Colors

Every once in a while the media frenzy of the day gets to me in a way that I want to add my two cents to the conversation.  So that's what this is.  But I will start by telling you what this is not.

This is not the extent of my opinions.  You should never assume you have me pegged based on what I say here.  This is not an assessment of current events.  I am not commenting on something I have no direct knowledge of.  That would be ignorant foolishness.

So I want to talk about how this does affect me: colors.  Namely skin colors as a means of defining ourselves and others.  Has anyone else noticed that this whole controversy has tacitly accepted the distinction of "black" and "white"?  It's a given in the argument.  It's an unstated assumption.  The two groups exist and are different.

I emphatically disagree with that.  I am calling the assumptions into question. 

Let alone the stupid nature of the terms which don't accurately reflect reality.  I know very few people who are actually white or black in color.  We're all a greater or lesser degree of tanish brown.  Where do we draw the line?  I know "blacks" who are paler than me and "whites" who are far darker.  And I don't mean people of one ethnicity who identify culturally with the other.  I mean actual African genomed people with pale skin and the reverse.

But even accepting the words as cultural markers, they are nothing more than something we assume.  We all know examples of the "crossovers" who identify more with the culture of the color they are not.  But then there's those in the middle, of various ethnic descents, etc. who don't fit in either.  For many of us, the cultural lines are not drawn based on color, they just aren't.  There's multiple colors in the same culture.  So it's not nearly as fixed as some would have it seem.

But to go a step further in denouncing the differences, I know many people who identify themselves as distinctly "white" even wearing the racist history as a badge of honor, and many "blacks" who are all chip-on-their-shoulder types.  But you know what?  They eat similar foods.  They view things in similar ways, only with a color swap. Soul Food and Southern Cooking are EXACTLY THE SAME THING!  The only difference is the cut of meat...and sometimes not even that.  A poor ignorant "white" says the same things about "blacks" that a poor ignorant "black" is saying about "whites".  I've experienced this first hand, each oblivious that they were saying the same things about the other group.  But they're sooo different!  It's ridiculous!

People are people.  We have different cultures.  We have different styles and different ways of talking.  But at the root, we all care about the same things.  We are not that different.  To draw a line based on some hazy definition of skin color is to establish a lie around which many evils spring up...as we're seeing right now.

So I refuse to accept the assumption.  I grant that many people do.  But that is the only reason it exists.  And every time we tacitly accept it, we reinforce it.  But every time we refuse it, we tear a bit of that lie down.  So I'm telling you that for me and my house, we will not, do not, use color as an identifying characteristic.  Not even culturally.

And I'm asking you to do the same.  Strike it from your vocabulary!  It will be stilted until you get used to it.  People around you will still use it.  But YOU don't.  Don't let your kids.  Don't fill it out on forms.  Erase it.  Insist on it.  Play dumb when people try to use it with you. "White?  That girl in the white shirt?  Oh you mean the guy with lighter skin up there? Is that who you mean?"  Decide on it right now.  And if you feel those tendencies of your past way of thinking creeping in, reject them and consciously look on people with fresh eyes.  This is the only way it will go away.  Take the power out from under it.  You'll have to think about people in new ways.  You'll find it gets easier with time until you truly don't see the distinctions you once did.

Don't perpetuate this evil.  End it now as far as your sphere of influence reaches.

Stolen or Lost

As often happens, I'm jumping off from something someone said who may actually read this.  If that's you, or you know who it is, please note that I am being careful to divorce the statement from the person.  As I've stated before, I'm dealing with ideas in this blog, which are the things the internet is made of, and not attacking people.  Truthfully, the statement is nothing more than a point of departure that got me thinking.  So I'm thankful for that and move on in the spirit of healthy salonic discussion and the "you" I address below is not that person, but a strawman I've set up for express purposes of tearing down. (that's actually what 'strawman' means, though people rarely use it correctly.)

So what is this now much anticipated statement?  That God wants his church back.  Yeah, that's it.  If you're let down, you obviously don't read this blog much.  At first, my reaction was "Who took it?"  Who could take it?  Is That-Than-Which-Nothing-Greater-Can-Be-Conceived so easily thwarted that anything which is His could be taken, stolen, or lost?

Now, of course, I get the statement.  I know how it was intended: as a clever way to describe a truth.  So no big deal.  But it lingered.  So as I pondered why, I came to see this as a symptom of the very kind of thinking which has led to the problem being addressed in the first place.  That problem is a lack of true relationship, true following of God's Reality.  See, I know several people right now who are on this journey away from the institutionalized church.  They call it different names, but this has been a grand revelation for them.  I'm happy for them and supportive.  I really am, because I am quite frankly tired of being out here in the woods by myself...both metaphorically and physically.  But more importantly, as one who came through this path myself, I get it.  I know the jaw dropping joy and boundless, sometimes sickening freedom of it.  Come on and catch up so we can move on together!  I hope these thoughts help.

But it's important to recognize that this is not a new thing.  It's not a "move of God."  Honestly, you gotta drop that kind of vocabulary altogether, bro.  God doesn't move like that.  Isn't that what you're waking up to?  His work hasn't been constrained to the various human institutions that come and go.  Sure he's moved through them, but not because of any thing they were.  Not because of anything they 'got right'.  To say so is just a deeper layer of the Pharisaical doctrines that Jesus was so against.  They'd taken the truth and twisted it to their own purposes.  Blind guides.

No God only moves one way.  It's the same way he always moves.  It's the way that Jesus came to show us, and the reason so few in his generation got it.  What were they expecting?  A hero.  A Warrior King.  A Righteous Ruler to wield true Divine Authority and set right all that was wrong.  They got this from their scriptures, just like we get our fallacies.

But what was Jesus?  Not that!  He said over and over, the Kingdom of God is not what men think.  It's within.  It's spiritual.  It's unseen.  He didn't overthrow society, he stepped out of it while staying right in it.  He crossed planes and walked right by those who thought they had it figured out.  The ruler who failed; that's him on the surface.  Just another radical who died.

You see where I'm going with this?  But what he did was change people on the inside.  He made them different.  He healed what was broken at the deepest levels.  I'll say it again, God only moves one way.  And that way is the way he's always moved: in the hearts of each individual person.  In those deep places where our own internal eye can barely see.  That's where he does his work.

Everything that occurs on the physical level is just a manifestation of this change.  A projection of a mutlidimensional existence into 3 dimensions.  It all comes from that.  On our own, we can't keep from getting the cart first.

So, remember that while this may be new to you, and the greatest thing ever.  It is...to you.  But you aren't the first, not even the early generation, man.  We had these same 'movements' in the mid '90's.  Right down to the house churches and all, bro.  I'm not saying their bad.  Walk your walk out.  You can't be expected anywhere on the path but where you are.  But realize things are just well in God's Kingdom.  They've never been shaken by winds of change in the world.  No one can take God's church, man.  He can't lose it either.  What was lost is us.  What's coming back is you.  What he's changing is your mind, not the world.  you thought you knew how it worked, but you've learned better now.

Read more old books.  Rome had it.  18th century France had it.  19th century England had it.  Early 20th century Europe had it.  Same abuses, same institutions painted in the fashions of the day.  And the same people realizing what's real and what isn't.  The same people awakening to what you are feeling now.

I know it's tough to shed old habits, and you'll probably get it wrong for many more years.  I'm just a little further down the path myself, so I'll be a different person soon too.  But one thing I can see from my view of the bend that you haven't gotten to yet is the lack of the preachy interaction.  Man, everything you learn isn't a revelation for everyone else.  Heed it.  Share it for sure.  But know, you aren't always gonna be at the head of the charge.  In truth, you never really were.  You just thought so, bro.

Now, jog on up here and let's go further up and further in together!

Fall where they may

Last entry,  I was struggling with the idea of evangelism.  I figured I needed study to settle my head.  So I took action.  I talked to a trusted friend who counsels me on lots of things.  He told me that he agrees with my approach, but he's also taken flac for it.  But he also told me he's seen others who took the more direct approach.  The proof is in the results...or the fruit, to use the Biblical analogy.

He also reminded me that there are different gifts, and though some groups try to cite the Great Commission as the bottom line of Christianity, it isn't necessarily that way.  Certainly we all have some level of responsibility to share our faith, but that there is a specific gift mentioned for Evangelism.  This reminded me of the discussion about various parts of one body.  How we are built to function as complementary parts, not all the same parts.  So in my mind, this necessarily disproves the interpretation that the Great Commission is the prime directive for every Christian.

Then I also talked to a friend who shares my faith but from a different part of the house.  He came at it from a different denomination, and then switched to one yet further down the hall from the one I came from.  So he helped me understand how those groups interpret the parts of the Bible that I was struggling with.

Then I reread a book (So you Don't Want to Go to Church Anymore) that had first gave me confidence to fully step out of the room I had been raised in.  I had poked my head out and looked up and down the hall of the wide house of Christian views, even looked int the windows of some other rooms.  But this book convinced me I needed to walk out of the one I was in.  I picked up several things I hadn't noticed before and reaffirmed the decision.  This served to help cut a few of the subtler cords that I hadn't fully broken yet.

And from there, I looked up one of the authors and found a podcast (The Jesus Lens) on interpreting the Bible as a chronicle of redemptive flow through time. The story of God's pursuit and salvation of humanity that culminated in Jesus, but continues through to this day and will progressively flow on to the end of time.  It was extremely enlightening to walk through every book this way.  I don't want to provide a cursory summary that will let a reader feel they got the idea and don't need to do the study themselves, so suffice to say this approach resolves many of the contradictory elements such as the nature of God in the Old Testament vs the New and the discrepancies in tone and approach of the New Testament writers themselves, which I mentioned as an issue last time.  I've heard many explanations for these problems, but this one is the best and most unified, to me.  So check it out if you're interested.

By this point, I was feeling more confident, so I even went through and looked up every verse that talks about the Word of God or Word of the Lord.  Actually, I looked up every instance of the word 'word'.  It's over 400 verses.  But I noticed two things:  they never refer to the written word, the scriptures, or the Bible itself.  Honestly, they couldn't refer to the Bible because it wasn't compiled until like 300 years after the last books were written.  But it never even refers to the Hebrew Law or Prophets.  These are always called out as writings.  The Word of God always refers to a live message or a person...seriously a person.  In some cases it says the Word of the Lord came to someone and said... and then the person replies.  So there's a conversation between entities here.  This is consistent with what John writes about the Word becoming flesh.

So I looked up the Hebrew and Greek words used.  'Dabar' in Hebrew and 'logos' is Greek.  They both refer to the written word only by extension.  The real meaning is the content.  They mean an issuance of information, a revelation in the strict sense.  So this just blew my head apart!  My whole life I'd been taught that the Bible was the Word of God.  Even as a toddler we'd sung songs about it.  But it's totally untrue!

In my excitement, I posted this on Facebook, which of course brought a little controversy.  But surprisingly, many people were not shocked.  So, I felt like Shinji Ikari emerging from his Instrumentality.  When it finally clicks, he finds himself standing amongst a host of people, who have also arrived there, clapping and congratulating him.

So now, I don't claim to have a better interpretation.  I truly feel confident in saying I know to be true what I already felt to be true.  And the burden of getting the right system down has been lifted.  I'm sure I don't have it totally right, but I have taken another giant step in learning to LIVE (alive, living) relationship with God.  And I am more comfortable with how to best deal with others at various points on the same road.

Because we ARE all on the same road.  Know it or not.  Believe it or not.  And I can now show you how the Bible demonstrates this.  And if I'm wrong, that's ok.  You can't convince me until my time is ripe, and I can't convince you until yours is.  So it's best to leave that job to the one who is capable of fixing us both.  Will people abuse this freedom, misinterpret what I'm saying?  Absolutely!  They already are, and have (I'm not the first to arrive here).  But potential for abuse doesn't mean we alter, negate, or hide the truth...as if we really could anyway.