Jesonian: Rome, Jerusalem and Antioch… July 19th, 2015

 Jonathots Daily Blog

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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:

1. We should love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength.
2. And we will love our neighbor as ourselves.

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First Night … June 6, 2013

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We spend entirely too much time debating the flavor, freshness and texture of our bread instead of being energized by the fact that it is shipped daily, as a gift.

When I arrived last night at Primrose United Methodist Church, there were not a lot of people there. Perhaps to the outside cynical viewer, it might even have appeared that there were SO few individuals present that NO possibilities existed.

That’s because we live in a society that bounces between religious fervor and “live in the moment” agnosticism. Sometimes people get all worked up about their journey, their need or their family, and for a brief season “praise God from whom all blessings flow.” Then some trial or tribulation comes in from an unexpected angle which attacks the house of cards of that belief system, and they tumble down in bewilderment, not sure why God has forsaken them.

The confusing, back and forth representation of spirituality makes people overly dependent when they need to be energized, and vibrate with worry when they should be relaxing in their accomplishments.

If you want to find out how things work, you need to go back to how it began instead of looking at all the patches on the well-worn tires over the history of religious practice.

That’s where we tried to go last night. A handful of us got together and decided to talk about returning to Eden with our faith instead of hanging around the cross, discussing the blood and salvation, the tomb, shouting and hollering about the resurrection or staring into the Eastern skies, pleading for the second coming.

Eden was where God came up with the idea for human beings to be created in His image. Once you place yourself firmly within the Garden philosophy, you realize that God walked in and said:

“Look. I made all the trees. They bear fruit. There’s food everywhere. The ground is fertile. I’ve given you gorgeous bodies–not because they’re physically attractive, but because they work so well. You see the little parts that give you pleasure and also make other human beings. You’ve got work to keep you busy. You’ve got fruitfulness IN that work to make you overjoyed–AND you’ve got each other. Have a great day. I’ll see you tonight.”

That’s right–God didn’t show up for breakfast meetings. God didn’t have lunch with Adam and Eve. God didn’t come in the late afternoon to save the day because they couldn’t figure out how to pick the grapefruit.

God showed up in the cool of the evening–to talk, fellowship and celebrate the victories of the day. God was confident in what He had provided. God believed in His own daily bread.

Somewhere along the line, we have to teach people who believe in God that God believes in them.

We aren’t the screw-ups that religion insists we have become. We aren’t without potential. We aren’t rotten to the core. We are just lazy, always looking for a shortcut by eating the “fruit of the knowledge of good and evil” so that we don’t have to actually work anymore. Once we get over that we become excited about our lives again, living within the twenty-four hour period, and we become powerful instead of weak.

So I’m going to tell them tonight, as I close out my time at Primrose, that your faith can be hanging around a cross all day, lamenting the death of Jesus or you can look for the signs of the times that point towards the end of the world.

But I would recommend that you come to Eden. Get your daily bread. Work with it. And meet God at closing time–to laugh about your follies and rejoice over your advances.

First night is done. Now it’s time for a new day–an exciting day.

This is a day that the Lord has made.

 

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Will… June 19, 2012

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A hidden prejudice–it is a decision made by those who should be the MOST giving and spiritual–to allow their personal preferences to enter the life of their gentleness and mercy and determine who will be loved and who will be set aside. It is the foolish conclusion that the Kingdom of God is a democracy–that somehow we all have a vote over whether each new member should be included in the holy flock. (By the way, we don’t.)

“Whosoever” means everybody. And “whosoever” also equals “NoOne is better than anyone else.”

But I must tell you that there is another hidden agenda that has cropped up in this generation of those who were meant to be the “salt of the earth” and the “light of the world.” This particular situation was triggered by a collision between reality and destiny.

Reality: the world is a mess.

Destiny: God is in control.

If you follow that logic through to completion–that the world is a mess and God is in control–then it certainly must cross your mind that God is a mess. So the source of our enlightenment, refreshment and salvation suddenly seems inept. So the average searcher finds himself escaping into fantasy.

In other words, “Since the world is nuts and God doesn’t seem to be able to do much with it, I’m going to go watch a movie about vampires, allow myself to be absorbed in a comic book flick or go to some seminar and hear about the end of the world and consider what kind of horse Jesus will ride when he comes back to the earth again.”

The rebirth of the popularity of fantasy is a hidden surrender by the church and those who believe, to the nastiness of the world around them, and a silent resignation to the incompetence of God. I know we consider “surrender” to be a positive spiritual attribute–and it may be, in terms of our own personal consecration and admission of our weaknesses–but once our foibles are revealed, it is time to get strong again.

It is the season to use our will.

Most Christians will tell you they think we are praying for God’s good works to be accomplished so we can give glory to Him. Unfortunately, this is the opposite of what Jesus taught. He said that the actual process is that WE do the good works, which people see and they glorify God on our behalf.

When you take the responsibility away from the individual believer–to make the world a better place–you put him at the mercy of coping with reality and destiny, and he will eventually escape into some form of fantasy. A quick perusal of the gospel of Jesus lets you know that it is a “go–be–do” proposal.

• Go into all the world and preach the gospel
• Be perfect, even as your Father in Heaven is perfect. and
• Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

God is not absent; He is just the only one in the company doing the job correctly. He has come to give us wisdom, His spirit, His grace and His agreement. But He expects His children to use their will to become “go-be-do’ers.”

You may think that it’s a powerful thing to relinquish your personality in pursuit of God–and there is a season where repentance demands that we admit our frailties–but only that we might acquire new power and new authority. If you tell people that the world is a terrible place and that God is in control and leave them without the will to make the earth become “as it is in heaven,” then don’t be surprised when they escape into all forms of fantasy.

Case in point: this is the source of much marital infidelity. In other words, “Marriage is not what I expected it to be (reality) but marriage is sacred (destiny) so therefore I am going to cheat and create a counter-relationship so that I don’t have to deal with either one (fantasy).”

We see it in the theology of the present religious system. “The world is in such a horrible condition that something has to change (reality). God cannot save the whole world, so Jesus will have to come back to destroy the wicked (destiny). So therefore, what’s the sense in me trying to do anything when God’s given up on the whole thing? Let me just develop my own world and dwell within its boundaries (fantasy).”

We are destroying the gospel by pretending that God is supposed to solve everything. He said He would care for us, He would meet our need (which is what we can’t come up with on our own) and that He would be with us always. But Jesus said that we are the “salt of the earth and the light of the world and that we’re a city set on a hill for all to see.”

Finding people in the desperation of reality and only offering them a destiny of heaven is removing them from the equation of changing the earth, and instead, thrusting them into a forced fantasy. There is a hidden surrender among those who should be attacking the gates of hell and tearing down the negative attitudes.

Here is the truth: the world says “no.” The universe is negatively charged. “No” is the most common word you will ever hear. So don’t you think we need a group of people on Planet Earth who are geared to say “yes?” If we’re going to end up with anything that resembles beauty, purity and clarity, the “no” that is chimed from the worldly system MUST be contradicted by the “yea and amen” from God’s people.

To do this, we must cease our hidden surrender, take our will and step forward in faith, believing that God has made us the front line in His campaign to love the world. Without this, ritual becomes more important than being real, worship becomes a replacement for mission and devotion, and platitudes are read from the Holy Book without any understanding of application.

Beware the hidden surrender which looks at reality and destiny and sighs in despair, heading off towards a selected fantasy.

God gave us the power to make a difference. Unfortunately, He does not force us to do so, but rather, waits for intelligent people to understand that living a miserable life is not a good warm-up to heavenly bliss.

A hidden surrender–it takes away our blessing of being involved in our own lives, bestowing grace and mercy to others.

So take a moment and redefine reality. Reality is actually what the world thinks is true PLUS my ability to make it better. Escape the foolishness of destiny, which tells us to wait for God to do good things so we can act impressed, and instead, go out and do something impressive–and delight in the fact that people see God in the work.

This will keep you away from the fantasy that makes your life a game of chance instead of a personal decision to go, be and do.

   

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