Private Notes 4 (Continuation of rough draft, meaning there might be mistakes.) Isnt There Another Word for SIn? ... Being born again is another concept in Christianity that loses its impact with overuse. It can become personally meaningful if we come to terms with it apart from the standard language that might be described as too “churchy.” Applying it to your own life and experiences, in your own language, can make it more meaningful. To me, when we give up justifying our mistakes and downfalls, whether to ourselves or to those who would hold us to out mistakes, we create a space for a power higher than ourself to amend them. Christs life fills that space and regenerates a person who is otherwise dead in their sins. We are born again in him, or re-born. We are filled with life once more. People who have grown up in the church are very suspect of a person who does not testify to this phenomenon in the exact manner of which they speak of it, which is unfair. No person wants their life story to be reduced to a paragraph describing every other persons description of being saved. There are as many ways to describe the specifics of what it means to be dead in our sins as there are people. If we just rehearse a script, its sort of like selling something as telemarketer. Its easy to read through, anyone can say it, and it only takes one sentiment to deliver its message. Spreading the word of God has to be more creative than that, because it turns intelligence off. With this however, is a fear that is understandable, a fear that people will start making things up and break off into false teachings. But that risk is always present, regardless. We are made in his likeness. No one should ever have to ask the question – is God an old man in the sky? Maybe if you are four and told the wrong thing. His intelligence is as vast as the universe is infinitely contained by Him. What is his likeness, again? Not a home-schooled high school dropout. Better to put your experiences in your own words than leave yourself unguarded to the enemy of life by accepting rote repetition. Indifference to our own sin is the problem. Reciting a script of salvation without embodying its message is sort of...indifferent. We are speaking of huge, life-changing supernatural experiences. Was is a cherub, an angel, the Holy Spirit, or what? It was definitely a theophany, but how do I know? By looking it up. What do I look this up in? Well, the bible is a good place to start. But, you have to read it. Anyone who has authentically gone through the experience of being born again doesnt have to be reminded of how serious sin is. Those who have grown up in the church and feel that they are spiritual heirs to the Kingdom might take it for granted that they have be created again without any in depth the knowledge or experience of the Trinity. Yet, they have to drill a salvation script into their mind like a junior high student studies for a multiplication test to be prodded into recalling how grievous unrepentant sin is. Okay, so just love the sinner as yourself. I have been in church and heard a pastor speaking of the command to love your enemy or whoever bothers you, your neighbor or boss, what have you, only to encounter someone fifteen minutes later blowing off the directive as if her honesty about her hatred justified it. Uhm, did you miss something? Yes, she did, because she just hears the same thing over and over again to the point it is no longer meaningful. This is the point when faith becomes dreaded religion. This is why I am grateful for not growing up in the church, because when the time came for me to read the Word it had more impact than if I had memorized scripture my entire life and could flip to any book, verse and chapter in thirty seconds. New life was breathed into me through the inspired Word of God. Before that point, the Bible didnt call me. Maybe I had to wait for it. Southerns just love taking their time waiting in line and slowing people down. Perhaps you need to wait for it. Pray in his name, but if it is ceaselessly bereft of significance to you, maybe you should be silent? Is God going to lose track of you if you stop praying to find your keys? Order in the court already, so that he might hear your prayer when it comes from true spiritual need. There is nothing like a prayer that breaks the silence when spoken outloud in a spontaneously moment of realization that one is suddenly smack up against the limit of his or her own power. Speaking of rote religious habits - Jews, I love them. I have no doubts of their salvation anymore that I have confirmation of it. I am not the one who saves, but to the Jew Christ gives precedence. So, I will walk in his way then and not sin when I speak of Jewish people. I love their grumbling. I love their traditions. My heart is touched in no other way by their humor and joy and murmuring complaints. Whether the first coming or the second, whose counting? God created days first, and then 24-hour periods on the 4th day with the creation of the sun and the moon. Huh? I lost count. Perhaps God isnt that simple? Can you explain it without going into the mode of right and wrong immediately? If you find a way about being right in response to the unexplainable, you are probably missing the truth contained in it. Can I explain my understanding of what God has shown to me? Can I make an argument that the Jew is already saved in Christ based on the nature of time? I cannot, because I cannot explain how God manufactures time according to beginnings and endings. Some believe Revelation was written in application to the first century A.D. - certainly the end of a time, and yet it can be applied to then and and the end. The first Messiah, the second. To your own salvation speak first, and be honest. Do not condemn anothers salvation. The sinner seems to hate the bearer of the truth, but they miss the mark because they refuse to see that it is the truth they hate, not the messenger. Indifference to the condemnation of another is wishing for another what can easily be done unto ourselves. The best response to wishing another to go to hell is to ask where you expect to go when it turns out your were stubbornly wrong about someone you dont even know. The fruit of the vine isnt in Egypt. I dont want to go back to the way things were during the time of my career successes anymore than I want to forget where the Promised Land is. There is a land to which we are spiritual heirs, and the only way to reserve our place there is to walk in the light of truth. And, that is the Law. (To be continued.)
Posted on: Tue, 18 Mar 2014 20:29:26 +0000
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