A thought-provoking point by Johnny Ova

The following post by Johnny Ova on Facebook says much of what I was trying to say in my post here yesterday.

I do take some issue with the "... spoke with were the people the Church could not stand. They HATED Jesus because He chose to love and serve them rather than the religious" and "The love of Jesus is so deep, it's offensive to the flesh." We need to be clearer about the actual social, political and religious conditions that Jesus lived in. Amy-Jill Levine (see here and here for starters) is tremendously helpful in this area. It seems to me that "the flesh" yearns for the love of Jesus. An old Old Regular Baptist hymn puts this very well. But I think that the main points being made in Johnny Ova in his post are sound.

Johnny Ova wrote: 

How weak does the Church think love is.

It was because of His love that I was forever changed.

You don't need to change, then meet Jesus
.
You meet Jesus and then change.

I was told to repent and change so many times and it did nothing but make be rebel even more. It wasn't until I experienced Jesus on a personal level, right where I was at...that changed my life and transformed my heart.

You don't earn His love with your choices. You already are loved by a perfect love. And it is in that meeting with perfect love, that all fear is cast away and transformation happens.

The Church is so scared of Jesus washing the feet of a "sinner" because they feel like they haven't "earned" their feet to be washed.

Every person that Jesus hung out with, named Apostles, ate with, spoke with were the people the Church could not stand. They HATED Jesus because He chose to love and serve them rather than the religious.

The love of Jesus is so deep, it's offensive to the flesh. He needs to love who we love and hate who we hate or else it's not "Christian".

A HUGE wake up call is taking place. Not to the non believer, but to the believer. A Revelation of who Jesus is, will be, and who He always was.

About Temptation And Testimony

A friend of mine in West Virginia recently offered up the following testimony:

So i noticed something today about temptation. On days that i dont really get into prayer, or just read some of the bible basically just so i can say i read for the day, and also when i stay to myself and don't really interact with people, ive found that im more susceptible to sin and temptation. Today ive prayed throughout the day, also prayed for others, witnessed to people and just prayed with others and brought the name of Jesus to peoples attention, ive realized that temptation wasnt as strong. When we witness and step out in Jesus name, thats where we get our strength. People want to pray as a last resort, but we need to put our relationship with God first. Im preaching to myself as well. Our Lord is a good Father. This year i have gained so much wisdom and knowledge through his Holy spirit, and the word of God. i still have a long way to go, for instance there are times i feel i havent learned anything and thats when the Lord will minister to me, and showing me that ive learned more than what i think i have. I wanna stay plyable, and always ready to learn more about our Savior. I know sometimes people get tired of me talking about Jesus and sometimes they might think im acting high and mighty which isnt my intentions. I just want others to know his goodness, and his mercy and grace. Also want others to know him the way i am coming to know him. I love yall i pray this helps someone in Jesus name.

This is real talk, and its sincere and comes from a place of great struggle and growth.

Now, no one should confuse me with being any kind of spiritual person or any kind of counsellor, but I want to offer up a few points in reaction to this testimony.

It's a true story that if you're trying to do any kind of internal work, including the work of repentance and salvation, that you're going to face incredible difficulties if you try to do it alone. Even monks most often do their work in preparation to reenter the world or do their work in communities. Our brother has his finger on the pulse here.

I get what our brother is saying about prayer coming first, not last, and I will offer that we need to somehow find the balance between prayer and good works and then turn each into the other. What I mean is that prayer could or should be a good work or deed and that the work that we do with others to uplift them can or should be prayers. Doing something prayerfully is a step towards that, but why don't we push it more often and go further?

In the book Raising Lazarus there is an especially moving and real scene in which someone is trying to help someone living in a homeless camp in West Virginia who has a substance abuse disorder problem and has a badly infected feet and is about to get rousted by the police. The person washing the houseless person's feet and trying to assist them was so involved in that work that it became a prayer, I think. The line separating our best desires that lead to justice and peace and wholeness, on the one hand, and holiness, liberation, and salvation on the other are more fluid than we think.

Most Christians will pray for a person and for easing or a solution to whatever difficulties that person is facing at a particular moment. Perhaps we get this wrong. It may be more meaningful and helpful to pray for the person, take the basic affirmative actions with them to help them get their life together, try to see that person in the contexts of their history and their family's histories, try to meet their basic needs without enabling their difficulties and disempowering them, make this about values and prayer and action, and build movements to make life for all of us easier.

It sometimes feels to me as if the "thoughts and prayers" messages we send out and praying for specific solutions to what we think are root problems is either manipulative or sentimental. We don't intend this to be so, but in the United States we have a Christianity that often holds to manipulation and sentimentality even as the churches empty out.  

Our brother speaks for so many of us when he says "i still have a long way to go, for instance there are times i feel i havent learned anything and thats when the Lord will minister to me, and showing me that ive learned more than what i think i have." I think that about every person who is open to salvation feels this. When someone says this out loud the common response from many believers is to tell the person to pray for wisdom and strength. I think that that's good advice as far as it goes, but someone should be offering an embrace and assuring people who are seeking something in spirituality or religion that they're better and smarter and more creative than they probably think they are and encourage people to start with the small things. The theologian Richard Rohr suggests that people learn to love a common object or being---a rock or a tree or a pet, for instance---before they try to love God.

We live in a world where love is distorted. We're told to love God, but our ideas of love come from Hollywood or are sentimental and so it is no mystery why people feel that they are failing to love and to know God. We're not going to fit God into anything, much less into our ideas of love that come from corporations and romance novels. We're told to think of God as Father, but so many people have never known a real loving father, or they never had a functional family and cannot grasp what God as Father really means. We set impossible goals for ourselves and one another and we crash. Most of us need to start with the small things and build from there.

The familiar point that God is love goes over most of our heads, and its an arguable formulation anyway, but there are enough good people around who testify that they found total love and acceptance and forgiveness in God and their testimony is mostly beyond question. Two points come to me from this. First, that we should not be quick to tell people who live different lives than we do that God doesn't love them, or that God may love them but certainly hates whatever sins we think they're committing. Be ready to accept the testimony of others and watch over time how that testimony plays out. Second, love has hidden and personal qualities---its intimate by definition---so we have to look for ways to publicly acknowledge God's love and God's working within us and amongst us. For me this means understanding social justice as the public evidence of God and God's love. I hope that you agree with me on this.

I think that one of the biggest walls we face when we want to find God's "goodness, and his mercy and grace" and share this with others is generational trauma. We pray and study with the thought that our relationship with Jesus Christ is only personal in the first place. But I want to offer up that our salvation depends on so much else. We come to our moments of prayer and good works as human beings with family and social histories and these have to be addressed, and especially so when these are the flashpoints for our pain.

Our brother's testimony above stands by itself, and nothing that I'm saying is intended to be critical. He's teaching us something. Every voice matters. Please listen up.

Some things to do, some things to smile on, some things to ponder

"The mountains are my bones, the rivers my veins. The forests are my thoughts 

and the stars are my dreams. The ocean is my heart, its pounding is my pulse.

The songs of the earth write the music of my soul."

"I sing because I'm happy. I sing because I'm free, His eye is on the sparrow

and I know he watches me."

Steve Cline on climbing mountains and our faith journeys

Friends, this is our third post from Steve Cline. Steve lives in West Virginia. I think that this post carries a great message to end one year and begin a new year with. We all have tough climbs, and some of them are dangerous and not everything that we cling to along the way is going to be helpful but our journeys have meaning and value and can take us to new heights and better vistas with the proper solidarity and guidance. This post also helps reinforce a point that is a basic premise of this blog: wisdom, beauty, and creativity are all around us and amongst us.

Dr. Ralph Stanley's "Great High Mountain" carries a similar testimony and message.

 

Some thoughts from the heart

By Debra Lynn Kimball--A touching drawing 

of saying goodbye.

 

Consider Who And How You Love

 

Family 5 Gospel Singers (Bassett VA) - I know Jesus Loves Me

Family 5 Gospel Singers (Bassett VA) - I know Jesus Loves Me

 

Our solidarity with Pride

 

Our On-Going Solidarity With Pride

 

Pastor Anthony F Gadson---Just Another Day The Lord Has kept Me

 

Understanding John 14:5-7 with Jim Palmer

The following comes from Jim Palmer's Facebook page and has been lifted without permission. I hope that readers will find Jim Palmer's Facebook page and engage with him.

Question: Jim, there's the verse where Jesus says, "No one comes to the Father except through me." I don't believe that verse anymore, but I don't know what to do with it.

Response: The entire statement attributed to Jesus in the Book of John reads, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."

The message of Jesus to the world was that there is no separation between ourselves and the ultimate reality that is at the heart of all things, which we most experience as love, peace, happiness and belonging.

When Jesus said, "I AM the truth", he was saying that he was a human expression of this ultimate truth and reality. Jesus wanted humankind to know that we are not separated, divided, or in conflict with this transcendent reality we touch and feel deep within our hearts.

When Jesus said "no one comes to the Father except through me," Jesus was saying that the entire paradigm of separation - separation from love, separation from belonging, separation from worth, separation from hope, separation from wholeness - is a farce. We will never know these realities fully in that paradigm of separation, which requires striving to achieve them. The only way of knowing them is through the truth that Jesus demonstrated, namely that these realities are knit into the very nature and essence of our being.

The Christian religion often makes it difficult to understand verses like these because it built a religion based upon the separation paradigm, which was largely constructed by the teachings of Paul, who shoehorned Jesus into it.

The way the Christian religion interprets John 14:6 typically comes off sounding like this: "Listen up everyone! You know all those other religions and religious leaders and their teachings about God? Well, guess what? They are all deluded and wrong! It's me and my way or the highway to hell. You can only be right with God if [insert Paul's elaborate theology or denominational requirements for salvation]." That interpretation couldn't be any further from the truth of what was meant by these words of Jesus.
Jesus was basically saying, "You strive to be right with God, yet I have shown you that you and God are not separated but one. There is no other truth to invent or scheme up. Even if you tried, you could not ever come up with anything better than the way it already is."

Jesus said, “I AM the truth.”

He didn’t say “I KNOW the truth,” as if truth is a piece of knowledge held by the mind. Neither did he say, “I HAVE the truth,” as if truth is a possession you can pass along to another. Jesus said, “I AM the truth.”

Truth is a reality at the level of being.

Truth is not something outside to be discovered, it is an actuality inside to be realized. What is this actuality? Oneness with God. This is your true Self.

Jesus is the Truth that God and humankind are one. This is the Truth that sets you free.

Hope that helps.
Jim

P.S.: The relevant verses from are here:

5 Thomas said to him, “Master, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?”

6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way and the truth* and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

7 If you know me, then you will also know my Father. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”

8 Philip said to him, “Master, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us.”

9 Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you for so long a time and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?

10 Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak on my own. The Father who dwells in me is doing his works.

11 Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else, believe because of the works themselves.

12 Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these, because I am going to the Father.

13 And whatever you ask in my name, I will do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.

14 If you ask anything of me in my name, I will do it.

Our answer to injustice, violence, and oppression...

 

7 VERSES CHRISTIAN FUNDAMENTALISTS MUST IGNORE

I'm not sure if I agree with everything said in this post or not, but I do agree with its central points: This comes from Jim Rigby writing on the Progressive Methodists Facebook page.

7 VERSES CHRISTIAN FUNDAMENTALISTS MUST IGNORE

“A TIME FOR EVERY PURPOSE UNDER HEAVEN”
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 is a strange little passage that rejects any rigid moral absolutes. Instead, Ecclesiastes says “To everything there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven.”

“THE SABBATH WAS MADE FOR HUMANS NOT HUMANS FOR THE SABBATH”
Fundamentalists sometimes attack progressives as "humanists." In Mark 2:27 Jesus defends those who place human need over religious institutions. He says the Sabbath (perhaps a metaphor for all religion) was always intended to serve human beings not the other way around. The Sabbath was understood as a call to value human rights and ecological sustainability over religious rules and institutions long before Christianity.

“LITERALISM KILLS”
2 Corinthians 3:6 says, “God has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant—not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” If Christianity is to be a religion of love it must come from internalized compassion not heartless and mindless obedience to an external law.

“THE NEW COVENANT OF CHRISTIANITY DOES NOT DISPLACE JUDAISM”
The “new” covenant was being talked about long before Christianity. Jeremiah and Isaiah both spoke of a new covenant for Israel that would be written in people’s hearts and minds not just in external codes (See Jeremiah 31:31-38)

“JUSTICE IS NOT LIMITED BY ANY BORDER”
Leviticus 19: 34 says, “The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am your God.” Deuteronomy 27:19 goes even further, “Cursed is anyone who withholds justice from the foreigner, the orphan or the widow.” Capitalistic Christian nationalism completely rejects this foundation.

YOU CAN’T LOVE GOD AND HATE PEOPLE
The First Epistle of John says in chapter 4 that we can’t love God and be indifferent to human beings. “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates a member of their human family, that person is a liar; for one who does not love their human family whom they have seen cannot love God whom they have not seen. And this commandment we have from Jesus: whoever loves God must also love their human family”

“WHOEVER HAS LOVE HAS GOD”
The Epistle of John also says, “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.” In other words, a loving Atheist is closer to the message of Christ than a loveless Christian.

And a note from us:

Why I am, or try to be, a Universalist...

 Why I am, or try to be, a Universalist:

It does not seem logical or scriptural that God demands fear instead of love and that fear creates love or leads to love. A loving God would not condemn anyone to an eternal hell be or expect obedience and love as a means of escaping hell. If hell is distance from God and some form of punishment, we experience that here---but we can also experience something of heaven. Is hell as strong or as enduring as God? No, it can't be---and so it cannot be eternal and in an eternal conflict with God. Which is stronger, love or fear?  Love is, and so God has the victory. There can be no tied contest between God and hell or love and fear. We pray that the Holy Spirit is "everywhere present and fills all things," meaning that the Holy Spirit would be present even in an eternal hell if it existed. God's love will not abandon us even in hell. When Christ cried on the cross “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” was He not speaking for all people for all time, and would God not hear His prayer?

Between now and the time of our passing our job is to love and serve others, being as human as we can be within God's abiding image, and let God be God and leave divine judgement to God.  

Learning More About God Through Prayer - Brian Zahnd

 

Marz

 

"God Did It" (Everything That Happened To Me That Was Good) RCC Sanctuary Choir

 

PJ Morton, Zacardi Cortez & Darrel Walls Sing "So In Love" & "All In His Plan" | Super Bowl Gospel

 

A few words about God...

 

The Happiness, Presence, & Transformation Of Love