A very hard question

God created us with a something that Christian's call the sinful nature - supposedly a destructive element of our psychology. I am wondering what was the original purpose of this part of ourselves?

A Loving Father

"One thing we do know: Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at this moment." – A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle, p41.

Wow. I had never really thought that God was THAT interested in my life.

Summary of Romans

If we define sin as living a fearful life and being plagued by the consequences of living in fear, and sinlessness as living in freedom from fear enjoying the faith of Abraham and receiving all the benefits of living fearlessly, then Jesus died so to eliminate the barrier that had thus far prevented us from making the transition and He was raised from the dead to demonstrate the quality of the fearless life. Law is based on fear and belongs to the prior life, grace is based on love and freedom from fear and belongs to the latter life. With this perspective why would we ever choose to live under the law rather than grace? The habit of living in fear takes practice to break but it is possible to break. Let us therefore live in grace. Thanks be to God. ;o)

Disadvantage of Inerrancy #2

It encourages us to see the bible as primary truth.

I agree with John Francke that theology is a second order discipline. That means that it is a process of reflection rather than observation. Science is more about the observable. Theology is about the unobservable.

I would go further and say that the bible is a second order text. Inspired but reflective. It captures observation and constructs a reflective story.

The driving values of inerrancy are to counter scientific argument against religion however to attempt to construct a set of first order observations about a reflective text is total nonsense. In the extreme.

It leads us to deny the empirical. It leads us to spend enormous amounts of intellectual energy creating systems of thought, which is no mean task, centred around a poem. There is no reflective truth. Reflection is conjecture. And as the domain of the empirical expands the reflective must yield ground. However it must also hold its boundaries against unmerited attack from those observers who desire power. Policy must be informed from both perspectives.

The bible is one supreme example of how to reflect in a manner that is sympathetic to our humanity, to creation and to the infinite and eternal. Biblical reflection is example of best practice though clearly uninformed by our current domain of knowledge. Let us instead of trying to assert the infinite bounds of our observation on the bibical reflection let us be aware of these differences and follow the example of the biblical writers in practising good reflection.

Palm Springs

Im going to be in Palm Springs, Ca from 2nd Dec to the 9th Dec. Do any of my friends live anywhere near there?

A better definition of sin

I grasping at straws here.

Sin is the gap between the ideal loving behaviour and actual behaviour. The ideal loving behaviour is what is best for everyone - Self and Other - borne out of love.

The sinful nature is the part of us that pulls us towards self-centred behaviour without regard for others. It is motivated by desire, want or lust. Want is the fear that I don't have everything I need. If I trust then I know that all that I need is provided for me. The sinful nature is a feeling that I don't have rather than an actuality. Hence a poor man might be rich, a rich man poor, a rich man rich or a poor man poor. Since the sinful nature is based on fear it tends to be irrational. In the light of God's promises it is totally irrational.

Feelings can be suppressed only to pop up again at some future point in time against our conscious will. The sinful nature can be suppressed similarly. This is Romans 8.

Feelings can be released. The sinful nature can be released. This is the heart of spiritual disciplines.

The "ideal loving behaviour" is easy when you have no feelings of lack. Holiness is easy when you have no feelings of lack. Releasing all feelings of lack is attainable if you want it more than you want to embrace the feelings of lack. "You must want to be free more than you want the world" - Lester Levenson. "You must loose your life in order to attain it" - Jesus Christ. When you trust that you have all you need, you have no feeling of lack.

The feeling of lack is fear. It is distrust in God's provision. It can be released. Faith in God's provision, is our natural state. You can also have faith in God's provision by having a high degree of self-confidence - you believe he has given you all that you need to meet your own needs. Fear kills the spirit. We can live courageous, fearless lives. In fact that is the life of faith.

There are many methods to release the fear.

Walking with God is walking without fear in union and harmony to the universe. Walking without fear is the thing that God reckons as righteousness - just as he did to Abraham. Walking without fear and unaware of the nature of the universe is also missing the mark.

The world around us is constantly trying to sell to our fears to make a profit from us.

Game theory is from the perspective of utter depravity - I will do always do selfish behaviour. Without a mechanism of removing fear a religion / way is dead.

Legalism is practiced by many people. It is prescriptive without insight. It motivates by fear. It focuses on insecurity. It kills.

Grace is practiced by a few people. It is insightful, and gives a few pointers to typically good behaviour. It focuses on security.

Many people who claim to be in the grace camp are not. They are unaware of their insecurity - their fear of death and hence fear of life. They still need to control so preach legalism.

A legalist can interpret a graceful message legalistically. Someone under grace can interpret a legalistic message gracefully. It is an orientation of the heart.

To move from legalism into grace you have to let go of / release the fear. If you suppress the fear you move further into legalism. Legalists are hard work. There are "Christian" legalists and "non-Christian" legalists. There are those who are under grace who believe in Christ and those who don't. Eternal consequences are based on the degree of acceptance of Grace not on the degree of acceptance of doctrine.

Grace does not invalidate good doctrine. It does challenge bad doctrine. Doctrine does not empower the legalist. Doctrine does inform the graceful. The fearful mindset is fuelled even further by doctrine. Love overcomes fear.

There is often an internal battle between fear and love. Love begets love. Fear begets fear. Often people are in chains to fear because of a lack of imagination. Love can be grasped through imagination. Imagination is that which is outside our experience.


All around us our experiences typically cause us to fear. Fear does not lead to happiness. Desire fulfilled does not fulfil. Desire remains, and remains, and remains. A way to be free from desire is to release it to let it go. Desire is the fear that something is missing, that we don't have all that we need. James talks about desires.

The technology of releasing and letting go is something that contemporary Christian's are largely unaware of, although it is practiced by those who practice spiritual disciplines and can be found in the traditions. The Bible refers to the fruits of releasing, and provides a story that encourages it. It maybe that the story is sufficient to become holy. I don't know. I wasn't sufficiently committed to it to find out. I've used many sources to find how to become increasingly fearless.

Much of my own salvation and sanctification has not come through the contemporary Christian message. From a solely Christian perspective I am one the outside. From the perspective of the message of Jesus I have been born again and am increasingly walking in the way.

God is love. God is more than love. He is light. And he created well. He reached out to a nation that he established as the Jews and demonstrated he love to them that their story might save all. Knowledge of God does not only come through knowledge of that story however I suspect that someone enlightened who read the story for the first time would acknowledge it's truth. It is not an exclusive story. Paul went to great lengths to explain to the Jews that it wasn't. Today we've made it an exclusively Christian story. But it's not. Its God's story. It belongs to him and he wishes to save all.

People wish to make it exclusive as they fear there is a limited supply of God's love. Their desire / want for God's love fuels a self centred belief. They act out of this belief and the legalist in them justifies their behaviour to themselves. However the truth is that God’s love in infinite is not limited and is poured out on all men to those who wish to be free and happy.

The gospel is good news but has no need to be exclusive. Grace is exclusive. It recognises that fear and sin lead to destruction – Self destruction and Other destruction at minimum. Grace has to be exclusive. There are two forces at war in our innermost person. On the unconscious level as well as the conscious level. Grace recognises this. Legalism doesn’t understand this. Legalism is a defence mechanism and leads to inflexible thinking.

Grace frees. Freedom is where happiness is found, where peace and rest is found, where love and sharing is found, where fearless and courageous living is found.

You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.

Thanks be to God who is able to guide us into all truth and freedom, away from law and into a wonder life. Amen

Reconstruction

For a while I've been saying to my friends that I don't believe in reconstruction. Some of the "emerging" church movement stuff has bothered me - in particular the new ideas of how to do church, the bandwagons such as being missional, etc.

I now realise why I don't believe in reconstruction. It's because I believe that as you strip away the rubbish you've constructed you are left with what is. God. Creation.

The real problem is our feeling of lack and then our wanting to construct something to fill the perceived void. Instead of sitting with the feeling a while and allowing ourselves to just look for what has already been provided our insecurity drives us to be active. Construction or reconstruction is from this perspective totally sinful.

Heresey?

What if sin is the fear of death?

What if the serpent did lie when he said you will surely die?

What if everything after that point was written from the perspective that we did die?

What if the mindset that we are dead or that death is inevitable is fallenness?

What if the Gospel is about escaping that mindset and the fruits of it?

What if the Gospel is about new life?

What if the message of the Gospel is that there is no death?

What if the idea of needing to perform a special ritual to escape death is just an immature ego manifesting as a religious mindest?

Just a thought..

<Smile>

My journey

At the moment I'm not in a church. I'm hearing messages from church that this is sinful and wrong. However I am convinced that this period of seperation is a vital componenet of my journey. And I hold that view no matter what. I know I'm still loved by God and that I'm still in relationship. All the apocalyptic things just aren't happening to me and they just aren't going to. You see my strength no longer comes from an Other. It comes from inside. And I am determined to give back more than I take. So learning to be self-dependent is important and it is hard to learn that in an environment that encourages dependency.

I have no choice. I have to take an opposing stand to the docterine of the church. Not that I think it is wrong. It is just getting in the way of me growing up.