Jesonian … October 7th, 2017

 Jonathots Daily Blog

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It is nearly impossible to be Jesonian–a true follower of the heart of Jesus–without fully comprehending that there are two Gospels. Shall we name them the “Galilee Gospel” and the “Jerusalem Journey?”

It is the reason theologians struggle with the message of Jesus, finding themselves complicating it so that the dual approaches can co-habitate within one faith. But it’s an error to do so.

Jesus had one message but two missions. His two missions were:

1. To bring the message to fulfill the love
2. To present himself as the doorway to fulfill the law

In Galilee he talked about life–abundant life. He lived with his disciples in joy–fully. He spoke of God as a Father and all of us as brothers and sisters. He explained the dangers of anger and lust. He clarified that the things we do to other people are recorded as actions performed to God. It was human–everyday fodder for feeling and believing.

But to fulfill the Law of Moses and welcome the Children of Abraham into his mission, he labored among the stringent, inflexible Jews, trying to reason with them and gather them together under a new understanding. These religionists had “jot-and-tittled” themselves into frantic insecurity about the purposes of God, and even, to a degree, agnosticism about the existence of Jehovah.

The Jerusalem Journey was filled with thinking, musing, mulling, wondering, questioning and attempts at compromise. It was a futile effort to afford political correctness to a manifesto meant for the whole world, and not merely designed for one hundred miles of landscape in the Middle East.

Did Jesus know that the Jews were going to reject him?

Did Jesus know it would end so badly, with his execution on a cross?

You can debate that all you want, but we are certainly aware that he reached a point where he had to relent to the conclusion that you can’t “put new wine into old wine skins.”

The problem in today’s church is that we focus too much on the Jerusalem Journey and don’t thunder the celebration of the Galilee Gospel.

Too much musing, too much debate, too much thinking and too much meditation.

It’s time for us to return to the Gospel of Galilee, when life was abundant and joy was full. It’s an easy message to remember: go, do, give, be.

• Go unto all the world.
• Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
• Give and it shall be given unto you.
• Be perfect even as your Father in Heaven is perfect.

Such a message offers redemption for failure, while simultaneously providing exhortation to challenge indifference.

There is a danger that we in the church will stall–trying to fulfill the law instead of fulfilling the love.

Stop thinking so much about it.

Go. Do. Give. Be.The producers of jonathots would humbly request a yearly subscription donation of $10 for this wonderful, inspirational opportunity

 

 

Jesonian–Troubling (Part 5)… July 29th, 2017

 Jonathots Daily Blog

(3382)

It is troubling.

“Family is everything.”

This philosophy is so widely accepted in our society that any attempt to question its veracity would be similar to suggesting the public execution of puppies in the town square.

Let’s first make something clear–Jesus was not an advocate for the genetic family. For instance:

–His clan was certainly dysfunctional.

–He was nearly killed by the hometown folk because they did not appreciate his message.

–And his family members went to Capernaum to bring him home because they thought he was crazy. He had to sidestep them, and informed them clearly that his family was anyone who did the will of his Father.

–When telling parables, he often criticized those who used family obligations as an excuse for not doing more for the world.

–He said our worst enemies would be those of our own household.

–And certainly he made the point that if you don’t “hate your mother and father, “you aren’t worthy of the kingdom.”

Jesus was concerned that we would love those who were connected with us through family ties, and not extend the same courtesy to our brothers and sisters throughout the planet. Why did this bother him? It’s really quite simple.

Please understand that evil never permanently leaves the spotlight, but merely goes backstage, dons a different costume, changes make-up and reappears as a new character. I believe this is what has happened in America. We are obsessed with the holiness of family. Yet it has suspiciously grown in popularity following the disintegration of segregation, Jim Crow and newfound civil rights for immigrants and the gay community.

Prejudice needed somewhere to hide. Bigotry was looking for a disguise. What could be better than family? It is literally “Mom and apple pie.”

So the same tenets which were promoted through segregation–that being “staying with your own kind”–have simply resurfaced as a maudlin proclamation of “loving your own.”

If everybody prefers their own family, we will isolate ourselves, making us vulnerable to evil tyrants who come and use our fears of one another to bring about mayhem and death.

I am troubled by the “family is everything” brigade. It is a way of hiding bigotry, which is no longer allowed to express itself through cross-burning, so instead is using cross-lifting.

My children know I love them–but they know I love them as I also love all of God’s children.

Remember, the last words of Jesus in the Great Commission were not, “Go back to your families and be happy.”

Rather, “Go into all the world.”The producers of jonathots would humbly request a yearly subscription donation of $10 for this wonderful, inspirational opportunity

 

 

 

Jesonian… June 24th, 2017

 Jonathots Daily Blog

(3348)

“Go.”

But where?

Into all the world, Jesus said as he was about to ascend into Heaven.

Although most theologians like to focus on the Ascension based upon Jesus’ arrival to “sit at the right hand of God the Father,” I would like to discuss what we have called the “great commission”–to go into all the world.

Was it not actually the ludicrous commission? After all, Jesus had traveled with his twelve disciples for three-and-a-half years. He knew they were Jewish, bigoted, disrespectful of women, indifferent to children and completely bound to their home base. How could he possibly anticipate that these immovable religious boys could ever take a message anywhere?

There were three keys to the success of the early church:

• The Holy Spirit
• The Apostle Paul
• The destruction of Jerusalem

If you remove any one of these elements, Christianity becomes a cult of Judaism, therefore suffering the fate of the Jews when the Romans destroyed their Temple.

Peter, Andrew and John had no intention of doing anything but hanging around Jerusalem and aggravating the Pharisees. (You may notice that I left out James because early on he mouthed off and lost his head–literally.)

So the Holy Spirit arrived on the Day of Pentecost and gave Peter the boldness to speak about the murder of the Messiah in front of Jews visiting from all over the known world. Three thousand of them were saved that day, went back to their homes and began the process of reaching the entire planet.

Meanwhile, a Pharisee named Saul of Tarsus became quite adept at killing Christians, therefore terrorizing them. He was on his way to crippling the movement when Jesus signed him up on the road to Damascus, to take the message to the Gentiles. Why? Because the original twelve were not going to do it.

And even though Paul was a Pharisee, he was a rabble rouser–a fire-brand of intellectual and spiritual energy. He found himself criticizing the original disciples because they would not eat with the Gentiles, deeming themselves better.

Paul took the Gospel to the Greeks, and since the Romans always followed everything the Greeks did, they made excellent evangelists. He ended his life in Rome, teaching, knowing that the Romans were going to reach the Germanic tribes and the Germanic tribes would evangelize the Angles and Saxons, and the Angles and Saxons were going to climb into boats, land on rocks near Plymouth and begin a new nation called America, which would generate the technology to reach the whole world.

To ensure that those “stay-at-home disciples” would eventually leave Jerusalem and follow in Paul’s footsteps, Jesus warned them about the coming destruction of Jerusalem–to make sure they left town before the Romans arrived with their deadly foreclosure.

By 70 A. D. there was no Jewish synagogue, race or movement. Christianity survived because the followers of Jesus literally “headed for the hills.”

In the process of touting the power of prayer, the value of meditation and the worth of Bible study, we need to understand that Jesus intended us to be a “go” people.

He wanted us to view the world as a whole instead of just our little village, and he desired that his children would be the most tolerant, non-bigoted, caring and clever people on the face of the Earth.

The producers of jonathots would humbly request a yearly subscription donation of $10 for this wonderful, inspirational opportunity