And you did not visit Me.

For I was hungry, and you didn’t feed me. I was thirsty, and you didn’t give me a drink. I was a stranger, and you didn’t invite me into your home. I was naked, and you didn’t give me clothing. I was sick and in prison, and you didn’t visit me.’
“Then they will reply, ‘Lord, when did we ever see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and not help you?’
“And he will answer, ‘I tell you the truth, when you refused to help the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were refusing to help me.’ - - Matthew 25

He lives in poverty. Oh, to look at it from the surface (because Heaven forbid you look too closely) it might not seem so, but he often has to make the choice between eating and paying the electric or the phone bill, and sometimes both bills. He is on social assistance because he has no other choice. Seriously. There are people who really CANNOT work.

His house is dirty and messy. It is that way because he cannot see well enough to clean it. He is on the list for a cataract surgery, but there is no date on that yet. He longs to be able to see. He hates living like this. He is unable to work because of his vision and many other health problems ... but he would love to be able to work to pay his bills on time and afford to do so many things that people who don't live in poverty take for granted.

He doesn't trust people, because people have always let him down. They have hurt him, or taken advantage of his generosity when he had a bit more money, or they judged him, so he has learned to be wary of people and might even push them away. He especially doesn't trust Christians. They sit back in their nice houses and designer clothes and they judge him without taking the time to know him. He has no time for people like that. 

So on the surface, he seems prickly by nature. He calls it like he sees it, and that makes people uncomfortable. So they stay away. As a result, he is lonely. And you might think that he has brought it on himself, that if he were more friendly, he might have more friends. But almost everyone he has ever known or trusted in his life has either let him down, or judged him, or used him, or a combination of all three. He can't afford to trust.

Image from Pixabay - a blur of long grass

He has his property, the one good thing he has left of his parents: his father, who died years ago, and his mother, who deeded the property to him before she got dementia and had to be placed in a nursing home. He has one beat-up little car, which he just barely manages to keep road-worthy in case he needs to drive it, which doesn't happen often.

Everything else has been stolen from him. The neighbors drive by the house and shake their heads, tutting to themselves when they see that his lawn is overgrown, grass as tall as four feet in some places. They don't bother to stop in and ask him if he would like someone to come in and cut it for him. They wouldn't do it for nothing. Rather than care for him, they would rather think he doesn't care. He does care. He just cannot physically go out there and use a push mower. He has a heart condition, a lung condition, failing kidneys, is nearly blind with cataracts, and he has other health conditions as well. And he simply cannot afford to pay someone to cut the grass, nor could he afford a ride-on mower in a million years. Simple as that. 

He used to have homemakers coming in to the house. But someone saw a rodent trap and then they refused to come in. The house has rodents because part of the house sits on a mud basement, but he cannot afford to do the home renovations that would need to be done to keep the critters from coming in. He has battled them for months ... and he is winning. But until the gateway is closed (that is, until there is a cement barrier), the battle will continue. He has asked the government for help. But there is one problem. There is no guarantee that the government will help him.

He has nobody to help. And everyone assumes that someone else will do it. So nobody does.

The church has forgotten him. They are too busy raising funds for this or that missionary half a world away while he lives in squalor beneath their very noses. They hold those upturned noses and look the other way because he doesn't attend church, so they consider him to be apostate. He doesn't attend because he has been too hurt by Christians judging him in that exact way just because he gets frustrated and loses his temper with people sometimes. Live in poverty yourself, and then see how quickly you lose your temper.  

Every unexpected bill that arrives is a crisis. Every unexpected setback is overwhelming. He has attempted suicide ... and only an intramural nurse saved his life because she called him after he had taken the pills. She called the ambulance and they came and got him. He was in the hospital for weeks, battling depression and hopelessness and panic. You didn't know that, did you? No, because you forgot him; he was easy to forget.

Strangers help him before the church would ever think to. It was strangers in a community service organization who replaced his fridge when it got broken last winter. They came in and took out the old one, set up the new one and brought groceries to put in it. And these strangers were NOT from a Christian organization. 

The only family members who do care for him live so far away that it is very difficult to make sure his needs are met from day to day. They have their own bills to pay too. They help whenever they can, but it is not enough; he lives on only $537 a month, and no more. In the day by day reality, he lives with the knowledge that others have the power to get together and help him, but they don't. Or they won't. 

And there are many others like him out there, people the church has forgotten because 'the government will look after them.'  Well - the government keeps these people below the poverty line so that they will be motivated to seek work. But this fellow can't work. What about him? 

What about you? What about me? Where do we fit into all of this? Do we - as a result of our own lack of action - keep people like this gentleman trapped in what amounts to a prison of poverty, just because he doesn't look like, talk like, or act like us? Do they have to clean up their act and be more like us just so we will look at them?

I'm not saying he hasn't made mistakes in the past. I'm not saying he isn't making mistakes now. But the fact remains that he is struggling for every last hour he remains on the planet. It should not have to be so hard. WE do not have to be so hard.

We have lost our Way. And if we don't find the Way of compassion and love, someday we may hear that WE did not feed, clothe or visit the ones in need. 

Nothing but the Bow

Rainbows. The symbolism of all colours being present in Light is one of the greatest things about them. The Father of Lights is a fitting name for the Creator and Source of such a lovely phenomenon...

The first rainbow recorded in the Bible appears after the Great Deluge - the Flood. God decided to share something that is always present with Him - the "bow" - (more about that later) with mankind, but He set it in the cloud. The bow symbolizes mercy; the cloud symbolizes judgment or justice. 

On Earth, the bow naturally cannot exist without the cloud (water vapour); we only see half of a rainbow (a semi-circle) at most, because our vision is limited by the horizon. 

But not so above. Although the bows we see cannot be seen from space because the clouds are in the way (did you catch the symbolism? when there is too much judgment, mercy cannot be seen), astronauts have documented seeing their reflection in the water - and on rare occasions, one of those who have, also said that he saw the whole circle reflected on the ocean from above - a remarkable experience. 

One other person said he saw one ... a whole circle ... long ago. The apostle John, in his vision on the island of Patmos (while in exile for his faith) saw a rainbow, a full circle - but there was one major difference from the rainbows of earth. There was no rain, and there was no cloud. There was only the Bow. It encircled the throne of God.

Nothing but the Bow. Only mercy. No judgment. NONE. Total acceptance, with no cloud obscuring, hiding, barring the way. 

What a contrast to the way most people think of God... as a harsh judge, jumping on every little failure, angry and foreboding, waiting to say, "Gotcha!" as he crushes us under his thumb. 

But that is not how God is. If that is your view of him, it is distorted by the cloud of judgment, by the limitations of our earthly system. I might even go far as to say that a lot of people create their god in their own image - and call him God. 

If you want to know what God is really like, look at Jesus. "He who has seen Me has seen the Father," Jesus said. 

Photo "Double Rainbow" by Evgeni Dinev
at www.freedigitalphotos.net

The myth of an avenging God is just that - a myth. Jesus hung out with the dregs of society: the hooker, the double-dealing bookie, the eunuchs (by the way, these were as close to trans people as folks dared express in that day), the poor and the lepers, the downcast and downtrodden. Even the rich and / or religious who sincerely sought the truth, He did not turn away. 

I don't know who this other god is that people fear (are afraid of) so much. He certainly bears no resemblance to Jesus. So my conclusion is that he must be a false god, a puny god.

My God loves. My God accepts. My God has a Bow surrounding Him with no cloud: mercy WITHOUT judgment. He is (and gives) Love without conditions, peace without distress, joy without reservations. Anyone who tries to say otherwise is selling their own, limited brand of god, limited by human understanding and logic. God created logic, and science, and intelligence, but He defies description, exceeds comprehension, and surpasses anything our minds can conceive. 

There is therefore no fear; there is no judgment; there is no condemnation; there is nothing but love, acceptance, and mercy. Nothing but the Bow. 

If you are struggling today with not feeling good enough, always feeling as though you have to measure up, let that go today; those feelings do not come from Him, but from your limited view of who He is. He has nothing but mercy for you. He has nothing but acceptance for you - just the way you are. He has nothing but love for you... whether you feel that or not. It is true!  Let Him remove your inability to see Him the way He is... You will never regret it!   

WORTHY

Of all the lies ever perpetrated by organized religion, perhaps the most insidious one is that we are unworthy worms, vile creatures, wicked and repugnant to God. Intended to spark humility and the fear (i.e., respect) of God, this idea of wretchedness has been the enemy's number one tool to incapacitate believers around the world for centuries! It is a killer. It kills faith. 

The logic goes like this: "I'm so unworthy, I don't deserve to lift my face toward the heavens, and God surely wouldn't listen to such a filthy rotten failure like me. Even if I dared to pray, there's no way He would ever consider saying yes to me because I'm so ugly and dirty to Him.  And even though Jesus has made me clean and acceptable because of the cross, well, that's still not enough because I see all too well what I'm like, and I just know that there's no way He'll ever listen to little old me. After all, just look at what He had to go through to redeem me!"

It's a cleverly devised lie, because it is mixed with truth. Yes, Jesus went to the cross and endured such a horrible death to redeem us, but not because we are worthless worms.  He went there because He values us so greatly that He would do anything to prove to us how much we are worth to Him!

Remember the story of the ugly duckling, the cygnet (swan chick) who was hatched in a family of ducks and never felt good enough?  That is a metaphor - a symbolic picture - for us.  The reality was that the "ugly duckling" was not a duckling after all, but a swan, regardless of how unworthy he felt. Keep that picture in your mind.  Not the taunts of the so-called siblings, not even his own reflection in the water compared to those of the 'brothers and sisters', not the revulsion that he saw in the eyes of the adult ducks, changed the fact that he was a swan - destined for far greater, born to beauty and majesty. The day he knew his worth was the day he heard the swans calling him from on high, and caught a glimpse of his reflection (now transformed) in the water just inside the broken ice prison he had made for himself.

That's us.  Born to beauty. Worthy.  Valuable.  Loved.  Called.  Yet so many of us still unaware that we are His treasure, that we are the apple of His eye.  We always were.

It makes no difference to its worth whether a diamond is in a crown or in a pigsty.  It's a diamond.  It has intrinsic worth - that is, it has a value that is in and of itself, and isn't dependent on its surroundings.  We are His JEWELS!

Photo "Ring With Stone" courtesy of
Boykung at
www.freedigitalphotos.net

Another - and perhaps more meaningful - metaphor is the (modern) story of Rapunzel.  (Even though Grimm wrote the original story [which is AWFUL by the way], I prefer the version that Disney did recently, because it ends WAY better!)  Never mind the romance piece for now - that's a different story to tell.  Let's look at Rapunzel herself: a princess who doesn't know she's a princess. Hear me?  Not only a princess - but one with magical giftings to heal and rejuvenate, but which are used by a selfish, cruel power (Mother Gothel) who pretends to be her mother.  Yet at every turn, this woman belittles her, tells her she is fat, or stupid, or lazy, or demented (crazy).  She uses the girl's bestowed power (expressed through her long, magical hair which must never be cut or it will lose its power - can we see the symbolism of Samson here?) for her own purposes and intends to keep her imprisoned forever.  Gothel builds a culture of shame and mistrust, and yet Rapunzel longs for something more - and eventually is drawn to see the lights that appear every year on her birthday.  For far away, the heartbroken King and Queen lift the lanterns to the skies in her honour every year, hoping that one day she will return to them and take her rightful place.  When Rapunzel sees these lights up close, she feels like she belongs there somehow.  Soon, she puts it all together and realizes that she IS the 'lost princess.'  And knowing who she is changes everything about how she perceives her upbringing; she sees the witch for what she really is.  

That too is us.  We have been sold a bill of goods and we have just accepted those voices (often voices we hear expressed in those old self-hating, self-torturing hymns and the fear-based traditions of the organized church) that tell us that we must be crazy to think that God would hear us, that we are delusional to think that He would care about the little things of our lives, or that He would love us unconditionally and beyond measure.  Or the voices say that yes, God loves us but only if we behave ourselves.  Or that He hears and answers prayer but that if we don't receive answers, then we must be doing it wrong.  

No.  We are the King's sons and daughters.  We are precious to Him, worthy to Him. He dotes on us, and hears our faintest heart's cry because He delights in us.  We cannot offend Him!  We cannot! And why would we want to?  Being aware of a love that great can only produce love in return ... (another post for another time).

Can we grasp this? Is this not good news?  Can we accept that He is far greater and far more loving and accepting and GOOD than we have ever allowed ourselves to dream?  The Word says that He is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we can ask or think --- so basically, more of every one of those wonderful things (like love, acceptance, and goodness) than we can imagine!  Well I don't know about you, but I can imagine A LOT!  A WHOLE LOT!! If we could conceive of a greater, more loving God than God Himself, would that not mean that the god we have been believing in isn't really God at all?  Because, in order to BE God, He'd have to be so far beyond our capacity to comprehend or imagine that we couldn't think or imagine of anything greater!

Yes.  Yes He has set His love on us.  We have laboured in the sun, but He finds us beautiful, ravishing.  

We are worthy in His sight.  We are. Oh that we might be able to SEE His love - to experience it in our deepest heart - it would transform every moment into something sacred!

The "quid pro quo" fallacy

For those who may not be familiar with the term quid pro quo- it is an ancient Latin expression meaning that if I do something for you, I expect to get something (of approximately equal value) in return.  It is usually associated with business, but has been used in social situations and relationships (usually business relationships). 

And sadly, it has seeped like e-coli bacteria into the groundwater of Christian doctrine, causing spiritual diarrhea, dehydration, and death.  Let me explain.  

Spiritual quid pro quo is the idea that in order to get something from God, we have to give something to Him. In such a mind-set, faith is no longer an expression of love (as the scriptures say) but currency - spiritual cash - to be used to bribe God into doing what we want Him to do.  

Oo. That sounds harsh, doesn't it?  We don't really do this, do we?  But we do!!! Here is what Joel Osteen said on his FB page recently: "God never promised that life would be fair, but he did promise that if you will stay in faith, He will take what’s meant for your harm and use it to your advantage."  (emphasis mine).  What he said really jumped out at me. Really. And not in a good way. 

Now, I think that what he was talking about was Romans 8:28 - that God causes all things to work for good to those who LOVE Him (remember we love Him because He first loved us!) and who are the called [ones] according to His purpose.  Romans 8:29 goes on to say that the "good" that God works all things together for is that we are conformed (not that we conform ourselves) to the image of His Son.  There is nothing in that passage about "staying in faith" - whatever that is. OR anything about OUR advantage (in the sense that is implied in the Osteen quote). 

Or maybe he was referencing 1 Corinthians 10:13 - you know, God doesn't allow you to be tempted above what you are able, but will with the temptation make a way of escape, so that you are able to bear it.  OOps, well, there is nothing in that passage about "staying in faith" either - or anything about turning bad things to our "advantage". It just promises an escape hatch, a way out.  Because He loves us. And He wants us to succeed. Not so that we will be victorious (that's a fringe benefit) but so that we will know deep inside that He is interested in every single thing that happens to us. Because He is head over heels gaga about us, in the same way that a good daddy is gaga about his little baby, who, by the way, is unable to do anything for itself. (That's another blog post.)

Photo "Hand Holding Dollars" by jannoon028 at
www.freedigitalphotos.net

The underlying premise of that Joel Osteen quote - the way it sounds to me - is that if WE keep believing, God will rig the game, and hoist people or circumstances on their own petards and bring them low so that we end up on top. But only if we keep on believing.  The emphasis is on us and our effort, and encourages the "what's in it for ME?" attitude.  The onus (or responsibility for the outcome) is ALSO on US ... and frankly, that seems to go against the love of God, the initiative He took in looking for the first, best, and most inescapable way possible to prove to us that He loved us all along.  It doesn't fit.  The self-centred, quid pro quo way of thinking is more like a transaction than an interaction, more narcissistic than intimate. It's religion and not relationship.

Okay, just so you know, I'm not picking on Joel Osteen.  I'm just using one of the things he said recently, because it seems to reflect and represent a lot of the teaching and thinking in Christian circles ... teaching that has been around ever since I can remember, and not just in one small slice of one denomination.  It's in the whole church.  It's formula-based thinking: A plus B has to equal C.  Put another way, you pray (that's A) and you believe (that's B) and therefore, God is obliged to (HAS TO) deliver on His promise (that's C).  Strange ... that's not what I read in the examples left for us in scripture.

Job prayed for his kids every day. They still died - at a party I'm sure Job wouldn't have approved of.  Sure, he had more kids at the end of his story - but every parent instinctively knows that having another child can NEVER replace, or heal the pain of losing, the first.  It is there. Always.

Moses, Gideon, Samson, Jeremiah, even King David ... these people knew from experience that it doesn't matter how much faith you have or don't have, or how long you pray or don't pray - God does whatever He wishes and chooses whomever He pleases ... because He is God. He is sovereign.

The three Hebrew children in the fiery furnace? Yes, they were delivered. But they didn't believe they WOULD be necessarily. They knew God COULD deliver them - but they were willing to be put to death.  They said to the king, "...even if [our God] does not [deliver us], we still will not bow."  That speaks to me more of passion for the God they loved rather than an "if we - then He" kind of thing.  Doesn't it?  

The same thing happened with Daniel and the lions - Daniel was willing to die rather than stop his relationship with God. God was that important to him. That he was delivered was a bonus.  He didn't expect or demand deliverance; he didn't go around the palace anointing everything with oil for protection before his prayer time.  He just prayed ... as usual.

And let's not forget that the most anguished, heart-felt "deliverance prayer" by the most righteous Person ever ... ended by saying, "Not my will, but Yours be done."

We can slip so easily into self-focused it-all-depends-on-how-hard-we-believe thinking, because it feeds the lie we have swallowed whole ever since the first Lie: that there is something that WE can do to better our lives, to cover our nakedness, to appease His anger (because after all, WE feel inadequate so He must see us as inadequate, right??) or to gain a reward (or keep ourselves from losing a reward - yikes!).  But the simple and amazing truth is that He has loved us the whole time, and continues to love us, and will never STOP loving us NO MATTER WHAT.  Until we begin to grasp how deep and unconditional that love is, all our efforts will have been for the wrong reasons, and we will have missed out on something very special.

The Bible is full of examples of God intervening into the timeline, and something about those interventions that strikes me almost more than anything else is that He never does the same thing the same way twice.  It follows, then, that we cannot expect Him to operate the same way He did last week or last month, or forty years ago.  It doesn't matter how long we pray, what words we say or don't say, what places we go or don't go, what format we use, how much we tithe, how many verses we read, how many Bible studies we attend, how many positions we hold in the church, or how many good deeds we do. There is nothing that WE can do to twist God's arm.  The brownie point system does not work.  In fact, it misses the whole point.

Let's think about how this fallacy translates into what church has become. We chase that elusive "presence" and tweak the song service ("worship time" - as if worship only gets penciled in for maximum 45 minutes once or twice a week) like it depends on US whether God shows up, as if He needs just the right atmosphere ... and as if it is up to us to create it.  Wow ... what arrogance. There is not something "anointed" (read: magical) about this song or that song, this speaker or that worship leader or those flags or that bottle of olive oil.  We can't manipulate the conditions that we think produce the results we want, or even the ones that "worked" the last time. We cannot manipulate God; He won't have it!  He will find a way to break out of the box we have put Him into.  Or (worse yet!) He will withdraw, because (after all) we think we have it all figured out, so why do we need Him?  Either way, He won't play our little self-constructed games designed to prove to each other (or to ourselves) who is His favourite. (Don't we know better than that?)  

Our spiritual disciplines and good deeds are not currency.  We can't treat them like bargaining chips (or bribes) to get what we want. If we do, we have it all backwards.  We have bought into the mammon myth - the I-scratch-your-back-and-you-scratch-mine lie.  This is relationship with God. This isn't the world system. God isn't some CEO to impress, He's the One Person in this whole universe who loves us just the way we are, no strings attached.

God is not about sticking gold stars or "good job!" stickers on our chore charts.  He invites us into His embrace - to clamber with glee onto His lap - and experience His love for ourselves: unfettered, unashamed, unafraid ... like children.  There are no agendas, no conditions.  He is about relationship; there is no need to feel obliged (or required) to add anything of our own to what He has already done to the uttermost.  To do so, in order to qualify for the benefits He has already freely given, would be falling from grace.  All that means (contrary to popular belief) is that we would be missing out on God's highest purpose for our life - intimacy with Him - and settling for what we can (try to) get out of Him.

In Search Of Life

It has been an incredibly stressful six months or more.  But finally, we have some peace within.  

Some people already know what I'm about to reveal. Some people - a smaller number, no doubt - even know why. 

My husband and I are leaving the church. There, it's out. 

No, it's nothing that any one particular person has said or done; in fact, if not for the hope we had from the wonderful hearts of a very few people who love deeply, we would have left long ago. No, we are not angry at anyone; disagreement is not anger. No, we will not reconsider; we have put much thought and prayer and soul-searching into this decision and it is made. There is nothing anyone can say or do to change it. No, we are not going anywhere else. The organized church is the same everywhere - we've tried for years to find anything that is like what the first century believers knew and we have found nothing. NOTHING.  And no, most certainly we are not abandoning our faith. 

We are not just leaving a particular assembly. We are leaving a religious system that says it is based on love, grace and good news and instead is based on judgment, rules, and death. While we are in that atmosphere, there is no way that we can pursue Life. 

This conclusion is based on personal experience going back as far as we both can remember, through various denominations, in various life stages, as children, teens, young adults, parents with children of our own, and all of it operating (or trying to operate) in ministry through the vast majority of it. Throughout our Christian lives, we and our loved ones have been subjected to the most insidious types of spiritual abuse possible (and sometimes blatant bullying) by people who are well-placed in various positions of power in boardrooms, Sunday school rooms, kids church programs, youth programs, church suppers, picnics, special services where we felt sucked dry and left to flap in the wind, and more. Yes, we could cite hundreds of scenarios where the expectations of other people have made us feel belittled, used, burnt out, taken advantage of, and taken for granted. And we would still put up with it ... if there was even the slightest spark of Life in it. 

But ... there isn't. HE isn't.

Yes, I know that He lives in us and that wherever we are [the implication is, together] He is. I know that. But when we get together in an organized, structured setting, it becomes more about controlling people's behaviour (making sure they don't "fall away", whatever that is),  being gatekeepers of morality, and perpetuating the upkeep of the building and the programs than it is about letting Jesus love us, and being filled with that love so much that it overflows into the lives of others just because we can't contain it all. As I've said, I have seen individuals whose lives are like that. But the church? 

No.

About a year ago, a friend of ours made a similar move to the one we are making. She felt that she had to leave her church to be able to hear God's voice, to find out who He really is - because all she was hearing from the organized church was condemnation, guilt, shame, manipulation, should-dos and must-dos. It was all based in fear. Fear of losing what God had so freely given by dropping the ball somehow. Fear that people would stop tithing / giving to the church. Fear that the big bad world out there would somehow corrupt the strict code of morality that the church has embraced for centuries.

She had to leave the church to find God. Interesting. (Here's a footnote by the way: she DID find Him ... and she is deliriously happy!!)

Photo "Portrait Of Pointing Male" by
imagerymajestic at
www.freedigitalphotos.net

I will ask a question here - haven't there been many times when you've left church more drained than when you went there? More frustrated, more angry, more drained of hope, wondering if this is all there is?  I had times like that once in a while, years ago when I was involved in a community of believers that supplemented what happened at church... and even that group got bogged down in "organizing the organism" (also known as vivisection: now there's a horror story...) 

Since that time, that horrible experience of futility and burnout, that feeling of being beaten up, has happened more and more often until the point where it is so rare that even when the slightest glimmer of the presence of God shows up in a church service - He is doused with ice water after someone decides that we've had "enough worship" and wants to get to the "real" reason for church - the preaching. (WHAAAT??? Where is THAT written???) The preacher stands up (and here I must say that not EVERY preacher is like this) and starts to yell at the people for "not doing enough." He (or she) tries to scare people into toeing the line. Or shame them into getting out there and spreading the good news. (Really? is it good news to tell people that God can't stand to look at them, but He loves them so He killed Jesus for them, and then expects them to toe the line and behave themselves the rest of their lives or they'll end up going to the bad place anyway??)  It's all DO, DO, DO, with no encouragement to BE, BE, BE. It's like folks don't even know HOW to just BE. They think that unless they are out there, full bore, chugging for the Lord, He's not going to be pleased with them. What bondage.

He DIED for them to prove how much He loves - has always loved - the human race. Oh my goodness, do we think that He will stop being crazy about us just because we didn't read three chapters in the Bible today? or didn't sprinkle oil on the living room furniture to chase the demons away? 

Come on. Is our god really that small and petty?

God is LOVE. God is so much LOVE that He went to the ultimate extreme - becoming one of us - to prove that love. Jesus didn't die to make God stop being mad at us. Jesus died because God loved us so much and we were still drowning in our blindness thinking that He needed to be appeased. So He came to prove His love - and WE killed Him - and HE forgave us while we were doing it!! No condemnation, NONE. Just total acceptance and love. He came and died to remove our blindness if we would ask Him to, our blindness to His love, His light, His LIFE. And then He rose from the dead to show us that we would live forever as well.  In that act of pure, eternal, inexhaustible love, He KILLED the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the tree of good and bad, right and wrong. And He opened the door to the tree of Life.

THAT is the Good News. THAT is the gospel. Not this whole system that is based on the same tree that Adam and Eve ate from in the Garden: the tree of "I'm better than you because I do this and don't do that."  That's the morality tree. It's what put Jesus to death!! He came to show us Love and Light and Life - and the religious system of dos and don'ts, shoulds and should nots, musts and must nots, felt threatened by Him... These religious rulers manipulated the political rulers of the day, and turned His message of Love into a capital crime, when Jesus Himself did not say anything against Rome, or against slavery, or against any of the societal ills of His day.  His only scathing rebukes had been against religion - the system - that rules-based, fear-based, politico-religious system that condoned oppressing the poor, and created a spiritual top-down caste society of haves and have-nots, of those who were "in" and those who were "out." 

The kingdom (kingship) of God is not like that. He turned the top-down system upside down and showed us that WE are the pearl of great price that He gave everything to have, that WE are the friends He would lay His life down for, before we even knew what it meant for Him to do that. He placed Himself beneath us, serving us... to show us how very much He loved us. ALL of us, every single soul down through history ... even the ones that have not been conceived yet. Not just the chosen few.

The religious system grinds people to oily dust and uses that dust to oil its cogs to grind more people up. It is an atmosphere that is anti-God, anti-Jesus, anti-Spirit. It is exclusive, not inclusive. It shames and does not accept. It is Ichabod - the glory has departed. We are not willing to be part of that system anymore. To us, it is (always has been, and sadly, probably always will be) death, not Life.  

Photo "Sunrise At First Sight"
courtesy of Keattikorn at
www.freedigitalphotos.net

We are searching for Life. We know that light-giving Life is in Him (see John 1) and we have only seen darkness and doubt and despair in the organized church. We are not saying that we will never darken a church door again ... but we are saying that such an oppressive atmosphere - for us - does not lend itself to finding Life or to falling in love with Jesus. 

And we understand - and fully accept and love - those who feel that the organization is the place they need to stay in order to have a feeling of community and purpose. We understand that there are people  -  many people  -  who need that structure, who need that place to call home in order to feel safe.  With rare and extremely notable (but temporary) exceptions, we have not found that feeling for ourselves; in general, we have found ourselves excluded, abused, judged, and at best, tolerated. 

So we are going on our quest - and it must happen outside that atmosphere. There have been definite glimmers - outside the organized church system - where we have experienced the organism of the Church (notice I capitalized it), been uplifted and fed, felt like participants in the good things that God is doing in people's lives. These have led us to believe that finding Life is possible, that God will prepare an accepting and loving community for us, and that it will be so very important for us to refrain from jeopardizing that by taking out the scalpel to dissect it and organize it. That would only kill it. There is no way we would want that.

I don't expect very many people to understand ... or to agree ... but I only wanted for the people who know us best to hear the real reasons from us, rather than speculating or gossiping or judging ... and to understand that it is necessary for us to guard our hearts, which for us (right now) means that we practice self-care by removing ourselves from that which crushes us. 

This is a scary thing we are doing. We are not sure what to expect. We are not sure if we'll find what we're looking for. We are launching out into the unknown. All we know is that if we keep doing what we've always done, we'll keep getting what we've always gotten.  And we are tired of living like that.  If there is not more, then "the abundant Life" Jesus promised is a sham. But if - as we suspect - there IS something more, we are on the lookout for it. We are in search of Life.  And if we find Life - there will be no question that those who know and love us will be the first to know because we won't be able to contain ourselves.

One born blind

There's a modern miracle happening all around the world. A scientist stumbled upon a solution to the problem of red-green colour-blindness and soon thereafter, the company called EnChroma was born.  

My daughter told me about this company that is really doing some good. People who were not allowed to drive a vehicle can now drive when they wear their new sunglasses. They can read signage they never could. And they can see so many things that those with regular colour vision take for granted ... every day.

As she told me about it, I began to understand a very powerful spiritual truth. It's all about darkness and light, and how these have been portrayed in the western church for centuries ... that darkness somehow exists apart from light, and that when the light turns on, the darkness leaves. 

That is not what Scripture says. John chapter 1 says that the Light (of Life, of Love) shines IN the darkness .... AND THE DARKNESS DOES NOT COMPREHEND IT. 

Wait a second... if the Light shines in the darkness, doesn't it dispel the darkness?

No. 

It's like being blind. There can be all the light around that you want, but that doesn't mean that the blind person can see it. 

When the blindness is removed, people see the light. The light was always there, but the blindness must be removed first. 

THIS IS THE GOSPEL. It is entirely the work of God to remove the blindness; we just ask Him to remove it so that we can see the Light that has been there all along - the Light that has been shining in and through our darkness even though we didn't understand or know that it was there, the Love that we always hoped for but never experienced.

And He does. He DOES remove that darkness. And the Light shines through in all of His brilliance.

In a very small way, the video link below shows what being able to "see" something that was always there but the person never perceived, looks like. It's a video of someone who has tried on his EnChroma sunglasses for the first time ... on his birthday.  This man has never been able to truly see red, green, purple, pink, orange, or brown, or even some shades of blue and yellow ... in all of their different hues.  His experience of colour has always been what people might see on a TV with most of the colour (but not all) removed - faded... not gray exactly, but ... just drab. His family has transplanted some flowers at the base of a tree just for the occasion.

Now watch carefully his reaction to his birthday gift.

Watch it, and think ... "He has delivered us from the power of darkness..." 

See if your reaction is the same as mine was.