Authenticity

Gifts galore and giving gifts

eejoseph, ,

Some gifts do not deserve the name. Others mark a person in ways one cannot explain. The intrinsic value of gifts must be measured by the source and the receipt.  Only the most twisted or damaged personalities customarily reject gifts.  Today the things I call gifts are not things at all.  They are people.  All give and sputter. Supposing one gave and never stops giving, would it be time to stop living? Giving perpetually without strings is diagnostically divine.

Gift glut and glitching generosity

Your parents may have passed off the stage of life but from time to time something they passed on to you comes in handy and supremely effective.  It seems that people are needing bigger barns for all the gifts we receive; gifts from the home circle, from school, from friends, from the workplace, and from random strangers who have taken notice of us. The numerous gifts in our experience may cause us to think that generosity is mounting, that would be an illusion. Society is so fragmented and siloed that interactions that would have been the agency of generosity and love are fewer.  Genuine gift giving is rare and still needed.

The everready gift that keeps giving

In our world where buy and sell,  glorified consumerism, and law and order are quick and easy gotos, the things that are permanent and infinite get graded C, D, and F. You ask someone about the morality and they give you the Ten Commandments.  You can also discuss salvation with someone and you’d be surprised at how often people will deny that they are saved.  There are people who actually prefer living in terror of losing their way, and are convinced that they get baptized by the Holy Spirit every day, and can be born again every day.

Deniers of the truth

This is what happens when people replace the Christ of  Calvary with their own message, a time-bound doctrine, or even a divine promise. I think we can agree that the truth for Christians will always be tethered to the elevated Christ. They will never say that God has saved them. They deny the truth of their conversion,  their passing from death to life, and the receipt of the Holy Spirit as down payment of the future inheritance.  They deny Jesus the outcome of his offer. 

Belief is not works

Whether we need to be saved from our sin, or whether we need the necessary maintenance of our salvation from sin, it is the Christ who is lifted up who is the remedy. Imagine that God needs to test you after he gives you repentance, gives you faith, pardons all your sin, makes sure his child, and gives you an appointment to serve. Then imagine that God sets you adrift and requires you to finish what he started on your own. That horror house is where many Christians live. 

So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure. (Philippians 2:12-13)

My fear and my trembling is God at work!

Affirming from antiquity that God fights for his people, he saves them, he keeps them, and he brings them to fulfillment, we find.

Unless the Lord builds the house, They labor in vain who build it; Unless the Lord guards the city, The watchman keeps awake in vain. (Psalms 127:1)

Everyone a prophet

eejoseph, , , ,

Final, vital prophets, and other vain headliners

It is a kind of default badge for people in what they think are new movements to seek a accreditation by associating the movement with a prophet or some other icon of authority.  Whatever the choices are for an icon it is hoped that the movement acquires an aura of authenticity.  This is a madness that envelops religion.

Book mixup

Historians and theologiams have found similarities between Christianity Islam and Judaism which can only be explained by the fact existence of a common source. The “people of the book” designation must be taken literally, otherwise people would need to rely on oral tradition and, frankly, rumour speculation and folklore. Christians had the same Hebrew Bible, its (second century BC) translation into Greek, and the belief in one GOD. The unique Christian book, the New Testament, did not take shape until the 2nd and 3rd centuries, and the Arabs had neither book nor monotheism until the 7th century. The only book that could have been a source for the thoughts that reliably lift people towards Divinity must be the Hebrew Bible.

Those unfamiliar bridges

What are females?

The creation of woman is unique among the creation narratives. The existence of an alternate version means that the book cannot be trusted. Neged as the term defining the relationship between male and female cannot possibly mean the lame “beside” or “suitable” with which we are familiar. Rib, from which God made Eve, is help and protection, as ribs are known to protect the vital organs, heart and lungs. Neged also describes equals in negotiations and equals face to face. The reason the first woman is called “mother of all living” is obvious, but mother as source could not be a male honour. Man becomes part of the living chain only through women. Hence women represent the fact of being alive, and the “out front” part of the life cycle. Or do we want to imagine that God’s bringing Eve to Adam could be something other than a face to face presentation? So what’s with the hidden or invisible woman, the second class female, and the exclusion of females from any human endeavour?

What are words?

If Christians, Muslims and Jews read the first three chapters of the Hebrew Bible study Christians are less likely to grasp the foundations of human life. The vocabulary and grammar leaps off the page into a clear understanding, and the meaning does not need to pass through translations and revisions of translations such as we find in the 17th century King James version and the 19th century Revised Standard version. When one has no respect for the distance between the 21st century and the unique materials that have come to us through Jewish hands, the search is over for the counterfeit and diabolic.

Relative goodness

He has told you, O man, what is good; And what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

Micah 6:8

No matter what people call themselves they know what is good, they know what justice looks like, they appreciate kindness (given and received) but they all have a problem with humility. Just look at the jockeying to be first and tops in humanitarian ventures, even when the game has been called repeatedly, for kings, priests and mystics. There is no second Solomon, no remixes of covenants and promises. Isn’t goodness within the reach of all humans apart from a creed or cultural framework?

Least in tune

It makes sense that projection is involved in the claims people make about themselves. The expression of such claims are either external or internal. It is always what we wear, clothing or life itself. The liar broadcasts his abhorrence for lies, and unholy people wear their holiness on their sleeves. A prophet is only a big deal for people who want to avoid God.  Do people not have a moral obligation to read sacred texts? The landmark encounter with God in the Jewish experience is still the Exodus and Sinai Covenant. The elephant in the room of every reflection on history and personal accountability is the broken covenant; broken from inception by choosing not to hear Moses instead of God’s voice and violated to the present day via idolatry. The indications are that neither Jews, Arabs nor 21st century seekers make any significant progress without acknowledging the demise of prophets and the rise of anointed leadership without precedent. Of Yahweh, Isaiah wrote:

Like a shepherd He will tend His flock, In His arm He will gather the lambs And carry them in His bosom; He will gently lead the nursing ewes.

Isaiah 40:11, NASB

Ezekiel, a prophet of priestly background, also wrote:

For thus says the Lord God, “Behold, I Myself will search for My sheep and seek them out. As a shepherd cares for his herd in the day when he is among his scattered sheep, so I will care for My sheep and will deliver them from all the places to which they were scattered on a cloudy and gloomy day.

Ezekiel 34:11-12

I [emphatic] will feed My flock and I [emphatic] will lead them to rest,” declares the Lord God.

Ezekiel 34:15

It is Moses, the prophet who dared to ascend Sinai and be as God to the Egyptian king who assures us that prophets are going to be common.

But Moses said to him, “Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, that the Lord would put His Spirit upon them!”

Numbers 11:29, NASB

The Arabs of the 7th century were neither fans nor followers of Moses, disciples of Jesus nor owners of the Hebrew Bible or the Greek Testament. Every tenet in the Bible takes on an extreme profile while the virtues of love and moderation become mere platitudes. We are great at avoiding GOD by means of talk. A lot of yapping about God blesses no one. First and last things get reversed any way, and it is the truly eternal statutes that demand our attention: justice, mercy and faith[fullness]. So let’s take Moses and John the Baptist seriously, before we find it really challenging to exit the prophet trap. We are not going to impress God by being hard line on crime and sin. God has already shown what his answer is to human sin, and it is a sacrifice, not fixing behavior.