Explanation, exhortation and experience do not always fall neatly into place. The priests of ancient Israel were perhaps the most affected by the hiding of the Messianic kingdom. The prophets were in a different predicament; they wrote about the Messianic Kingdom without knowing how or when its details would play. We can forgive those who sought to know the timing of the greatest mystery, but the ridicule and catastrophe that comes from posing as experts of the prophetic panorama is deserved.

There was a wisdom beyond the powerbrokers

Yet we do speak wisdom among those who are mature; a wisdom, however, not of this age nor of the rulers of this age, who are passing away; but we speak God’s wisdom in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God predestined before the ages to our glory; the wisdom which none of the rulers of this age has understood; for if they had understood it they would not have crucified the Lord of glory;

1 Corinthians 2:6-8, NASB

No second or third thoughts

The rulers of the age in which Paul lived did not know God’s mystery. Neither the Roman authorities nor the Jewish administrators of religious life seems to have had second or third thoughts about trying to respond to Yeshua of Nazareth with homicide. They thought nothing of killing him. He was just another troublesome Galilean. The Romans thought that by sacking the temple they would remove any Jewish resistance to Roman rule. The Jewish people on the other hand thought that by killing Yeshua they could remove the revolutionary uprising that Yeshua’s followers presented. Both the Romans and the Jewish people were doomed to lose against two permanent unchangeables: the son of David and the city Jerusalem.

“‘But to his son I will give one tribe, that My servant David may have a lamp always before Me in Jerusalem, the city where I have chosen for Myself to put My name.”

1 Kings 11:36, NASB

“then there will come in through the gates of this city kings and princes sitting on the throne of David, riding in chariots and on horses, they and their princes, the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and this city will be inhabited forever.”

Jeremiah 17:25, NASB

Faith’s mystery comes down to the matter of residence, first the residence of God among humans, God being one of us, and, second, the residents of God’s people in Jerusalem as a permanent feature. Neither mosque nor Solomonic temple are divine priorities. Faith in the prophets does not ideally end with a prophet, but with God himself intimately connected with individual human beings.

“In You, O Lord, I have taken refuge; Let me never be ashamed.” (Psalms 71:1, NASB)

Nudity, exposure and vulnerability

Indigence is a common cause for embarrassment and feelings of shame. Sometimes that just comes down to our perceptions. In the real world however, we find that our conditions in life do not necessarily bring us to shame and disappointment. In addition to our exultation concerning the glorious hope believers also exult in their tribulations, “knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance; and perseverance, proven character; and proven character, hope; and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.” (Romans 5:3-5, NASB)

Useless buoys and lifelines

Let’s face a couple of facts. Some of the help offered us for coping with life’s spiritual priorities are mere distractions and theories. The same must be said of the cultural, political and economic solutions and help, with one distinction; they’re all manifest failures. God never handed anyone a political, economic or spiritual system, and all of our ancestors, no matter where we come from, will tell us, if they could, “our failures were the best we could have done”. We are all victims of the same wannabe infection. Wars and competition have sapped the human energy to live harmoniously with neighbours and distant partners. When we realize how many homicides have robbed us of a path to a sustainable lifestyle we will stop looking for heroes to force us to be diligent about our personal potential and considerable gifts. God has used one homicide to demonstrate his great love and install a fresh vision in human minds about accountability.

The fact that someone is naked or hungry or without shelter does not necessitate shame or disappointment. God is able, in whatever circumstance we find ourselves, to glorify himself and to satisfy us to overflowing.

Even meagre progress in adversity is encouraging

When we choose our refuge fear ought to vanish. We must therefore not merely copy David’s prayer, such as appears in Psalm 71:1, because shame is not on God’s agenda. The experience of shame was not intersectional to nudity, vulnerability, or any at risk situation. Many things are in the Scriptures for us to avoid, so do not let people tell you that because David prayed in such a way . Every risky situation, every adversity, comes with a way out, pre-planned and held in abeyance. That is where hope resides, a necessary thing to have to connect us to the next assured stop in the spiritual journey. We are not ashamed of eternal life. We are not embarrassed to have love for our enemies develop in our hearts, and to prove that God 5 not done with us he pins our hopes to a flower that by all descriptions will unfold without end.

Deceitful spirits, doctrines of demons, and hypocrisy

But the Spirit explicitly says that in later times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons, by means of the hypocrisy of liars seared in their own conscience as with a branding iron, men who forbid marriage and advocate abstaining from foods which God has created to be gratefully shared in by those who believe and know the truth.

1 Timothy 4:1-3

Marriage bans are demonic

“Shun, shun, shun, avoid” do not come from Jesus. It sounds Jewish and appears only in Israel’s approach to Canaan. Only blindfolded people can come up with “” as the foundation of God’s kingdom. Only the trapped deceiver can come up with “God is checking your diet to find you a place in his family”. Someone in the modern era counselling against marriage is obviously trying to be more Jewish than the Jews, like this vicious plagiarist who wrote the following.

I would warn you [Counsel to a young woman.] to be guarded as to where you bestow your affections…. Remember that your life belongs to Jesus, and that you are not to live for yourself alone. You are not to enter into the marriage relation with an unbeliever; for in so doing, you do exactly contrary to that which Jesus has commanded. Shun those who are irreverent. Shun one who is a lover of idleness; shun the one who is a scoffer of hallowed things. Avoid the society of one who uses profane language, or is addicted to the use of even one glass of liquor. Listen not to the proposals of a man who has no realization of his responsibility to God. OHC 257.

Taste, touch, and handle not are dead in the water

[since you 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

When did Jesus ever put forth prohibitions on marriage?  The instructions given to Israel in the desert and in early Canaan are not applicable to believers.  If someone tries to convince you that the instructions given to the journeying Israelites are also the instructions of Messiah to his disciples you should remember that Yeshua is not Moses, and Moses was never his teacher. The biases of Israelites against Gentiles are going to destroy the paths of God’s great love and peace. They will shatter the foundations of the human family, debilitate both the redeemed and the lost. We can hardly ignore the marriages of Abraham, Joseph, David, and we cannot pretend that the conversion of thousands of persons to the Way without their spouses are a necessary part of Christian growth. Is there no grace for keeping married people together?  Was love not the glue of Gentile and unbeliever weddings? Shunning people who have not been moved to accept the gospel would be as misguided as Ezra’s dissolution of Jewish marriages to Gentiles. Shunning is just bad advice especially when love has entered the picture. The righteousness of love has clearly gone over a lot of people’s heads.

The best the conservative elements across the globe can give the world are cowards, liars, and odiferous dolts.

Those who did not believe

Now I desire to remind you, though you know all things once for all, that the Lord, after saving a people out of the land of Egypt, subsequently destroyed those who did not believe. (Jude 5, NASB)

Reject government and embrace vigilanteism

Yet in the same way these men, also by dreaming, defile the flesh, and reject authority, and revile angelic majesties. (Jude 8, NASB)

Agents of shipwreck, waterless clouds

These are the men who are hidden reefs in your love feasts when they feast with you without fear, caring for themselves; clouds without water, carried along by winds; autumn trees without fruit, doubly dead, uprooted; (Jude 12, NASB)

They dare to call themselves Christian

Christ is primarily the Way, there are not a choice of ways to live. There is only one way. Love is cooperation, beginning at home; home where children do best when education is more than recitation and fecal matter slogans.

Some time ago it would have been rare for a black man to receive justice in an American Court, and today, two hundred years after the declaration of independence, a third of Americans want to see a former president avoid facing the music in court for nearly one hundred criminal charges. We kid you not. There is neither mosaic legal justice nor Messianic righteousness in letting an unprincipled businessman pose as a champion of the people and avoid certain justice.

More stripes for the one more richly endowed

… that slave who knew his master’s will and did not get ready or act in accord with his will, will receive many lashes, but the one who did not know it, and committed deeds worthy of a flogging, will receive but few. From everyone who has been given much, much will be required; and to whom they entrusted much, of him they will ask all the more.

Luke 12:47-48

We can keep believing that our complicated laws, insurance brokerages, real estate agencies are neat places to hide our malicious intents, but we will not be able to hide the utter destruction of our systematic racism and exploitation of workers. People are citizens before they become workers.

“‘You shall do no injustice in judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor nor defer to the great, but you are to judge your neighbor fairly.”

Leviticus 19:15

Everyone is a neighbour but some neighbours are just for exploitation and shallow international cooperation. We are looking for that certain justice that goes beyond cute songs and lullabies; justice that people do and people feel whether they are accused, convicted, or acquitted.

God has children. The devil has his too. The facts that define these two “families” will shake us to the core. God’s fatherhood is utterly distinct from all others, so it is unrealistic for Abraham’s descendants to assume that they are automatically God’s children. Hence this rebuke from Yeshua of Nazareth. God’s children can have conflicts with neighbours but they always seem peaceful solutions, as did Abraham when the flocks he and Lot, his nephew, owned were too much for the small area they were occupying. If God were anyone’s dad they would love people.

The illusion of loving God and despising people

“Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love Me, for I proceeded forth and have come from God, for I have not even come on My own initiative, but He sent Me.” (John 8:42, NASB)

Despising just one person for any reason will threaten your boat. Imagine what the effect of writing off entire people groups with our biases can do to a “boat”!

A historic turning point

The people who decided, in the first century, against continuing to follow patriarchs, prophets, priests, and kings became the targets of virulent hate, even in courts of law. “God is my dad” is inconsistent with evil discrimination. It is also incongruent with the Law of Moses because the law of Moses allows discrimination on the basis of food and drink consumed, and on the basis of days, times and years observed. You can also imagine how much water a sieve will carry when its purpose is to strain out the water of God’s fatherhood and tender love for humanity. It makes one wonder what human family and fatherhood might be about , if it does not come from the highest source and patterns.

A popular saying holds that it is through pain that humans achieve anything. “No pain, no gain”. A less popular saying proposes that God will have nothing short of exponential growth in the spiritual life of those he enlightens. “Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit.” (John 15:2, NASB)

Change is good vs traditions are inviolable

The more a person changes the more people think one is just dust in the wind. So we look for stability, even strict adherence to culture, religion, political affiliation and even family heritage. It is not entirely clear to me that changing often is a sign of perfection, but it must be true that the best examples of change only happen in nonhuman species. The caterpillar changes once, and the change is spectacular. Its perfection is not repeated. So let me propose that it is not repeated change that shows perfection. It is the dramatic change that we all expect and are usually incapable of manipulating that shows perfection.

Spectacular change expectations

24) Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. 25) He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it to life eternal.

John 12:24-25, NASB

35) But someone will say, “How are the dead raised? And with what kind of body do they come?” 36) You fool! That which you sow does not come to life unless it dies;

1 Corinthians 15:35-36, NASB

We are not in control of perfection: it happens to us. Otherwise, we would be metamorphic practically every time we think we need a shift in our circumstances. Quite literally, hundreds of little changes are presented to us repeatedly, and we ignore them at our peril of stunted growth or stagnation. However, if you change your orientation often it is more likely that you are an example of imperfection than of perfection.