Context

 Biblical context is the subject of this posting.  The dictionary defines context as “the whole situation, background, or events relevant to a particular event, personality, etc.”  The disgrace of most biblical understandings is the historical disregard for the whole context in favor of the minutia, which may or may not support a particular religious group think.  Biblical thinkers argue minutia.  This disgrace is validated in tens of thousands of books, by every religious structure from time immemorial to this very hour.  Few have ever cared about the big picture, preferring their religious givens.  The Bible, in my humble opinion, is not a religious textbook but seems to be a running account through history of the disparity of the power of religion and the power of raw spirituality, always in flux, intermingling and rocking back and forth.    

Moses climbed the mountain and came down to us with a pure spiritual message from God, written on stone tablets.  The people and by extension, we humans, vehemently rejected this pure message, preferring to write our own sorted futures.  Reacting, Moses got angry at his people, breaking the first stone tablets into a thousand pieces.  Returning to the mountain again Moses came down the second time with the revised religious version, shared in the Bible as the Ten Commandants.  The result being that there are now acceptable or forgivable excuses to deviate from the pure message of God.  “Thou shalt not” now becomes a discussable directive and the Mosaic Law is available for human debate.  The law in Moses’s time worked the same way it works today, having money and being politically connected always tips the scales of justice.  Exceptions in the name of God are now allowable, this new version turned Moses and we humans into terrorists, igniting our dark side.  As long as it is acceptable or excusable or forgivable to kill in the name of God and country, we qualify as a terrorist organization, at least, it would seem, according to God.

When I first began to read and ask questions of the Bible, I was perplexed because there seemed to be two different Bible characters named Moses.  The youthful Moses who killed in defense of his own people and subsequently ran scared for his life, spending the next 40 years hiding in the wilderness.  The second Moses, after his burning bush experience on the mountain top, finds the courage to accept an impossible mission back to Egypt and his old enemies.  God even took the voice of Moses from him but the Pharaoh got the message anyway, “let my people go!”  This impossible mission in human terms, was accomplished by relying exclusively upon faith in the power of the Spirit of God.  As a result, the history of the Spirit lead exodus from Egypt says that might does NOT make right, the powerless were victors.  The Moses who came down from the mountain the second time was again in a religious mode, this mode says that might does make right.  Moses and the people of God then invaded their promised land, embarking on a scorched earth campaign to kill every man, women and child that inhabited their prophetic inheritance.  All this killing was for the sake of supposed religious purity.

A second watershed moment occurred about 1500 years later when a wondering itinerant Galilean spiritualist named Jesus was noticed by the people.  The faith of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, which long ago was perverted to become a mere religion, had again, in this timeframe, as it does in every time frame, become irrelevant to the daily lives of the people.  This Jesus, who had no religious affiliation, no formal religious or secular education beyond family, spoke to the people listening with an otherworldly authority that attracted a growing following. For him, earthly boundaries seemed irrelevant and the unexpected became the expected, he gave orders to the spirit world, the natural world, the weather and even the finality of death itself.  Jesus spoke of the eternal kingdom of God beyond death but much to our surprise he demonstrated that a piece of God’s eternal kingdom and the consequent responsibilities are available to the living.   According to Jesus, this Kingdom reality can be trusted, win or lose.  Once again, earthly might does NOT make right when the Spirit moves.  

An angel spoke this truth to the prophet Zechariah, “Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit says the Lord Almighty.” How can we recognize the almighty Spirit of God as opposed to human bullying?  There seems to be a biblical pattern, the Almighty God acts in the moment of weakness, desperation and dependence upon His spiritual power and presence.  It’s not us. Much like a raging bull, all we have to do is get out of the way before we get trampled.  Getting out of the way of the Spirit of God is about getting our individual personhood out of the way.  Noah got himself out of the way, accepted the ridicule and built an ark.  Moses climbed the mountain to inspect a burning bush that surely must have been an illusion and then went on a mission in the power of the Almighty.  David walked with the Spirit as a young man, accepting the arrows of King Saul without malice and then when he became king, his ego with a religious bent got in the way.  You and I, all of us have similar stories to tell if we dared.  Most of us never let go of our stuff and let the Spirit move.  Spirit aware life is, somehow, exceedingly difficult for we manipulative humans insisting on looking good to gain the praise of others.  Getting out of the way of the Spirit is so difficult that most of us will never know it, religion or no religion.  I am no exception.

The Almighty Spirit chooses to act, or not to act, in certain desperate and precise moments when someone makes themselves vulnerable. The decision to act on our behalf is not ours, our only choice is to be vulnerable. Religion is easy.  Being vulnerable and allowing the Spirit of God to call the shots, not so much.  One might ask, why did the people revolt the first time Moses came down the mountain?  Why did the people put the fulfillment of God’s promise on their own shoulders?  Why did the people of Jerusalem praise Jesus riding into town on a donkey and within three days abandoned him to a cruel death on the cross?  It would seem that some of the people had false expectations or the wrong expectations and a lust for the power to have their immediate needs met.  When their needs were ignored, the people and the religious folk turned on Jesus who barely opened his mouth to defend himself, preferring to trust in the wisdom and power of the Spirit of eternity.

Jesus had told us all that we needed to know about living eternity wise in the Sermon on the Mount.  These are the most difficult words for we mortals to hear, far beyond any religious ethic.  Every religious ethic is about hedging these absolute words of Jesus.  Some are easier than others but some are exceedingly impossible.  We are to live defenseless in this dangerous world.  We are to live sharing our stuff whenever asked by anyone.  The most impossible is to turn the other cheek, to accept ridicule without taking the offense.  May I suggest that Jesus uses the simple and profound rational, if one truly believes in eternity, the priorities of this world should not matter.  We all should be asking, what American can live this way?  What human being has ever lived this way?  Jesus is one human who lived out to his death this God given mission or ethic.  Spirituality is above and beyond religion, it is about laying our earthy lives open to the whatever in this life in order to welcome eternity. 

Joachim Jeremias, a relatively modern biblical scholar and theologian wrote a little book called “the sermon on the mount”.  I like little books; most books are 80% fluff and footnotes.  This one asks the right question, how are we as Jesus believers to take these most difficult, if not impossible words?   Shall we cut off the hand that offends the Law? Shall we give our property to anyone who asks at any time?  How are we to relate to our evil enemies?  Shall we not object when the bullies of this world are inclined to push us around?  If taken literally, these are nonstarters in human terms so traditional Christianity has always had qualifiers to soften the impact of these most harsh words of Jesus.

As Dr. Jeremias explains, some would say that the sermon on the mount is a call to return to the legalism of the Old Testament perfectionist rule book religion.  Some would say, the words of Jesus were given to us as an impossible goal that would at least improve our lives as we reach toward that goal.  Some would say that Jesus spoke these words because life as the people knew it was about to end.  On page 12 of the little book, the author states that all three understandings are about Old Testament Law making the rule book religion our entrance into eternity.  Summarizing the understandings, “The first conception makes him (Jesus) a teacher of the law; the second a preacher of repentance; the third an apocalypticist (an end time prophet).”  Were any of these understandings a full reflection of the words of Jesus?

Dr. Jeremias says no, replacing them with a fourth understanding, the new religion of the Christ.  No longer does the Old Testament flexible Law hold sway for Jesus has given us a new time of Jesus grace. The sermon on the mount is a teaching moment for the new faith which was and is both the right words and the right deeds. The author makes a solid argument by adding other words of Jesus and piecing them with the sermon on the mount but should we not ask, is there a real difference between a Jewish legal excuse and a Christian grace excuse?  Is there any excuse for living in our world but avoiding the harsh words of Jesus?  While everything seems to fit logically, the leap to another religion does not explain all the harsh words.  We are still left with a quandy.  

Explain your words Jesus.   How shall we resist the bullies of this world who rob and kill us?  Shall we not have the right to personal property and be willing to give up our stuff should anyone demand it of us?  What if they want our money, house or retirement account?  Are we to give them even more than they ask?  How can we love or even be kind to those who are our enemies and wish us dead?  How can we tolerate slander and the demeaning of our personhood?  The Christian religion does not ask or expect these hard choices to be laid upon us, why should you?  Could it be that for all time we have been barking up the wrong tree or howling at the moon?  Could it be that the harsh words were more about eternity, that dimension beyond death?  Maybe, Jesus, you were making eternity sense not religious sense.  Could it be that the long-foretold appearance of Jesus was not so much as a religious icon but more importantly an eternity prophet and evangelist? 

The prophets have always been among us.  Most of our prophets have been pied pipers leading us on to earthly conquest while ironically claiming to defend the name of the whomever.  They tell us to kill in the name of their God and their prophetic understandings.  Jesus was not that kind of prophet nor was Moses prior to smashing the stone tablets.  These two pivotal biblical men who lived and died, just as you and I, were eternity watchers in this life.  Jesus gave us a glimpse of eternity in the sermon on the mount and Moses saw a glimpse of eternity as he starred into the burning bush which was not consumed.  The Bible doesn’t say what he saw but he left the mountain out of character with his past human compromises.  One might ask, what did Moses see in the burning bush?   He did see something, right?  Does it not seem logical to assume that Moses saw a vision of eternity?  Could it be that Moses shared this vision at the very beginning of his writings, known to us as the Garden of Eden?  Both ends of eternity are illuminated for us in the words of these two biblical giants.

G.Goslaw

Landers, CA

 

 

 

Thanks be to God

To my delightful surprise, a little piece of Landers, California has been my abode since 2012.  Periodically, I get antsy staying in one place but these times pass and I rightfully remain grateful to all those who made my sandbox happen.  The weather is just a wee bit hot in summer and comfortably chilly in winter, no complaints.  The neighbors are few as my dogs and I hike our sandy roads.  One neighbor, Janet, stops by with her dogs every few days and we share a smoke on the front porch, mixing in a little intelligent conversation about world events, family and politics.  This is adequate socialization for this content senior life observer.

      

This past February I was told an emergency appendectomy was in my immediate future at our hospital on the hill in Joshua Tree.  Five or six hours later the surgeon arrived and I entered the never, never land of anesthesia heaven, trusting in the competency of hospital staff.  Upon awaking from my deep sleep, I slowly became aware of how close eternity had rubbed up against me.  In the recovery room, G. Goslaw began bleeding, an alert nurse recognized the situation and took aggressive action to get me back into surgery to stop the bleeding.  In her words, “I didn’t think you were going to make it”.  I am haunted by the realization that the end could very well have been in 2017, my last days on this earth.

Most of us live very busy lives but in times like these we should ask, when death does arrive, will we humans experience some sort of eternity?  If so, what will eternity look like?  The answer to the first question is a no brainer, there either is or there isn’t.  No eternity means that our lives are reduced to our circumstances and relationships through whom we hope for a future beyond death.  This believing in ourselves may be enough for some but it seems a bit superficial, life becoming all about me and mine.  This is the very definition of Godless secularism, get all you can while you can, every decision is only a pragmatic personal calculation but how that decision may affect others is less important.  Is it any wonder that our country has progressively become mired in selfish expectations and attitudes?  Should there be no eternity, a great many of us will be proved wrong, disappointed and unaware of the loss.

Let us, therefore, quickly dismiss that possibility.  The second question is more fun to consider, what will eternity be like?  What is the destiny of the human spirit?  Every few years someone rises from a near death experience to tell us what eternity is like on the other side, a light at the end of a long tunnel, an overwhelming sense of peace, the great judgement day.  Our religions deposit supposed truth upon the people, whether it be something called nirvana, the fires of hell or 99 blessed virgins.  As for me, eternity without my dogs won’t cut it, which only proves that our expectations have an eerie way of trapping us in earthly drumbeats.  Listen as we must, these opinions are all different and may only be the simple winding down of our computer brains, none of us really knows.

 

In the recovery room, there were no lights, possibly I wasn’t dead enough to bring back any messages or I wasn’t worthy enough to be that messenger.  Others have, Socrates of Greek antiquity and King Solomon of Hebrew history each brought back unusual understanding.  The boy David, the twelfth son of a shepherd family found great courage under the stars of biblical times.  My spiritual background is from an evangelical perspective that has only one picture of eternity, the heaven and hell scenario.  One might wonder if this thinking (dogma) is intended to scare the faithful and sinner into submission to a man-made institution.  Sure, the Spirit of God operates in the church as he does among all of us but is the thinking of God the same as the thinking of the Church?  I trust not.

I can trust Jesus who came out of the desert with a message for the forgotten people, not the religious and proud crowds.  He said, your circumstances have no real power over you because this world belongs to the God of the galaxies and he has your back.  Eternity is here and now as well as beyond death. This was new news to the forgotten people, no one had talked to them before about eternity, as Jesus put it, the kingdom of God.  The forgotten people clamored to listen to this strange talk from Jesus.  Is this kingdom talk a new thing?  Is the kingdom really for me?  Why has no one else spoken of this kingdom?  Does this kingdom have rules?  Will this kingdom improve our daily lives?

Jesus told a little story recorded for us in the gospel of Mathew, this parable or “The story of the wedding banquet”, is a picture of eternity (Mathew 22: 2 through 14).  The story begins, “The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son”.  Fourteen little words tell us the size and shape of eternity more profoundly than a multitude of volumes written from human understanding and for a profit.  Eternity has one boss (king), we human beings are family (sons), eternity is a party for the ages (banquet), eternity is about the unification of we humans to God (wedding).  Which one of we humans would want to miss this eternal party?   Not I, nor any other honest person, most of all some of us believe that none of we human beings will miss out!

Surprise, surprise, this is not the small ball touted by the religious crowd but sounds much like universalism, which says that, to God everyone is a son deserving of an eternal party.  The religious crowd will question, don’t our choices in this life determine our eternal future?  If the individual is a part of the wrong religion or worst of all, no religion at all, surely these folks will be excluded post death, will they not?  In response to these seemingly logical questions, one might ask, do those who teach an exclusionary eternity understand the heart of God.  Jesus excluded no one from the love of God, not his enemies or his critics or those who nailed him to the cross, “Father forgive them!”.  Such words sound inclusive not exclusive.  Another instance, the two thieves crucified with Jesus, one repented in this life and he was told that this day the kingdom of God was his to share prior to death but Jesus never condemned the other thief to some other reality.  The love of God never gives up on any of his sons, he just waits, saying, your time will come (the lost parables).

Either God loves the world (John 3:16) or he doesn’t.  Divine love reduced to the religious few is the religion of the Old Testament.  To the extent that the New Testament enforces this understanding of spirituality, the N.T. has missed the revolution that Jesus began.  The hell advocates are certainly missing the revolution, no surprise, you see, most of us miss it most of the time.  The parable of the banquet says that the exact same thing, the Kings invitations to the party is ignored by the people, each preferring to actively pursue other things, “But they paid no attention and went off – one to his field, another to his business.  The rest seized his servants, mistreated them and killed them (v.5).”  Have you ever wondered where violence originates, violence that always makes no sense and is self-destructive, could it be that to us, anything is better than accepting an invitation to spiritual accountability?

In response to our avoidance techniques, God (the king) directs his servants out into the streets to invite anyone and everyone they meet to the party.  “So the servants went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find, the bad as well as the good, and the wedding hall was filled with guests (v. 10).” May I be blunt?  Does this story uttered by Jesus not teach that a heavenly destination is in the cards for all of us?  Moral standing may not be the primary qualification for eternity.  The shared human destiny is an eternity with God, who does not discriminate, by race, religion, wealth, sex, skinny or fat, ugly or buff or relative goodness.  And that there, in eternity, we all will discover what spiritual reality is truly all about, at the party.

About this time, I hope you are questioning my universalistic assumption about this passage.  When the invitations of the king are rejected by the people who kill his servants, the king takes revenge by sending his troops to murder and burn out those selfish subjects (v. 5)?  Is this divine intervention or a John Wick movie about revenge?  Can’t you hear that line, “they killed my dog”?  As if that injustice was to justify all the killing to follow in the movie.  Worse yet, this so-called God, who acts out with the sword, must be related to that other ancient religion that persists to this day.  Anyway, the biblical parable of the wedding banquet describes a very human deity who responds to injustice just as we do, with violence from a vengeful heart.  This venom can’t be the God of the galaxies, but the Bible, in this parable, claims this earthly behavior is a divine right, violence is a part of the character of God.  A simple question, how does this violent depiction of God square with the message of Jesus who said, love even your enemies? Jesus goes on to say, love your enemies so that “you may be the children of your Father in heaven (Matt. 5:45)”.  This is not the picture of a violent vengeful God.

The conclusion I have reached is that the red-letter edition of the Bible, the words purported to be from the lips of Jesus, are a mixture of his words and the succeeding generations of religion defenders and handwriting duplicators, who were not fans of the Jesus spiritual revolution.  The violent elements to the parable were added to water down the wide open message of Jesus.  In verses 13 and 14, the king, God, has an encounter with a man at the party without wedding clothes, the king feels insulted and passes judgement upon the man.  “Tie him hand and foot, and throw him outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.  For many are invited but few are chosen.”  The religious few relate to these words but really, the ultimate reality, God, is he so easily insulted and apt to take revenge?  Is this parable Greek mythology or spiritual truth?  Sadly, the answer is that it has become both.

Heaven is a place for spiritual growth freed from the burdens and distractions of this earth.  Let’s play God a moment, how would you design such a reality?  The parable of the wedding party may be helpful to reduce the fog of some of our misunderstandings about eternity.  While all our spirits may have the same final destination, the seating arrangement at the eternal party may or will be different.  Some of us will be up close to the action around God, while others of us will be seated in the darker places.  Just possibly, as we get it together in the hereafter, those closest to the light will pass on into another reality.

Should this be the future for the human spirit and justice combined with love is the character of God, how will God determine the pecking order in heaven?  Who gets to proceed first to the light?  My own opinion is that those of us who had no chance at finding God’s Love in this earthly life, will go to the head of the line.  They will experience the blessed light and the next reality sooner than we darker souls.  The worthiest of all contenders for this priority are the millions of we humans that were aborted in the womb, their bodies torn apart before they had a chance at the life we take for granted.  This would-be justice!  Enough with the suppositions, the Ultimate Reality is the boss.

G.Goslaw

Landers, CA.  

Choice

Why did Moses and the children of Israel spend forty years wondering in the desert?  If you believe the Moses spin that is up front in the Bible it was because they were afraid of the giants in the land.  This is what happened but after all the heavenly assistance rendered to them as they escaped captivity in Egypt, why would they fear a few giants and hostile peoples?  Their fear overwhelmed them because the killings at Mount Sinai was a choice to live by the point of a sword.  Moses had taken control away from God and they were on their own, a human religion had replaced God.

Eventually and without exception human strength will turn to weakness.  Crossing the Jordan River and possessing the promised land was to much to ask of a religion lead people.  They retreated into the desert where they wandered for 40 years.  To all those who say that God kills to get his own way, you are wrong. If God is a killer God, Jesus would have raised an army!  To all those Biblical literalists who believe that Moses was marching to the kill at the direction of God, you really don’t know God.

G.Goslaw
Landers, Ca

Twisted ...

Exodus 31:18
When the Lord had finished speaking to Moses on Mount Sinai, he gave him the two tablets of the covenant law, the tablets of stone inscribed by the finger of God.

Exodus 32:19
When Moses approached the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, his anger burned and he threw the tablets out of his hands, breaking them to pieces at the foot of the mountain.

Exodus 32:27, 28, 29
Then he said to them, “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says.  ‘Each man strap a sword to his side.  Go back and forth through the camp from one end to the other, each killing his brother and friend and neighbor.’ ”  The Levites did as Moses commanded, and that day about three thousand of the people died.  Then Moses said, “You have been set apart for the Lord today, for you were against your own sons and brothers, and he has blessed you this day.”    (TNIV Study Bible)

Mother tells the story about church pastors at a church business meeting and an argument ensues.  One of the pastors rises and makes a point by saying that God said that the issue must be resolved “thus and so”.  Another pastor of the opposite persuasion immediately rises saying that God told him in his prayers that God wants the opposite point.  Did neither pastor hear from God?  Did only one pastor correctly hear from God?  If so, which one?   Our will is so easily transferred to the Almighty for distribution.  Is this not twisted?

G.Goslaw
Landers, Ca