Dear Suzanne Holbrook,
Thank you so
much for sharing your Facebook post and your concern about the spiritual condition
of our country. These are definitely
hard times and these hard times have only begun, ouch! Our country and our present emergency demands
that we lay people, such as yourself, speak up and show up to confront the
Godless priorities of the radical, socialist political base of the new Democrat
Party. This is the radical left that has
put America in chains and bondage under our largely absent president Joe Biden.
No one can
question that you deeply believe what you believe. This is clear because you
are courageous enough to share what you believe with the rest of us and put it
out there. Maybe, you are brave enough
to listen. The end of our suffering may
be a Revelation type scenario but don’t get your hopes up, that scenario is
largely fodder for the TV preachers. It
is a Sunday sedative and has been around for over 2000 years. These prophets say, God is coming to pluck we righteous
folk away from our suffering and then damn, for all eternity, the rest of
humanity in judgment. Isn’t this
spiritually sensitive? Enough said.
Please allow
me to disagree with you about St. Mathew 10.
In this chapter Jesus is charging his disciples to be mini messengers as
he has been a messenger of God. Jesus
has been their teacher and leader and it is their time for the disciples to
share with the people. Pivotal to
understanding this chapter and the charge to the disciples is to understand the target.
My Bible is
a red-letter edition, these are the words of Jesus in verse 5, “Do not go among
the Gentiles or enter any of the towns of the Samaritans. Go rather to the lost sheep of Israel”. Jesus was sending out his disciples to challenge
the spiritual status quo, the corrupt religion of Israel that was comfortable
leaving the Gentile and Samaritan seekers, also called sinners, beyond the
grace of God. These religious folk were also the target of John the Baptist.
Allow me to
share my way of understanding the Bible.
Verses 32 & 33 are a good example.
Based on these Bible words, are
my assumptions necessary? Or are my
assumptions just convenient? We all fall
into the trap of dumping our favorite assumptions into scripture at the
slightest opening. I try to work hard at
not dumping.
In these
verses, is Jesus claiming an equality with God based on his sonship? The verses in question read in the TNIV, “Whomever
publicly acknowledges me I will also acknowledge before my Father in
heaven. But whomever publicly disowns me
I will disown before my Father in heaven.” Father is not capitalized in the Greek and what does before the Father tell us? Is Jesus claiming equality with God as the
Christian doctrine of the Trinity of God demands? You are welcome to this assumption but is it
necessary from these words? I think not.
What if
these words mean that God is spiritually the father of us all and the father of
Jesus. This is the spirituality Jesus
found in the desert. Jesus came out of the
desert to tell us all about the love of the father. His father and our father is angered with the
religious status quo which withholds the love of the father from those who fail
to think, look and live according to our authorized human version.
The Bible
says that we are all sinners, do we take this plain biblical truth seriously?
G. Goslaw
Landers, CA
