Imagine that Christ was a Muslim. Where would his hajj take him? Which prophet would be his commander?  Would he stop calling GOD his father?  Would he be comfortable hiding women and tieing their hands, hands God created (in the first place) to make the man complete? It is a long hard road to acceptance when prophets are the seekers, but if you know prophets, they could not care less about getting smiles from everyone. The doctor,  lawyer, rabbi, pastor, elected official and any of the powerbrokers of our times have shown how readily their interests lead them to bark up any withered tree they deem available.

All across the board

Vegan diets, foreigners, and priesthood

Imagine that Christ was Jewish and vegan,  he’d  be blocking his participation in the essential processes of his people: for example, eating the passover once per year. If he was on the other hand a foreigner he could not be a priest (sounds familiar) and all the talk about Abraham’s innumerable children is simple hot air. It most certainly is not the best thing since man met woman.

What God mercy looks like under human direction

Holiness is one of God’s essential attributes and salvation is his exclusive prerogative.  These two issues must always find their orientation, application and outcomes in God.  Since man is incapable of saving himself, God intervenes personally.  He designed his intervention in a manner that does not allow any human credit.  He did not send a prophet, a priest, a scientist or a soldier.  He sent his Son. If God could call Israel his servant and his son what can we say of him with whom God created the world?  Let us remember how the Genesis narrative has God speaking to God “Let us make man in our image”, and let us  understand that there is an Agent to whom God assigns his important acts in the universe.  “Son” is not a metaphor for “boss” and it most definitely means the one in whom the father invests his all.  “Son” definitely means activity and progress. When the Son of God is in charge women and aliens have access and what the faith groups say about women is a reliable measure of morality.

Breaking limbs, withering leaves and infertility

Why have all the models of government not worked.  They have priests.  They have prophets.  They have pastors.  They have missionaries. None of them have produced a 4 year rule of righteousness and justice.  They have been barking up trees with no limbs and with no fruit at the top. A nation cannot have enough Muslims to make it Islamic. Most faiths that I am familiar with are splintered into groups that are hostile to one another, and some are in open conflict, to the point of bloodshed. You name it and they are at war: Catholics and Protestants, Shia and Sunni, Sikhism and Hinduism, Episcopalians and Baptists. The limbs are all broken. Still, many hope that a majority of any faith in any nation can transform government into a servant of God apart from punishing wrongdoing. I am sorry to say that God has better things to do than punish evildoers, and his plan centers on more noble and redemptive purposes. I think that’s what mercy and grace and compassion means. Otherwise we are barking up a withered tree.

I’m joking, right?  We should have figured out that someone giving us the rules for today and tomorrow is not a good feel.  We might resolve to have our shields up the next time this person speaks to us when it turns out that the speech operates on the as-I-say not as-I-do level. Not a joking matter!  Tongue in cheek is the nature of all the so-called fundamentals of obedience to all God has said, and the nature of the words of those who say they are the spitting image of God, with a grab bag that resolutely leaves God out of the picture.

How bad or good can life get to keep a person smiling or grimacing?

A greeting sets off alarms with terms like “no matter”, never  always, and every  because it is likely to be posing as general counsel.  Why I should not have an emotional experience during a storm? Is there a soul who does not get lowered by “life”.  Put another way;  the person who does not humble himself will have God do it.

• No matter how adverse conditions are
• Never be down
• Always smile
• Every day is a blessing

We are going to forget, forbid, forcibly try to impress, and forgive.  There is no guarantee of any of these, even if some sorcerer decrees and declares it. GOD himself assures us that each day has its trouble and that nothing will by any means permanently injure us.

No-one is ridding the world of serpents and scorpions

Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing will injure you. (Luke 10:19, NASB)

Nothing ever does you wrong

What we say is chaff when disconnected from the words of Christ

People can’t use prayer to erase or reduce God’s program,  such as essential sadness, sorrow, each day’s evil, and the very circumstances that contrast with inseparable divine love.  Are we authorized to forbid people to weep and mourn?  Do we presume to know how many and how intense the challenges are that we need to face? How dare some people talk about faith in God, when their distinct interests are the visible, the tangible, and the things people taste and eat?

A Moses, a David, a Paul, an Ezra, a Barnabas, we can never legitimately aspire to be because that route would deny God the pleasure of his wise and wonderful will for each individual.  So if we insist on jumping through hoops to win prizes that are not available to us that delusion has a date with the One with the keys. Why does it surprise us that we cannot be Father, Son, Holy Spirit? No hoops are necessary.  I cannot imagine who we might dare to want to be with all our might, and be anything but unapologetic and expectant for the discovery of who we are in God’s grand scheme.

Holy you and holy me are incomparable in name, function, and destiny.

Identity we cannot afford to neglect

He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes, to him I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, and a new name written on the stone which no one knows but he who receives it. 

Revelation of John 2:17, NASB

Whatever people call us does not alter what is contained in the unique and exclusive name Christ gives. Just as the name SON distinguishes the Word of God from all other entities, so we can expect the name given in connection with the white stone to pierce the bubbles in which we might seek refuge.

Governments and all kinds of institutions go to great lengths to prevent confusion between people having the same names, which often happens. With a close(r) look at the two, three, four, or five individuals bearing the same name authorities will discover something that will decisively distinguish one from all others. With that information much misunderstanding and anguish can be averted. We would be surprised at how many people do not like you/us, period.

Hunger free, sinless and tireless

Superheroes own aircraft, never have to cook, mop a floor, raid a beehive, or go shopping.

When a sparrow’s death has God’s attention he does not seem to be much of a deity, so people reason, because death is the ultimate enemy, and they conclude that they have defeated death, a thing we know is entirely in GOD’s hands. People want to claim a win and a gain no matter what experience GOD assigns. After all, did not his SON die to bring life to humanity? .

Not even David, with God’s own heart

David’s a guy with a ton of baggage that we do not want wholesale. We’re sure we want his victory songs, and nothing to do with his anointing, his respect for Saul, his alliance with Jonathan, and we know what experiences of his we would never get ourselves into. We want the Father’s love without his discipline and correction. Our saddest desire is for the Word of God, incarnate and written, without change-creating and makeover power.

In this age of rights and competing privileges it may seem hardheaded to talk about people who have no right.  In most associations there are hard rules governing the conduct of their distinctive business.  For example, we will know exactly how topsy turvy our world is when a woman is the bishop of Rome.  We are neither topsy  turvy nor out on a limb when we say that people who turn from the gifts of the Risen Christ to the weak and useless rudiments of ancient Israelite life have no right to eat at the table with the people who are hospitable to outsiders, are not established in the community of the faithful by means of food and drink, but by the blood of Christ.

But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how is it that you turn back again to the weak and worthless elemental things, to which you desire to be enslaved all over again? You observe days and months and seasons and years.  I fear for you, that perhaps I have labored over you in vain.”

Galatians 4:9-11

To a man, every group of “Christians” obsessing about law and grace, law and order, law and righteousness, has found the low road. The easiest thing a person can do to impress his peers is to put on a show, you know, rend the garment and not the heart. The easy reality bypass is to say we are committed to doing everything God says, and that proves how deeply in love with him we are. We then pick all the things that have nothing to do with people being the supreme object of God’s love.

We have an altar from which those who serve the tabernacle have no right to eat.

Hebrews 13:10, NASB

Quit messing with our altar

No Gentile could ever become a priest in Israel’s ancient Levitical priesthood, nor can any Muslim convince adherents of Islam that he or she is a prophet.  We had better start worrying about why God for so many people is the ultimate do-as-I-say boss. I much prefer the God who opens the door for his amazing creatures to emulate him, especially in interpersonal matters. Woe is me for seeing an accessible God in the merciful Allah (ain’t that what they say?), or in the God of Abraham who turns a dead end couple from Mesopotamian into the ancestors of a family as numerous as stars in the sky.

Do not be carried away by varied and strange teachings; for it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by foods, through which those who were so occupied were not benefited.

Hebrews 13:9

The insane and the inane

So tell the world why do people turn from loving people to loving the law, the state or the political party. Is it not a leaky lifeboat that people are rushing to board when they tell us that it is a righteous or godly thing to do no work on the seventh day of the week while it is clear that God is works 365-24-7? People are insane and just plain inane to subscribe to a good news package that begins and ends with commands that can never produce life. The insanity proceeds to prefer so-called prophetic visions, tabernacle theories, opposing views of the Bible’s pronouncements on the means of salvation, what to eat, touch, and taste, and being more Jewish than the Jews, over the eyewitness accounts of the apostles, whose words the insane refuse to interpret from their purest forms. It is definitely a silly thing to claim to be the real McCoy when we do not even want to admit that our proclamation arises from mere and often poor copies of the handwriting of Messiah’s eyewitnesses. What right indeed have such people to call themselves disciples, to eat at our altar?