Understanding Paul's Mind in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10

     There is a great incongruence in taking what Paul writes in his letters as commands to be followed. Paul himself is very explicit in his letters that those who are disciples are not to be trying to follow commands or "laws" but are to be submitting to and cooperating with the Spirit of Christ, and that it is the Spirit of Christ who is to be acting and speaking through you. This is the bedrock for understanding Paul's mind when he gives instruction in his letters.

     When Paul talks about "inheriting the kingdom of God," he's not talking about going to heaven when one dies, he's talking about a person manifesting Jesus Christ in their words, actions, and even demonstrations of power. That is, when one is "walking in the Spirit," they "inherit" everything that Jesus Christ is as they submit to and cooperate with His Spirit. So when Paul says that someone behaving in a certain way will not inherit the kingdom of God, he's talking about when someone's behavior clearly indicates that they are functioning from their own devices, their own fear, aggression, or bodily cravings. And this, when you understand the bedrock of Paul's thinking, makes perfect sense. 

     If one is not submitted to and in cooperation with the Spirit of Christ, it's not going to be Jesus Christ acting and speaking through that person. They're not going to be "inheriting" His person, power, or attributes as long as they are submitted to their own ego/mind/identity produced by their own malfunctioning neurology. They've unplugged, so to speak. They're not "making their home in Him." They're not "walking in the Spirit," and as such are not going to produce the fruit of the Spirit as Jesus Himself said, "without Me you can't do anything at all."

     In the light of this understanding, let's look at 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 which reads, "Or don't you know that behaving in the wrong way will not inherit the kingdom of God? Don't be led astray; neither male whores nor idolaters nor adulterers nor weak, self-indulgent people nor those committing pederasty nor thieves nor avaricious, not alcoholics, not slanderers, not plunderers will inherit the kingdom of God." Virtually everything here listed can be ascribed to one of these three survival responses (malfunctioning in human beings) in some way: fear, aggression, and bodily cravings, all of which indicate disconnection from the Spirit of Christ. It is not a matter of any of these practices automatically damning someone to hell, but that the person is submitting to their own flesh rather than the Spirit of Christ. Further, it is clear from Paul's other writings that he never intended this list or any other he wrote to be additional rules or commandments for Christians to try and keep, but rather a practical instruction that one cannot be in submission to the root causes of these behaviors and manifest Christ at the same time. No one can be enslaved to two masters, and no one can be enslaved to one's malfunctioning responses of fear, aggression, or bodily cravings and be enslaved to the Spirit of Christ at the same time. It just isn't possible.

*(It should here be noted that the word "malakos" is frequently translated as either "catamite" or "homosexual" in modern translations. The word itself means "soft, gentle, delicate, self-indulgent, morally weak, faint-hearted, or cowardly." The word "arsenokoites" is frequently translated "sodomite" and this is technically the correct usage, but it is my understanding based on other early Christian writings that what was meant was the practice of pederasty, that is, older men sodomizing younger boys, which was a common cultural practice in ancient Greece and Rome. Finally, the word "pornos," frequently translated as "fornicator" actually means male whore, specifically such as might be found in pagan temple worship, but could be applied more generally as a pejorative as well.)

If God is Here, Why Do All I Sense is Nothing?

      It's easy, so very easy, to feel like God isn't there; like the lights have gone out and you're completely in the dark. But He is. It's easy for two reasons, and they're two reasons we must always keep in mind when we feel like the lights have gone out.

The first reason is "what" He is. Because all of creation, everything we interact with, everything around us and we ourselves, is essentially code written and executed using His own Being and energy. Without His Being and Presence we do not exist and cannot exist independently from His existence. As a result, we cannot distinguish Him "physically" (for lack of a better word) from everything else. We cannot distinguish or detect Him using our five senses. He is both omnipresent and infinite. There is and can be nowhere that He is not or does not exist, because everywhere in space and time, every dimension, every particle of matter or transmitter of energy depends upon His existence for their own.
The second reason is ourselves. Because of our own inherent malfunction, the fear which dominates and drives our behavior and thinking (and from which our "ego/mind/identity" is literally built) cuts us off from sensing Him, because He is love. Love (agape) and fear cannot coexist in the same space. Fear or panic, which is really a better descriptive term for this, is a physical, neurological survival response which focuses only on what the brain thinks it needs to survive, either in terms of needs or dealing with threats. It has to be bypassed or "rendered inert" before we can even begin to sense or feel Him and the love that He is with us and around us.
Our own brains, when we are engaged with and functioning from our own malfunctioning minds, are what plunge us into the darkness and make us stumble around blindly, even if His Light is shining full blast around us. A man who shuts his own eyes cannot see the light, and a man who shuts his own ears cannot hear the music.
Or perhaps another way of looking at it is that, there are documented cases where, when there has been a deep psychological trauma, the brain will literally shut down all processing for the part of the body associated with that trauma in order to protect the psyche, the EMI. One such case is when a woman walked in on her husband having sex with someone else, and she was immediately stricken blind. There was nothing physically wrong with her eyes. Her brain had just shut down the visual processing center so she couldn't see.
For whatever reason, believing it to be a trauma which the psyche can't handle, the malfunction within the human brain shuts down our ability to naturally sense and process God's presence around us much like that woman's brain shut down her visual processing region. As a result, our ability to sense Him is spotty and imperfect in the best of circumstances, and has much to do with our own submission to and cooperation with the Spirit of Christ. And the more entrenched we are within that panic, within functioning from our own malfunctioning EMI, the harder it becomes and the more entrenched the darkness we experience.
What we always have to keep in mind is that, as dark and silent as it appears to we who are blind and deaf, He is still always right here, right now, where each one of us is individually. He is always right here, and right now. That does not and cannot change, regardless of what our brains are telling us. It is hard, very hard, to believe that something is there when our brains are refusing to process its existence, but that does not make its presence any less real. And it does not make His presence, and His love any less real either.

A Wager in the Spirit of Pascal

 I would like to posit a sort of "Pascal's Wager." 

     For those who don't know, Pascal's Wager was initially proposed by Blaise Pascal, a French Philosopher who made the proposition that if a person believes in God and does what He wants and it turns out that God doesn't exist, the worst that can happen is that he is remembered for living an upright and virtuous life as a good man. But if a person refuses to believe in God and do what He wants and it turns out that He does exist, then the worst that can happen is that this person will spend eternity in hellfire.

     So, in the spirit of Pascal's Wager, I would like to posit something similar. If one believes that the Gospel, the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, has little to do with justification if anything, that is, the forgiveness of one's sins (Penal Substitutionary Atonement), and everything to do with the union with, submission to, and cooperation with the Spirit of Christ, manifesting Jesus Christ through that person, and it turns out that it was about believing in Jesus for the forgiveness of sins all along, what is the worst that can happen? The person's sins are still forgiven because He believed in Jesus Christ, and he is remembered as a Christlike man. 

     But if a person believes in the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ for the forgiveness of sins only (Penal Substitutionary Atonement), and then attempts to be a "righteous" man by keeping commandments (something which Scripture is explicit about being impossible), refusing to believe he can turn control of himself over to the Spirit of Christ and teaching others it's only about forgiveness and trying to keep commandments, and it turn out that that's not what it's all about at all, but it's about submission to and cooperation with the Spirit of Christ, then what's the worst that can happen? The person lives under the enslavement of his own sinful flesh, continuously subject to his own fear, anger, and bodily cravings, and unable to do what God wants because as Paul wrote, "those who are in the flesh cannot please God." Worse than this, as Jesus said, "The one who doesn't make his home in Me dries up, is tossed out like a branch, and they collect them for the furnace to be burned." And even worse than this, he teaches others to be like himself.

     So, this is my proposed "Pascal's Wager" to those who believe the most important effect of His death, burial, and resurrection is the forgiveness of their sins. I would think the desired path would be obvious.

The Only Three Temptations That Exist

      There are only three things we are actually tempted by, and everything else is a product of our acting on those three thngs. The three things are fear, aggression, and bodily cravings; the chief of the three being fear. It is perfectly natural and normal to feel these things, as they are a normal part of our psychology as human beings. But the temptation is not to feel these things, but to take matters into our own hands and act on them. To let our own malfunctioning survival responses, which these are, take control and drive our behaviors. It is engaging with and acting on these three things which disengage us from cooperating with the Spirit of Christ and send us down the path of error and death.

     Think on it. Why do people steal? Murder? Lie? Gossip? Want what they don't have? Eat too much? Hoard things? Have sex recklessly? All of these "sins" can be traced ultimately to one or more of these three things as their causes. Their brains are responding to what they perceive as either survival threats or survival necessities, and are pushing the person to act accordingly to deal with them.

     When a temptation arises, ask yourself, "What am I afraid of happening or not happening?", "What am I angry at?", or "What does my body think it has to have in order to survive right now?" Ask, "What am I attached to that I'm afraid of losing?" or "What am I averse to that I'm afraid of gaining?" It is because of these attachments and aversions that Jesus laid down the conditions of discipleship (letting go of earthly attachments which can trigger the fear response) that He did. Fear and Agape cannot coexist in the same space. Either the God who is Agape flows through you, or you subject yourself to your own fear. You cannot serve two masters.

     Pay attention to what triggers your fear responses, and work at letting those things go internally if they cannot be let go externally.

Why Modern Christianity Looks Nothing Like Early Christianity

      Modern Christian theological, teaching, debate, and discourse is a reaction to those theological ideas which came immediately before. There is a constant debate, for example, about whether or not "the Rapture" is pre-tribulation, post-tribulation, or mid-tribulation, and divisions and sprung up over this. Yet it would surprise and even shock many Christians to learn that this debate only really dates to the early to mid-nineteenth century when a certain group of Pentecostals in Scotland prophesied a pre-tribulation rapture, and the idea was brought back to the United States by John Darby. Prior to the nineteenth century, this idea wasn't even a blip on the radar.

     Most of the modern theology which the American churches rest on can trace its roots back to the Reformation as a reaction to church leadership within the Western Roman Catholic Church that was abusing its spiritual authority. Prior to the sixteenth century, "Sola Scriptura" was unheard of, and the idea that the Eucharistic bread and wine could be anything else but the real presence of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ had been anathematized for over a thousand years. Martin Luther's own nascent teachings on Penal Substitutionary Atonement were themselves a reaction against the spiritual abuse by the Catholic leadership. But in the writings of the Church prior to Luther, you don't actually find most of the teachings which the modern American churches consider important enough to argue and divide over. It could be a fair statement that the "Christianity" which much of the American church practices was invented as a chain of reactions to the abuse which was happening in Western Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. To be fair, Luther and the Reformers were, in their own way, trying to return to the primitive faith before what they saw as the Roman corruption. The problem was that they didn't know what that faith actually looked like (Luther initially wanted to replicate Eastern Orthodoxy but went a different direction when he realized how different they were theologically from himself, indoctrinated a Western Christian), and they eschewed anything which remotely resembled the Roman Catholic Church in any way, often fighting with each other verbally and physically over how much of traditional teaching to keep or throw out. The next hundred to two hundred years after Luther was both wild and brutal, and resulted in tens of thousands of deaths.

     When a modern American Christian (and in particular those from the Protestant branch of the family tree) reads the primitive writings of the Early Church Fathers, it can be a bit jarring, even disorienting at first. Many Christians who have been taught in Evangelical Protestant churches, or in the Baptist traditions in particular, will often reject their authenticity outright because of how much they appear to contradict their particular branch of theology, born as it was out of theologies devised 1500 years after they were written.

     The writings which fall into this category were written between the late first century and the very early second, and were penned or dictated by Bishops and church leaders who were second and third generation from the Apostles themselves. Polycarp is a great example as he was a student of John the Apostle in his early years. Ignatius of Antioch was the Bishop of Antioch who was martyred (torn apart by lions in the coliseum in Rome) in 105 CE. In addition to other authors such as Clement of Rome, and the author of the Epistle of Barnabas, there is also the Didache, a very early Christian catechetical text, which has been dated to around 70 CE or thereabouts.

       The earliest writings of the church, when taken without our theological baggage of the last two thousand years, describe a faith and church gatherings that look nothing like Modern Christianity of really any stripe. The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches, as much as they claim descent from these early forerunners are really only mere shadows and echoes of them, themselves really born of reactions to theological debates which arose between the fourth and the eleventh centuries, not to mention the reactions to the Protestant Reformation and its daughter denominations.

     One does not find the five solas in the earliest writings of the Church. Neither does one find the pomp, grandeur, or political machinations of the twin daughters of the Imperial Catholic Church within them. One does not find any reference to penal substitutionary atonement theory, the rapture, or nearly any other thing which we fight over, argue over, or consider to be the "core" of Christian doctrine.

     What do we find in these ancient letters and teaching materials? In the words of the Didache, "There are two ways, one of life and one of death, and there is a great difference between the two ways. The way of life is to love the Lord your God with all of your heart, strength, mind, and soul, and to love your neighbor as yourself, and whatever you don't want someone to do to you, don't do it to them." What we find is an emphasis on living how Jesus taught, and walking how He walked. We find them encouraging love, compassion, and unity among all the brethren, and clarifying what behavior followed the way of death, what we would call the "works of the flesh" as Paul described it. We find them seeking to fill their minds with whatever is true, noble, and of good report, and above all, to chase after the prize of the high calling of God with Christ Jesus. After that, we find these church leaders trying to manage and administrate different situations between different church gatherings and bishops/presbyters. As much as they did not look like the modern "Christian" churches at all, these were the church leaders and church gatherings that spread the Way across the Roman Empire and beyond the uttermost parts of their world.

     There is frequently great confusion, and many theological explanations and excuses, as to why we don't see the same demonstrations of power in the modern churches that they did in the primitive, ancient churches. The answer doesn't require a convoluted, three hour sermon with references. It's because the modern "Christian" churches neither teach nor practice what the ancient church did, and the ancient church would not recognize the modern churches as Christian at all.

Echoes of Judgment Day

 And this is the judgment that the light had come into the world and human beings loved the darkness more than the light, because their works were deranged. Because every single person practicing foul things hates the light and doesn't come to the light, so that his works wouldn't be brought to light. - John 3:19-20, my own translation this afternoon.

As I've been reading the news, it occurred to me today that there's a trend that's been repeating over and over again. This trend that occurred to me can be found in both mainstream media, and niche news sites that cover more geeky topics. The more I thought about it, the more of a pattern I saw over the last several years that appears to be speeding up and intensifying. This theme or pattern is one of the unveiling of old wrongdoings and mistakes, and the intense reaction against that unveiling. 

     Sometimes it's just on a personal level, at other times it's on the collective level of a nation, but it seems in these latter days that everyone's hidden sins are coming to light, and it's making people very, very angry. It's disturbing and unsettling them, and they're lashing out, trying to either cover them back up, or destroy those bringing either their individual works or their collective works into the light to be exposed for everyone to see. And in the process of trying to hide their works again, they only expose themselves all the more. 

     And my thoughts turned to these verses in the Gospel of John, and also to the very concept of "judgment day" when everyone's works are exposed for all to see. Another thought was the term "day of anger," or "day of wrath." These latter days seem to be filled with anger, wrath, and judgment, not of God, but of human beings towards each other as the consequences of their wrongdoing and selfishness are on display for everyone. Everyone appears to be angry with everyone else, and everyone appears to be judging everyone else. And it's only getting worse, not better.

     How does one stop judgment day, or the day of wrath? By letting go of judgment and anger, forgiving, and loving one another as God with Christ loved us. One stops judgment day by doing what Jesus taught, and following His Way, because judgment day is caused by our own selfishness, judgment, fear, and anger. The fruit of our own actions and words is what judges and condemns us.

On the Holiness of God

 Another word which is often misunderstood and even abused by theologians is the word "holiness," in Greek, "hagiosune," and it's cognate "holy," in Greek, "hagios;" and in particular when this word is applied to God.

     The root word itself, like it's Hebrew equivalent, "qadosh," means "set apart for sacred use." The lexical definition for the Greek first lists the word as meaning, "devoted to the gods," and thus "sacred, holy," in a positive sense, and "accursed, execrable" in a negative sense. This is what the word means when applied to objects, animals, and people.

     But then, if this is the meaning of the word, how does it apply when God says, "be holy, because I am holy"?

     A common refrain among theologians and pastors is that the holiness of God means that God either can't be in the presence of "sin," or must destroy it where He finds it. It means that God is intolerant of anything which doesn't meet His standards. They use it as the reason why God needs blood in order to forgive wrongdoing and "sin." Except God Himself never says this in the Scriptures, no matter how they are twisted.

     God is holy, but what does that mean? It means that God is different, set apart from us in who He is. But why is He set apart? If He were the vengeful, "holy" tribal deity that many make Him out to be, how would He really be any different or set apart than any other conqueror or warlord throughout history? Or how would He be set apart from the tribal gods which our ancestors worshipped once upon a time like Zeus, Thor, Ba'al, or any other of the "hero" gods of the pagan pantheons? By attributing to Him this kind of "holiness" which many do, we don't set Him apart, we create an idol and slap His name on it, something which He expressly forbade.

     So, God is not like these other, very human false gods. So how is He set apart from them, and from us?

     First, God is not subject to the same malfunction we are. Fear isn't a thing for Him. As the Scripture says, "God is love." Fear and love cannot coexist. If God is love, then He cannot be triggered by fear, and because God the Father is not human or anything like human, He has no survival responses to be triggered. He loves. He seeks the right balance for His creation. Holding grudges or holding one's wrongs against another is a foreign concept to who He is. Where human justice is about retribution, His justice is about restoration and reconciliation, recovering the malfunctioning and erring person and restoring them to a right state of being. Nothing threatens Him, because nothing can threaten Him and this is alien and set apart from the human experience.

     Second, God as He is, is not confined to limitations. He is set apart just by virtue of what He is. He exists at every point of space and time, and outside of them stretching into infinity. Space and time move through Him, not vice versa. He exists in every dimension which exists, and every universe within the multiverse. He is the foundation of all creation, and all creation is like code written using His own Being as a medium of execution. He is set apart because everything each one of us individually experiences, He experiences with us, right there in that moment. He laughs with us, rejoices with us, mourns with us, cries with us, hears what we hear, sees what we see, and feels what we feel. There isn't a sub-atomic particle out of place and He doesn't know about it, because that particle is merely a vibrating dimensional string written into His "surface" and shaped entirely of His own Being. God is both completely other, and completely and intimately right here with us.

     God is holy, because His character, His Being, is entirely founded on love for others, for His creation. He is set apart and holy, because we don't understand that. Our brains can't process that. When He acts, it is because He is love, not because He is angry, vengeful, or dictatorial. Our problem is that we, being malfunctioning, can't fathom what that means, because our brains can't actually fathom what that love is, looks like, or even means, because in their malfunction, they only really understand attachment, aversion, and the fear and anger which result from them.

     We need to take a hard look at how we are portraying this Being that we so inadequately call "God," and stop blaspheming His holiness by portraying His holiness as though He weren't set apart, but just like us.