WHEN I WAS A CHILD is not always a fond memory. Paul uses the phrase to orient himself for his readers.   When Paul was a child he was a conscientious Jew, and he lists all of the things that define him as an extraordinary Jew.  So we are confident that we have captured what Paul’s childhood is like.  First, let us see that the child stands in contrast to the wise and intelligent.  The child is expected to advance to responsible adulthood, and I say, woe to the human who does not see that being left behind by the Irresistible  flow of life in all its manifestations.  The grown person keeps up with the flow because avoiding change and growth is like  having standing in the rain and not getting wet.  That person would be an extraordinarily grown man.

When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things.

1 Corinthians 13:11

This is an all together different arrangement of children and adults from what the Lord Christ had to say about children and the wise people (typically, adults).

“At that time Jesus said, “I praise You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them to infants.” (Matthew 11:25, NASB)

Paul is addressing the state of affairs between Jewish life and full blown Messianic revelation, namely, juvenile and adult.

“Now I say, as long as the heir is a child, he does not differ at all from a slave although he is owner of everything,” (Galatians 4:1, NASB)

The Man of God says good bye

The child is not equated with the mature or responsible heir; he is appropriately pictured as subjected to slaves and is comparable to the slaves. The child – nëpios – νηπιος – represents the minor,  whose destiny includes release from guardians and tutors.  For Paul the sweep is large and traumatic. He who excelled in the religion of his ancestors plungers to the very bottom in his discovery of the Lord’s Anointed.  That plunge is painted in the gripping terms of loss and gain, excellence and rubbish.  Not least in any way is the contrast of law and Christ.

“and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith,” (Philippians 3:9, NASB)

DISCOVERING PAUL’S CHILDHOOD

You will see there is no God, Yahweh, or Christ, or even Moses in Paul’s childhood.  This is because there was not, at least, no dynamic relationship with a person.  Paul can sincerely list his Jewishness.

• FLESH.  circumcised the eighth day,
• NATIONALITY.  of the nation of Israel,
• TRIBAL PRIDE.  of the tribe of Benjamin,
• ETHNICITY.  a Hebrew of Hebrews;
• RELIGIOUS AFFILIATION.  as to the Law, a Pharisee;
• PROGRESS and ACHIEVEMENTS. as to zeal, a persecutor of the church;
• RIGHT STANDING. as to the righteousness which is in the Law, found blameless.

But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ.”

Philippians 3:5-7

When grown up time arrives

The rite of passage sees an end to childish things, dim views, and partial knowledge.  Instead of the large number of instructions in the law the heir who comes into his own has three pillars of success; faith, hope, and love.

Stop being kids

Verse 20 of 1 Corinthians 14 cautions Paul’s readers in tender terms.  “Brethren, do not be children in your thinking; yet in evil be infants, but in your thinking be mature”.  We need therefore to ask ourselves about the things we have put away as we mature from law to faith, from juvenile to mature.  We are in laughingstock territory when we boldly assert that we have converted from child to adult with our fingers wrapped tightly around days, months, years and seasons, touch not commands, taste not commands, and handle not commands. There is no adult dimension to being subject to elementary or “kindergarten” principles governing this age.  Growing up or ending one’s childhood is not a willpower thing, because you do not initiate growth.  It happens to us, so growing up is not entirely in our control; it flows from both outside influences and mysterious inside help.  We stop being children with a conscientious choice in three critical areas.

Speak, think, reason

Here is a good example of how the sentence structure or word order in particular does not necessarily tell the truth contained in the context.  The exhortation for speech, thought, and reason do not necessarily happen in that order.   Speaking should not happen in a vacuum.  Thinking and evaluation are likely to happen in the light of what Christ has accomplished or be categorized as noisy gong. 

If you have died with Christ to the elementary principles of the world, why, as if you were living in the world, do you submit yourself to decrees, such as, “Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch!” (which all refer to things destined to perish with use)–in accordance with the commandments and teachings of men?

Colossians 2:20-22

To answer Paul’s question directly we turn to the well-known obsession of people with things that require no personal responsibility or intellectually mature sacrifice. I make no apology for my observation that the many proud cultural traditions are not much more than humanity’s kindergarten, and packages of elementary principles of the world we know. Man, would it not be something if they all began to dream of those matters that are sustaining to both the next generation and our ancestors?

Americans keep sending people to Congress who have nothing on their mind but personal power and prestige, and in the grandest tradition of racist supremacy and capitalism, the alliance between fascist causes and religion continues to intensify.  If we thought that representation makes its mark by means of winning partisan conflicts then there is no viable house to defend, the division of people by politics lends itself to shallow morons making themselves the heroes of movements that are divorced from the progress of the last century.

Bondage still stalks the land of the free two centuries after independence

You cannot send people like waffly L. Graham, toothless Quasi-speaker K. McC, seditionist M.T. Greene, J. Kennedy, T. Cruz, Gosar, Hawley to Congress and expect honourable defense of the constitution. These people think the truly wise will use the courts – all the way to the Supreme Court – to make the law not apply to them and whomever they choose to bless. These guys and gals are a curse on patriotism, and with religious guides like Jim Jordan, and whoever else is pushing Jesus into government, Catholicism and Protestantism are in the bed of promiscuous love. The papacy holds the aces and the enslavement of people is still a priority.

For the people is a lost number

America and many other nations are like a child who while learning to count to 10 was told that 7 is a bad luck number. That knowledge acts as a base for never completing the count. “For the people” is not a cute slogan, it actually means the due respect for all of the people’s needs, rights, and aspirations. Two hundred years after independence, let’s face it, some people are not people in America. “For the people” can be a good Gospel song, but the music stars are not catching the gleam. “For the people” is a convenient talking point to get a person elected, but, apparently, the people who matter are one’s siblings and relatives. The current conversations and behaviours are dead-raising horrors.

Today, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) is sitting in soiled diapers on account of its anti-female regulation, or shall we call the move by the SBC’s own terminology, amendment.

Amendment, shmamendment

Amendments have been unsettling in the religious world and in the political realm. Just ask the Americans about their perfect and enlightened constitution.
One: people do not like change.
Two:  the destiny of man has not changed
Three: change to historic operations are necessary (e.g. what was good for journeying through a desert does not work for residence in Canaan)

The most sacred trusts are deposited in the earliest narratives. It is kind of quixotic for the Taliban, the Evangelical fundamentalists, and the Catholics to want to exclude women in God’s name from serving as leaders and stewards of divine mysteries. For Christians it is especially disgraceful to hear men and women talking about excluding women from positions of influence. Would they also deny a woman the right to teach her child what’s right and what’s wrong and to talk about those things from the cradle to the grave? There is a lot of hot air behind the all-male talk. How do I know?

Adam (mankind) is male and female

Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

Genesis 1:26, NASB

Not only is there no room for gender discrimination in the administration of the mysteries of the Christian faith, stewardship is marked, from the earliest template, as joint. What else are these misogynists going to come up with in the name of decency and justice?

You may not be a believer – a faithful or graced person – if you keep clinging to the conclusion that humans are all intrinsically good people or all deserve to be celebrated.  The malignant things some people in positions of trust repeat in word and deed are a flashing warning that toxic potions, fabricated narratives, and absurd religious-political constructs are not worthy of our time.  War to end war has made the journey from bad to worst and the idea is a crooked attempt to imitate the life from death realities that define God.

Who’s gonna stop the misery?

None of the political platforms are sufficiently informed or enthused about all of mankind. The power hungry nerds of our times will not rise to the occasion to defend the human race, because they are all interested in exploiting us. All the leaders pretending to have received top notch insight and instruction are like foolish little children in the marketplace dancing and piping and applauding each other’s performances.

31) To what then shall I compare the men of this generation, and what are they like? 32) They are like children who sit in the market place and call to one another, and they say, ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not weep.’

Luke 7:31-32 New American Standard Bible

On becoming and other privileged lanes

We Christians have clearly marked rights of passage in the spiritual journey.  Conversion and baptism are the primary pair; they transform a person’s identity.  Baptism is the action we take to declare to the believing community that we have experienced a change and to state our commitment to the new status.  Jewish people have a bar mitzvah rite. When does a person become a Muslim?  Do we really know how deadly organized religion has been, or are we willing to ignore the evidence of Judaism’s follies, Christianity’s tango with worldly powers, or Islam’s quest to dominate by extremism?

Question of the millennia

What is the difference between a religious person and a religious country?  All kinds of holiness mantras and regulations will break up our reverie about governments allied with religion and answer the question with “Too much”. That “too much” rises like smoke from a fire to choke us with discrimination, miscarriages of justice, and cleverly devised fables. Christian individuals are entirely different entities from the so-called Christian nation. Muslim individuals are entirely different entities from the so-called Islamic nation. Religious Jews are entirely different entities from the so-called elect kingdoms of Israel and Judah. So let them smoke their pipes and croak in their silos of bigotry and darkness.