inc. Kindle Edition.
