Why Pastors Can't Do Their Real Job

 In the traditional church model, Pastors can't actually do their jobs because the congregation, and frequently they themselves don't understand what their job is. It is believed that the pastor's job is to perform weddings and funerals, preach an engaging sermon on Sundays, manage the various programs and "ministries" of the church, and generally function as a CEO of the church answerable, on paper at least, to a church board or to the congregation if he does something that they do not like.

     This is not what being a pastor is about. This is not their job. This is the job of deacons and church administrators tasked with keeping track of the "business." They are not there to act as figureheads for the will of the congregation, or the will of the elders or deacons.

     What is the best description or analogy of a pastor's actual function? This may sound funny, but the best analogy would be a Jedi master to an apprentice, or apprentices in the sense of a Qui-Gon Jinn to an Obi-Wan Kenobi, or an Obi-Wan to an Anakin. The first job of a pastor is to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. Period. The first job of a pastor, the first function of a pastor, is to live as Jesus Christ taught and to walk as He walked. His job is to embody the manifestation of Jesus Christ within and through everything he says or does. His job is to know how to be a disciple, and to practice it well enough so that he can fulfill his second job, and that is to teach others how to be disciples. The master doesn't just lecture on the science or theory behind the practice, the master has practiced it well enough that he can model it for others. The master doesn't just expound on how to do a thing, he demonstrates it, shows it, and expects his apprentice to model what he does, and to do it again and again until they get it down well enough that he can move on.

     This is what Jesus did with His disciples and apostles. He didn't just verbally teach, He demonstrated with every word and action. "If you've seen Me, you've seen the Father." And so for the pastor, the bar must be "if you've seen me, you've seen Jesus Christ."

     Modern pastors in modern churches are expected to be entertainers and politicians within their churches, as well as keep up a kind of facade of holiness which is heavily dependent on what the congregants expect a pastor to appear as. They have to do this if they want to keep their jobs. They can't afford to make the wrong person in their congregations angry, or the wrong person among their clerical superiors depending on the denomination. They have to worry about keeping the church's finances flowing so they can keep being paid and keep the church's lights on. In short, they can't do their actual jobs because of the constraints of the traditional church model.

     Some pastors try to find ways around this problem which is inherent to the model, some try to rise above it, many are drowned by it, but nearly every pastor knows exactly the problem of which I am speaking even if they've never been able to put it into words before.

     In order for us, any of us, to truly function with the charism to which we were called we have to let go of the fear of being cast out by those congregations. We have to let go of the fear of what happens if we actually let go and cooperate with the Spirit of Christ in what we say and do. We have to be willing to actually be disciples of Jesus Christ and understand all that means and goes with it. We have to be the "master disciples" necessary to teach "apprentice disciples," because this is our function in the body. We have to submit to and cooperate with the Spirit of Christ, turning away from fear, anger, and all of those "dark side" emotions which lead us down the path of the Flesh and to our own destruction and the destruction of everyone around us. We have to step back and let His Spirit flow through us, speak through us, act through us, and touch everyone else around us through us. Otherwise, if those around us can't experience Jesus Christ through us, why should they listen? Why should they join our churches or congregations? If there is no real power flowing through us, what's the point? We're just more charlatan clerics trying to scrape by and hopefully do some kind of good while we do it.

      This is the responsibility of a pastor.

Thoughts on the Origin of the Human Self Identity

      The things which please or displease us we latch onto as what we identify ourselves with. I like chocolate cake. Me liking chocolate cake is a part of my identity. I was born in America. If this pleases me, then it becomes a part of my identity which I treasure. If it displeases me, it becomes a part of my identity I am ashamed of, but still a part of my identity. I write rambles, and it has become a part of my identity that I do so. Being a Christian has been a part of my identity for a long time. But the point is that the ego builds the illusion of identity around those things which either please or displease, which it either agrees with or disagrees with. This is why it can be so psychologically threatening when something which is agreed with or disagreed with is challenged. Even something as inane as fictional stories or characters. My agreement with, for example, that "Han shot first" in the original Star Wars becomes a part of my identity, and who I consider myself to be. Thus, when it is changed by the film maker, it threatens that identity (in reality, I don't personally care; I figured that was George Lucas' call and he can do whatever he wants with his film), and thus threatens me psychologically.

     In this way, one's ego, Old Man, or EMI is intrinsically tied to the hamartia malfunction, and is a by-product of it just as much as our sense of "right and wrong" or "good and bad" is a product of that malfunction. Furthermore, our assignation of "good" or "bad" to those things which please or displease, what the brain's fight/flight/feeding/sex response system mistakenly registers as survival necessities or survival threats, further reinforces those things as a part of our personal identity with which the ego uses to define itself, being a product of that malfunctioning fear survival response.

     Why does it do this? Because our survival response system is always in overdrive, it reacts with fear to nearly everything. And when we are panicked and afraid, we blind ourselves to our Source, the God in whose image we ourselves are made and carry, and are cut off in this way from the Spirit of Christ as Fear and Love cannot coexist together in the same place. One is blinded to God when he or she submits to their fear responses, and as human beings, we are subconsciously ruled by fear because of our malfunctioning survival responses. Being blind to the genuine source of identity, the brain panics and devises its own in order for it to continue to function.

More Thoughts on the Ego and Disengaging From It

      I was thinking about the concept of "God-sized hole" in people as is popularly taught, or used to be popularly taught, by many churches. My thought was that, in a way, this concept isn't that far off the mark. The human ego or self-identity, what one author calls the EMI (Ego/Mind/Identity), and can be likened to how Paul describes "The flesh" and "the Old Man," is formed from the malfunctioning human brain's fear response, and its need to cling to whatever pleases it and push away whatever displeases it. It clings to various things in order to form a personal identity to define itself, even though it in itself is an illusion or delusion created by the brain. My thought is that it is created by the brain out of the panic of the soul or immaterial part of the human being being unable to sense or connect with its Source, that is, God, from which it is ultimately derived and has its being. Perhaps there is something in the malfunction, something about the way the enlargement of the amygdala or maybe the miswiring of the hypothalamus affects the reception by the brain of the soul or immaterial, causing the brain to go into a panic from the beginning and cling to anything it can in order to form a "pseudo-identity" to define itself rather than defining itself by its Source. 

     How do you disengage from this ego, your own responses, and engage with the Spirit of Christ? First, you ask Him with intention. Then you let Him do it, and don't take back control. The steps are easy enough to understand, but the execution of the latter takes time and practice. We disengage from the Spirit of Christ and engage with our own responses when we submit to our own fear, aggression, and bodily cravings. Fear itself is the chief thing above all others which tears back the control we've ceded. We don't always understand our personal motivations in the subconscious realm. Many different things that we're not consciously aware of can trigger a fear response, and if we aren't careful, this can cause us to engage our own responses once again. This is where understanding our own minds can be useful, as well as working through past emotional and psychological trauma in our lives. If we simply begin by asking "why am I doing this thing?" And continue to ask this question of one answer after another, we can get down to the root trigger and become aware of it so that we may learn to let this thing go as well. Letting go of those things which trigger our fear, aggression, and bodily craving responses is a necessity for the disciple of Jesus Christ because of the obstructions these place in the practice of the Way, causing us to be tripped up. Remember, He will not force you to do anything. Following the Way is strictly voluntary.

     Random thoughts can be triggers to take back control from the Spirit of Christ. The thoughts themselves are amoral, neither good nor bad, but it is when we engage with them with a fear, aggression, or bodily craving response that we run into trouble. This is where the discipline of contemplative prayer and meditation can be useful for the practicing disciple of Jesus Christ in learning how to be aware of one's thoughts, but not engage with them. Again, the goal is to not be triggered into taking back control from the Spirit of Christ.

God's Immediate Answer to Adam's Fall

 If Jesus Christ was God's answer to the fall of Adam, then why did He wait for thousands of years to come? Why wasn't it immediate? The answer is that it was immediate where eternity is concerned. 

     Eternity is not governed by time or space. Time and space are merely a few dimensions or vectors of travel among many which cross through Eternity. When the Logos incarnated as a human being immediately in response to the fall of Adam, He entered our "timestream" from Eternity at a point along that timestream which was appropriate. 

     While we can imagine space in three dimensions, we can only imagine time in terms of forwards or backwards, and really only forwards in terms of cause and effect. We can only think in one dimension of time, one vector. But the dimensions of space and time from the perspective of Eternity are much less confining, and much more "voluminous" than we can physically process with our human brains because of their four dimensional nature. The incarnation of the Logos as a human being from Eternity impacted the entirety of our timestream towards the very beginning of it and towards the very end of it. What we perceive temporally as a single event which can only effect events after it, was actually a multidimensional event with effects that transcended our concepts of space, time, causality, and the more modern Quantum Mechanics concept of retrocausality, that is an event in the present causing an effect in the past.

     The union of the Logos with human flesh meant the union of the Logos with all human beings within that timestream inasmuch as all human beings are variations of the same human being and descended from the same human being. And the death of the Logos incarnated as a human being impacted every human being along that timestream as well. What happened to the Logos incarnated happened to Adam and every descendant of Adam through that union. It happened to every single person that shares Adam's "flesh," his DNA. As such, if every human being died with Him, then every human being will also, at some point along our timestream, be transformed just as He was transformed, and those who have physically died will be restored to a transformed, "energy based" physical body just as He was, because He and every human being are one. Because it is an eternal event it has already happened in the absolute. We who are still moving along our common timestream are just waiting to catch up to its place within that timestream. 

     Thus, and for this reason, the mechanism for this deliverance, our union with Jesus Christ and thus with His Father, which is found within and through Jesus Christ from our common malfunction was already in place for Adam and every human being from then until the present day, and until the day of transformation and resurrection.

"If You Don't All Turn Around, You Will Be Likewise Destroyed"

     I was flipping through Luke this morning and ran into Luke 13:1-5. Typically, pastors and preachers have a tendency to overspiritualize everything Jesus said, when there were times He was being very practical in what He was saying. In this case, when He repeats Himself three times, "If you don't all turn around you will likewise be destroyed," He isn't referring to being thrown into hell. 

     The Romans had direct government of Iudaea since 6 C.E. Prior to that the Kingdom of Iudaea was a client kingdom under the Herods since Pompey's time. The only reason why Pompey and his legion had come was because they were invited by the Sadducees to mediate a civil war between the Pharisees and Sadducees, each faction supporting a rival heir to the Judean throne. This civil war tore the kingdom apart and very nearly destroyed it. After being betrayed by the faction that brought him, Pompey then occupied Judea and Herod's family (who was the choice of neither faction) was installed as the client monarchy. The Herods in turn were so brutal vicious that the Judean people themselves went to Caesar in Rome and begged for Herod Archelaus' removal. This was the cause of Rome organizing Iudaea into a Roman province with direct Roman oversight. They had, by this point, spent over sixty years trying to bring law, order, and peace in cooperation with the client kingdom, and now direct Roman governance was their last option.
     In the meantime, those warring factions hadn't stopped being violent. But alongside hating each other, they then turned their daggers towards the Romans trying to bring order to their civil war. And so there were insurrections, murders of Roman personnel, false messiahs rising up to "overthrow their Roman oppressors," appearing to forget what it was like when they governed themselves. As their tactics became more vicious and brutal, the Roman response was in kind. Rome didn't tolerate chaos even as it tried to respect and absorb the other cultures, cults, and deities from the people within the empire's borders.
     So what was Jesus warning them of? Hellfire? Not of the eternal kind, but of the very grounded earthly kind. He was warning the Judean people that if they didn't turn around from their tactics against the Romans, then they would be destroyed, which did happen starting in 70 C.E. after yet another Judean rebellion and false messiah in 66 C.E. culminating in the well known "last stand" suicides at Masada in the early second century.
     What was He telling them to do? Love your enemies, do good to them, carry the soldier's gear the extra mile. Be kind to one another, and forgive one another. If the Judeans had followed what He said towards one another and towards the Romans, there would have been no Masada. There would have been no destruction of the Temple in 70, much less Jerusalem. There would have been no roads lined with crosses of Judean zealots. Had the nation done what He said, there would have been no need for the Roman legions to remain there, being needed elsewhere on the Imperial frontiers at the time, like Britannia or Germania. Had the Judeans practiced what Jesus preached and ceased their delusional, suicidal insurrection against a Rome that was going to bring peace at all costs even if it meant scorched earth, then none of what Jesus predicted would happen would have. As the Prophet of Yahweh (obviously more than this, but a prophet as well), He was warning them for three years, almost forty years before it happened, to turn around before they caused their own demise.
     And they refused to hear Him. More than this, they harassed Him, spread fake news about Him, and ultimately murdered Him, just like the prophets before Him for warning them about what was coming, because they didn't want to hear it.
     And what was even more insane about their behavior was that they knew what the Romans would do if they continued, because they did it in Greece with Corinth. When Rome subjugated Greece, the original Corinth was such a rebellious city that Rome razed it to the ground and rebuilt it as a Roman city. Even further back, when Carthage gave Rome such problems as a rival, ultimately, Rome came and razed Carthage to the ground, even going to far as to salt its farm fields so the people would be forced to move because they couldn't grow crops to feed themselves. This is what Rome did to cities that it deemed a threat. They destroyed them. And Jerusalem had been getting on their to-do list with their antics over the previous 90 years. Rome's patience had a limit.
     Jesus wasn't telling them anything they couldn't have already known. But no, they were counting on being children of Abraham, and their supposed strict obedience to the Torah to save them from Rome's wrath. They supposed God would keep them from being destroyed because of the sacrifices, the tithing, the outward observance of the Torah's regulations, all while condoning murder of foreigners, abuse of women, hoarding of wealth, and so on. The preached the Torah, praised the prophets, but didn't listen to their words when those same prophets preached against the very same things.
     Today, at least from my observations, we find ourselves in similar circumstances. If we would just live as Jesus taught, and walk as He walked, then all of the impending doom which appears to want to blow up in our faces wouldn't because it is a doom almost entirely of our own creation, and one we are, like the ancient Judeans, ignoring, believing that God will rescue us from it letting all the "sinners" who don't believe like we do be destroyed.
     Scripture is clear it doesn't work that way. Jesus was actually clear that it doesn't work that way, and so were all of the prophets. You reap what you sow.
     By 70 C.E., nearly all of the original disciples had either been martyred, or had left Jerusalem and Judea altogether. Ephesus in Asia Minor had become the new hub of the Christian faith for many years, and after Ephesus, Rome itself. They saw what was coming, and the murderous dispositions of the Zealots in Judea had encouraged them to get out before everything Jesus said had come to pass.

Passages on Running the Race

“Haven’t you seen that all these people running in the stadium are in fact running, yet a single person gets the prize? Run thus so that you would seize it. And every single person who contends has self-control in everything, those in fact then so that they would take a crown that decays, but we for one that doesn’t decay. I then run thus like not without seeing where I’m going, I don’t hit air when I box; but I give my body a black eye and bring it into slavery, lest having preached to others I might have become a failure.” - 1 Corinthians 9:24-27

“to know Him by experience and the power of His resurrection and communion with His feelings, being formed together with His death, if I would somehow arrive at the point of resurrection which is from the dead. Not that I already took it or have already been brought to completion, but I chase after it if I also would seize upon what I also have been seized by the Anointed Yeshua. Brothers, I don’t yet count myself to have seized it; but this one thing, forgetting in fact the things behind me yet stretching out to reach for those things in front of me, I am running it down against the finish line for the prize of the top calling of God with the Anointed Yeshua.” - Philippians 3:10-14

     It's important to understand who Paul's competing against in his athletics metaphor. He's competing against his own flesh, his own neurological malfunction hardwired into his physical body. He understood how hard the fight is, and he was fighting to win. What prize was he fighting for? Always he was fighting so that it would be Jesus Christ who was manifesting through Him, and not his own devices. Always he was disciplining his body, his flesh, so that it wouldn't interfere with his union with Christ in His resurrection shining forth through him. Always Paul was fighting to keep "walking in the Spirit" so that he didn't succumb to the desires of his own flesh: fear, aggression, and bodily cravings. Paul understood what was at stake if he didn't fight for it every moment of every day.

“Don’t you know that to whom you offer yourselves slaves for obedience, you are slaves to whom you obey, whether of the malfunction for death or obedience for being set right? … I speak humanly because of the sickness of your flesh. Because just like you offered your body parts slaves to dirtiness and resulting in lawlessness upon lawlessness, so now offer your body parts slaves to being set right leading to holiness.” - Romans 6:16, 18-19

“Because we know that the Torah is spiritual, yet I am fleshly having been exported for sale under the malfunction. Because I don’t know what I’m accomplishing; because I’m not practicing this thing I wish, but I’m doing this thing I hate. And if I’m doing this thing I don’t wish, I am agreeing with the Torah that it is good, but now I am no longer accomplishing it but the malfunction residing within me. Because I have seen that good doesn’t reside within me, that is, in my flesh; because the willing is at hand with me, yet the accomplishing the good isn’t; because I’m not doing the good which I wish, but I’m practicing this harm which I don’t wish. And if I am doing this thing which I don’t wish, I am no longer accomplishing it but the malfunction residing within me.” - Romans 7:14-20

“Yet I say, walk by the Spirit [of Christ] and you won’t bring the desires of the flesh to completion at all. Because the flesh desires against the Spirit [of Christ], and the Spirit [of Christ] against the flesh, because these things are opposed to one another, so that you would do not whatever things you would wish. And if you are led by the [Spirit of Christ], you aren’t subject to the law.” - Galatians 5:16-18

Consider the Birds...

"Consider the birds..."
     I was reflecting on this passage in the Gospels this morning whIle I was changing the chicken waterers. We have a lot of birds running around in the back yard as well as the barn, and I watch their behavior every morning, afternoon, and evening. And not just the birds, but the goats, the cats, the dogs, and the rabbits as well. Watching animals is highly instructive where spiritual things are concerned and where this passage in the Gospels is concerned, because the major difference between the behavior of animals and the behavior of human beings is that, unless the animal is unbalanced, their behavior is not dominated by anxiety or fear. Certainly their natural flight response is active. If a physical threat occurs or gets too close they run. If they can't run or have a family or flock to defend, they fight. But once the threat is over, it's over. They go back to just living their lives, looking for food, mating, socializing with each other, and so on. The threat, while it may be a fact filed away for future reference, doesn't continue to impact their lives in any way. They just let it go. This is one of the reasons why animals can be such a joy to be around.
     Human beings don't do this. As I reflected on this, the lives of human beings are governed by fear, aggression, or cravings from day one. When Jesus tells us not to worry about what to eat, what to wear, and so on, and not to worry about tomorrow, He's giving us the animals, the birds in particular, as an example of a healthy mind and healthy use or context for fear and using it as a comparison, or a baseline, against what every human being generally does without serious training and teaching to the contrary.
     Our whole psychological identities are formed from fear, from the things we're afraid of losing to the things we're afraid of gaining; from the things we're afraid of happening to us, to the things we're afraid of not happening to us. Our minds are governed from birth from a fear response that is unbalanced and out of control, and the human mind creates illusions, distractions, and even splits itself in response to it. This overactive fear response is what causes us to not be able to perceive God around and within us, as fear and love can't coexist in the same space. Our very egos, our very "selves" are formed from this overactive fear response, which then fights to defend itself as well.
     Animals don't do this unless they're unbalanced. A fearful animal is a dangerous animal, to other animals, to human beings, and to itself. This should give us a clue as to why animals tend to see human beings as a threat most of the time unless they've learned not to. They can sense that we are unbalanced and governed by a malfunctioning fear response.
      This fear which governs human beings is the source of just about everything which is wrong with human beings, and is the reason why we "naturally" (even though it is against nature) have our senses closed to the God who is always here. We have to learn to let go of this fear and the clinging which triggers it in order to open those senses, to "have eyes to see and ears to hear" the God who is love. In this passage, Jesus was illustrating for us and calling us to a "normal" and healthy life.

What the Experience of "Walking in the Spirit" is Like

     What is it like to submit to and cooperate with the Spirit of Christ? I'm going to do my best to describe it, because it can be both subtle and dramatic at the same time.

    First, what it is not. It isn't like what you may have heard about channeling. That is, you don't black out, and you're fully conscious throughout it all. You may feel a little bit like a spectator in your own body, but it's entirely voluntary. You choose to cede control, and maybe that really isn't the right way to say it either. You cannot force it either. You can only let go and allow it to happen.

     Second, your personal feelings and emotions don't necessarily change, but they don't influence how you respond, what you say and what you do. This is important to understand. Your brain may be pumping angry or fearful thoughts through your mind, but as long as you don't choose to let that fear or anger (or bodily cravings for that matter) dictate your words or actions, as long as you don't submit to it, the Spirit of Christ remains in control and it won't be reflected in what you say or do.

     This second point is the biggest challenge, and remains the constant battle which the disciple must fight. Submitting to your fear in particular, as the root of all the others, will wrench control back from the Spirit of Christ, and He will let go and allow you to resume control of your own words and actions, and reap the consequences or "harvest" from them. Cooperating with Him is absolutely, painstakingly voluntary. He respects your free will more than you do.

       So, what is it like? Well, as I mentioned before, it's a little like being a spectator in your own body. You're watching yourself do these things, and hearing yourself say these things, and at first you're utterly amazed at what you're saying and doing. How kind you're being, how loving. You're utterly amazed that you're saying all the right things even though you know you prepared nothing, and sometimes what you're saying would normally scare the hell out of you to say to anyone. At first, you think to yourself, wow, I didn't know I could do that, or say that. And this is where it gets a bit tricky, because the control of the Spirit is so subtle sometimes you may believe that it all came from you, that is, your own ego. And then this too can cause you to wrench back control believing that it all came from you.

     You may be prompted to say something specific, and then be surprised when the words come out of your mouth before you've had time to think them through. You may be prompted to do something specific, and then watch yourself do it before it's had time to really register what you're doing.

     Having a baseline of comparison is why Paul continuously gave lists of the "works of the flesh" in his letters as well as describing what the Spirit of Christ would produce. In short, if your actions or words are motivated by fear, aggression, or bodily cravings then it is your own ego which is producing them, and you have wrenched back control. You may not know exactly when or what triggered it, but you did.

      As you continue your practice of "walking in the Spirit" and also "remaining in Christ," you will eventually begin to experience how He feels about certain things, and you may feel like a kind of channel for those feelings and emotions. This can get a little confusing at first, especially when your own brain is still pumping out fearful or angry thoughts. As you're speaking or relating with someone, you can be overwhelmed with a love for that person which doesn't originate from you (frequently this becomes obvious because of the overwhelming depth of it, and also because it may not be someone you would normally feel that deeply about). There may be times you become angry, but it is a different anger, more paternal, more, almost exasperated like a parent with his children. It isn't a destructive anger. It doesn't seek to lash out or seek revenge, rather it is a corrective anger, seeking to turn that person around. Sometimes you may feel the humor in things you might not normally, and even sense God laughing as though sharing a joke with you.

     It's important to understand that this is a learned discipline. Most don't just recognize the difference between themselves and Him instantly, and most give into their fear more often than not at first. Consistency in this practice, the Way, develops with exercise of it. We don't really develop the stamina or "muscles" to not act on our fear or anger without doing it over and over again. Eventually the "muscle memory" does kick in, and the cooperation and submission to Him becomes implicit.

     Finally, you will never cause harm when submitting to and cooperating with the Spirit of Christ. This point must be drilled home. He may get angry through you, but He will never strike someone through you. He will never seduce anyone through you. He will never lie to anyone through you. He will never steal anything through you. He will never defraud anyone through you. He will never be unkind through you. If your words and actions display any of these things, then it is you and not Him. If your words and actions cause harm to another, harm not necessarily pain, then they are born of your own brain, and not His Spirit. And if it is not Him, then you have fallen off the Path and need to course correct back onto it, trying to make amends for what harm you caused when off of it.

     Course correction is as simple as admitting that you are in error. Saying it aloud is helpful psychologically speaking because it makes it real to you. Saying it to another person even more so because it cements it with a witness. "I have caused harm. I am in error. I have fallen off the path." After this admission, it is helpful to verbally and intentionally ask Him to resume control for the same reasons. There is no need for guilt. It does and will happen, and the fight against one's own fear, aggression, and bodily craving responses will continue until the body dies. But as you practice, staying put in cooperation with the Spirit of Christ will become more consistent and a bit easier over time. 

      I am reminded of something which a psychologist friend once told me. At the time, I was undergoing neurofeedback treatment which uses a system of rewards to retrain the brain, and in a sense, rewire the synaptic connections. And what he told me was that typically, you yourself won't notice the difference (my experience was atypical, but I digress), but others will notice the difference in how you behave and act. The reason for this is that the brain doesn't register that there's been a change in the connections (if I remember correctly, it's been fourteen years). The brain just continues on. And I was reflecting on what I wrote in my previous post this morning that, at first, you may not notice anything different at all, or that another is in control of what you are saying and doing because the brain isn't aware of it at first. But others will take note, and see you demonstrating love, joy, peace, tolerance, etc. It takes intentional observation and awareness sometimes to establish when it is the Spirit of Christ and when it is your own ego so that you can more easily recognize when you've fallen off the Path and when you're walking it before you start causing harm to others, intentionally or unintentionally. The objective here being to minimize when the ego (or self, or psyche, or one's own malfunctioning neurology) is in control, and to maximize when the Spirit of Christ is in control. As John the Baptist said, "He must increase, while I must decrease."

     From my own personal experience, especially before my neurofeedback treatments for Asperger's Syndrome, the difference between my own responses and behaviors and His could be dramatic. Speaking in public would terrify me personally to where I would shake almost uncontrollably, and yet under the control of His Spirit, when He spoke through me, no one would know it. No one would see it or hear it. With my Asperger's I wouldn't know how to relate appropriately, and yet under the control of the Spirit of Christ I would be relational, appropriate, and caring even as my own brain was screaming at me. With my own devices, I may not want to do something because of the mood I was in, and yet as long as I am submitting to Him, I find myself standing up and not only doing the thing, but going the extra mile. I myself may not want to give money when asked, yet I find my hands opening my wallet and giving the bills within it. There have been times I've been about to explode from frustration at someone and make the situation ten times worse, and yet the words that come from my mouth are calm, kind, and patient even as my brain is raging at me to quit, lash out, and so on. Do I ever lose that fight and submit to my fear and anger? Of course, but it's a lot less frequent than it used to be. And with each won battle of not giving in to my fear and anger, it becomes less and less.

      It is scary at first to entrust yourself, your life, and your relationships to Him and have Him interact with all of it through you. But I can bear witness that He has earned my trust with it, and His results are always better than mine ever could be.

The Disciple of Jesus Christ and the Law

 "Knowing this, that the law wasn't laid down for the person who is set right..."
     "And if you are led by the Spirit [of Christ], you aren't subject to the law."
     "Yet the fruit of the Spirit [of Christ] is love, joy, peace, tolerance, kindness, goodness, trust, courtesy, self-control; there isn't a law laid down against such things as these."
     Why?
     "And they who are of Christ Jesus crucified the flesh together with the passions we suffer from and its desires."
     Therefore,
     "If we are living by the Spirit [of Christ], we should also be marching in line with the Spirit [of Christ]."
     This is the relationship of the disciple of Jesus Christ to the law, any law, in a nutshell. Put simply, written laws don't really matter to the one who is submitting to and cooperating with the Spirit of Christ, because it is Jesus Christ acting and speaking through that person. Laws aren't made to restrain someone who loves others and does no harm. They're made to restrain someone who commits harmful acts against themselves and others. If Jesus Christ is acting and speaking through you, then you aren't going to harm others. And if you aren't going to harm others, then the laws, any laws, don't really apply to you, do they? If it is the Spirit of Christ acting and speaking through you, then you are going to demonstrate courtesy, because Jesus Christ demonstrates it through you. You are going to be compassionate, kind, and honest, because it is Jesus Christ doing it through you. If you are in submission to and cooperation with the Spirit of Christ, you're not going to be sexually promiscuous. You're not going to act according to your survival responses and animal nature, because it is Jesus Christ acting through you, and the Father acting through Him through you.
     This is why it has always been a mistake for Christians to teach and emphasize obedience to the Mosaic Law, and relegate submission to the Spirit of Christ to lip service at best. By doing so, they have done exactly what Paul wrote against in Galatians, and almost every other letter in the New Testament. By teaching and emphasizing obedience to the Mosaic Law they have literally disobeyed the Gospel and set everyone who listens to them up for failure as Paul described in Romans 7.
     Being a disciple of Jesus Christ means marching in lockstep with the Spirit of Christ. It means submitting to and cooperating with the Spirit of Christ, and crucifying, disengaging from, and rendering inert our own neurologically and biologically based survival responses of fear, aggression, feeding, and sexual desire.
     We need to get away from what is not working, as the New Testament already said it wouldn't work, and change our ways of thinking on these things. Every person who is living as Jesus taught and walking as He walked does no harm because it is Jesus Christ doing it through that person. And if it isn't Jesus Christ acting and speaking through us, then we are not being His disciples, much less anything resembling Christians, but become a poor imitation following rules, laws, and traditions without any understanding of why. And when we subject ourselves to those rules, laws, and traditions blindly, then errors, mistakes, and harm abound.

Why The Cross?

     Why the Cross?
     The crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ is the most central tenet and event of Christian belief that there is. It was horrifying and traumatizing when He was arrested and crucified, and there are no words for the overwhelming emotion when He rose from the dead. But why the Cross to begin with?
     The writings of the New Testament are explicit that Jesus Christ died for us. He died for our errors. Notice that these writings never say that Jesus died in our place, or that He took our place on the cross. This is a later, Reformation theological interpretation. But the New Testament is explicit that Jesus Christ died for our errors, and that He died for us. More than this, it says that He died for everyone, and in that He died for everyone, everyone died. Every human being died on the cross because Jesus Christ died on the cross. And, by the same logic, just as every human being died because Jesus Christ died on the cross, so also will every human being rise from the dead because Jesus Christ rose from the dead. The New Testament says also that we were exchanged with God (this is the literal meaning of the Greek word “KATAΛΛACCΩ,” which means to change or exchange something, especially money) through the death of Jesus Christ, and if we were so exchanged with Him, how much more being exchanged will we be delivered with His being alive? And so the cross is the means by which we are exchanged with God, and His resurrection, that is, His life the means of being delivered.
     The Logos, God the Son, entangled Himself with all of humanity when He incarnated with Mariam's DNA as the human being, Jesus Christ. As a result, when He died all of humanity died with Him through that entanglement. When He rose from the dead, all of humanity rose with Him. These were non-linear events which, while occurring in linear time, through entanglement, impacted the entire human race, every human being who has ever existed or will exist, in a non-linear way. Thus, every single human being has been and is already joined to Him, and through Him, God the Father. This is true of all human beings born after Him, and retroactively all human beings born before Him. As a result, all human beings have access to the Spirit of Christ through this union whether they are aware of the mechanics of it or not. All the "equipment" so to speak is already there with every human being. One simply needs to become aware that said equipment is there in some fashion, and trust it enough to make use of it whether one fully understands all the mechanics or not (of course the better one understands it, the better use which can be made). Deliverance from one's inherited malfunction though submission to and cooperation with the Spirit of Christ has always been voluntary. Recognition and trust in one's union with God has always been voluntary, as has one's cooperation with that union. The union itself, however, we are all born with without exception because of the Cross.
     If this is true, then why baptism? Why any of the Sacraments? Baptism was and remains the outward sign of belief and trust that these things are true. While all the mechanics may already be in place, one must believe that they are there in order to make use of them. Baptism provides an initiation point, a focal point that publicly declares to oneself and all those observing that this person believes and trusts that these things are true. There is an intention of belief involved which then actualizes one’s personal inclusion into His death and resurrection for that person, and once that bridge has been crossed there is no real going back. One can deny it or ignore it, but once one has genuinely trusted that these things are true, one cannot “unbelieve” and return to a state of genuine agnosticism or ignorance. One knows that it is there, and can consciously choose to turn away from it. This is potentially true for other initiation rights of belief as well such as “praying the prayer,” altar calls, baptisms of the Spirit, and so on. But when it come down to it, one must intentionally believe that one has been made one with Christ, and through Him God, in some way in order to make use of that oneness in being delivered from one’s malfunctioning responses and behaviors, as I have previously written concerning. If one does not genuinely, even intentionally believe that they are one with God, they cannot make use of that fact. (Which itself is the reason why many of the “Spiritual Gifts” have all but ceased among many churches and congregations, because those congregations teach in the clear and total separation of God and “sinners;” and so these members don’t know about their union with Him, and are taught to be afraid of any such teaching.)
     Why the Cross? Because within eternity, union with Him was God’s immediate answer to our malfunction, and this was accomplished across time and space to impact every human being ever born through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The Truths We Cling To

 "You'll find that a great many of the truths we cling to are dependent on our own points of view." -Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi
     I was reflecting on this quote earlier today on how true it actually is. Truth is communicated by language, but language is not a one way street. With a recipient of that language, it is just noise being made. The person receiving the language spoken or written cannot understand it in any other way than his or her own, that is, with what the audial or visual symbols mean to them. That is, a message spoken will always be filtered through the point of view of the recipient: through their own experiences, culture, and yes, language and the many differences in word meanings and personal understandings of those word meanings.
     For this reason, the things we cling to as true are true from our own points of view, from the way we understand them, but may not be true from the point of view of another person, who has a different filter through which things are understood. Does this mean there is no such thing as an "absolute truth?" No, I don't think so. Absolute truth is like the old illustration of the blind men trying to describe the elephant. It exists, but we're all describing it from our own filters and points of view. Absolute truth exists outside of our sensory perceptions and what can be fully comprehended by the human brain, which was designed to function within three dimensions of space and one dimension of time.
     It is an absolute truth that God exists, but it is almost most certainly an absolute truth that our individual conceptions of Him do not. That is, that how we "picture" God within our minds is a construct of our human brains meant to enable us to work with the idea of God, but that construct is invariably wrong in the absolute sense because we simply can't comprehend God in the absolute. Thus our conceptions of Him amount to little more than images which we create, some of them perhaps closer to the reality than others, but none 100% on the mark. And God knows this and works with our limitations regardless. The truth about God which each of us clings to is highly dependent on our own filters, our own points of view.
     The same is true about how we understand the Scriptures, and what we understand them to say. When any one person reads the Scriptures, he or she is filtering what they read through their own understanding of language, their own experiences, their own culture, and this doesn't even take into account that what they are reading is a translation which itself was filtered through these same things by the translator's own point of view of the text. I personally have spent a great deal of time trying to remove this communication "noise" to understand what the text is saying, but even then I still run into the noise of my own point of view. I attempt to let the text shape that point of view, but it is a cyclical thing, because that point of view also shapes how I understand what the text is saying in order to allow the text to shape my point of view.
     And the same is true of being taught by the Spirit of Christ, who is far more capable of getting across truth clearly, but it must still be understood through my own point of view. And so what truth is given to me through the Spirit of Christ may sound very different from the very same truth given to another because of how each of us must process and understand that truth.
     I think that, in order for us to move forward as our Teacher intended, we must learn to recognize that He may choose to reach and teach each one of us differently. That I must let go of the notion that the truth I personally cling to is truth in the absolute. That I personally know exactly what the elephant looks like, a great tree trunk, and that the person who describes it as a rope or a snake is just plain wrong. We are both right, and we are both wrong, and God expects nothing more and nothing less.
     This kind of thinking tends to be anathema among Christian churches and denominations, and yet it is because it is anathema that there are so many churches and denominations squabbling and fighting, breaking into factions, and bringing shame to the name of Jesus Christ because of it.
     I know that there are many things which I am right about, but like the blind man and the elephant, I am only right about that small portion I have felt around, but have not "seen" or experienced the whole. I cannot fully see it or comprehend it through the point of view of another, only my own. I can try and approximate the other's point of view, but I cannot really understand it as they do. There are explanations which seem incredibly wrong to me, but to another, they are the only way that person will come closer to the truth of what the elephant is. And I must learn to let go of the notion that "my truth" is true in the absolute.
      If I am to manifest the God who is love to the other person, I must let go of the fear of the other's person's truth, and respect it even while my mind is screaming at me for how wrong it seems. I cannot see it as a threat to the truths I cling to which form my self-identity, and it is this self-identity, this ego, which really is the one raging at the other person's truths. There was a time when the truths I clung to were very different from the truths I cling to now. I was and remain in a state of growth and flux. The other person also remains in a state of growth and flux. Who I am now is not who I was. Who the other person is now is not who they will be. Those truths I clung to were the stepping stones to the truths I cling to now. The truths the other person clings to are the stepping stones to the truths they will cling to in the future. And it is the same Spirit who directs our paths towards those stepping stones if we are both genuinely seeking Him.