Jonathots Daily Blog
(2638)
The religious system is confused.
Confusion normally sets in when what we have set out to do fails miserably, and rather than admitting our lacking, we choose to cover it up with freshly concocted stupidity.
All the churches in the United States are desperately trying to hang on to every blade of grass to keep from falling off the cliff into oblivion.
The level of disinterest for all things spiritual is growing daily. Rather than allowing for candid reflection and legitimate repentance, a strange sense of nostalgia has set in, causing these diminishing denominations to grab on to one of two efforts: to either become more Rome or more Jerusalem.
For some it’s an issue of attempting to return to the tenets of the Mother Church in Rome and put greater emphasis on sacraments, liturgy, tradition and form. They cite statistics telling them that most people want their church services to be somber, guarded and filled with relics of childhood memories of spirituality.
- So communion around the table becomes more important than communion of the saints.
- Repetition of words becomes more prevalent than the repetition of our ongoing commitment to one another.
Although many of them are Protestant, they secretly yearn for a reconciliation with Catholicism.
Then there are those who think the key to expanding their spiritual borders and increasing their attendance is Jerusalem:
- More emphasis on praise, worship, Old Testament practices and an apocalyptic geyser of predictions concerning the end of the world.
- If you can’t make people happy, then make them glad they’re sad because they’re waiting for Jesus to come back and make everything right.
And even though Jesus continues to stand at the door of all of these churches and knock, no one opens up to him because all of them are possessed by forms of godliness while denying the power of the Gospel to transform our everyday experiences.
There is a third choice. It is characterized in the Book of Acts by a body of believers who lived in Antioch.
- They were not Jews.
- They were not Romans nor Greeks.
They rejected the term “Gentile” and instead embraced a new name: Christian.
It was a mocking title placed upon them by their pseudo-intellectual neighbors, referring to this new breed of thinker as “Little Jesuses.”
They liked it.
They understood that to be a follower of Jesus was to embrace the lifestyle he proclaimed in his Sermon on the Mount and in all his dealings with his fellow-humans.
The Roman church will not give us the intimacy required to show mercy to others. We’re too interested in our own absolution.
The Jerusalem church will not provide us enough Jesus of Nazareth to transform the lives of the congregation from Old Covenant to New Covenant. And looking to the eastern sky for a Second Coming eliminates a vision of the entire horizon.
We must go back to being Christians–but in the style of Antioch, not Rome or Jerusalem.
That particular position functions with two Jesonian tenets:
- We should love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength.
- And we will love our neighbor as ourselves.
The producers of jonathots would humbly request a yearly subscription donation of $10 for this wonderful, inspirational opportunity
NEW BOOK RELEASE BY JONATHAN RICHARD CRING
WITHIN
A meeting place for folks who know they’re human
$3.99 plus $2.00 S&H
$3.99 plus $2.00 S & H
Jonathots Daily Blog 