This is the second in a series. It is still longer than a
typical blog, because this is a really detailed topic that I feel very strongly
about. Very simply, it is time for all citizens, let alone all Christians, to
fight for the right to establish their religion and to exercise thereof freely.
I mean, obviously this was in the founding fathers’s mind in the forefront –
after the Constitution this was the first amendment in the Bill of Rights,
right? Today, though, we wimpy wussy foot around talking about our religion.
Happy holidays? Baloney – and what holidays are those? Christmas, for me, so
Merry Christmas. Easter? Actually, I celebrate the Feast of the Resurrection;
Easter is a pagan holiday honoring Oestre the goddess of fertility and birth,
which is why all the eggs and chickens and rabbits hopping around.
Discrimination?
Wait a minute? Where did discrimination come from, you ask?
It’s right SDM, smack dab in the middle, of the whole brouhaha. If I am, in
accordance with your definition,
non-accepting or intolerantof your
particular beliefs, then, by nature of public misbeliefs of today, I must be
discriminating against you. This is obviously and particularly the case if I
have proclaimed myself a “Christian” and somehow you infer that I think you are
not Christian.
OK, let’s get clear on this. Please, understand completely
from the outset. How strongly do I feel here? This is what Doug Giles had to
say that kicked my mind in to “prolific writing” status:
The Church needs the biblical rebel
spirit of our founders injected back into the evangelical mix instead of this
squishy, pusillanimous, ignoble and compliant crapola that’s currently cranking
through our indolent pulpits and pews. God help the Church to lose its
cowardly, effeminate bent in these critical days. Amen. – Doug Giles
I always said that, when the revolution comes and they are
lining up people who they try and find to be guilty of Christianity, they would
grab me, stab me and slab me without a trial, that there would no need to find
evidence, that my true colors are clear. You shall know we are Christians by our love, and there are a lot more
reasons that you should know I am a Christian.
As an aside, it’s actually neither an appropriate nor exact
demarcation to call me a Christian.
Oh, yeah, as far as the general public, the media, the family, my folks, my
friends and my church community associates are concerned Christian is a
convenient tag. But: did you realize the word Christian only occurs 4 times in
the New Testament (my version) and all 4 times it is a derogatory and disrespectful appelation used by
non-Christians. We, that is to say the
group with whom I would have associated and with which I now identify,
preferred to be and are more appropriately called followers of The Way, or
Disciples (not really a proper noun, but I decided to use it as such to show
specificity rather than just generality).
Since there was a reasonable prolific cult in the late 70’s early 80’s
period, around the time of the Blessed Father and Mother Divine and The Church
of Jesus Christ of What’s Happenin’ Now, whose name was “The Way International,”
I have chosen to eschew saying that I am a follower of The Way, simply because
I don’t want to be associated with that quote. So, if you ask me for my
definitive answer as to what I am and how I believe, I am a Disciple; and, I
suppose more fully and most correctly, I am a Disciple of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We were
discriminated against in the First Century. Nero fiddled, threw us to lions,
burned us – you know, all those things you see in the movies that must have, of
course, actually happened. OK, most of that stuff did happen and pretty much
that way. Watch the Discovery Channel, National Geographic and The History
Channel, if you can miss Ice Road Truckin’ Swamp Pawn Auctioneers, and see some
of the real documentaries about early life of the Disciples (Christians).
Just today (today, for now, being July 12, 2012) I made a
comment, my second cousin made a comment and my oldest daughter made a comment
on Facebook. Had to do with sin, defining sin, going to Hell, who will go to
Hell, if there is a Hell, how do you raise kids, how do you go all in at Texas
Hold’em – you know, the general kind of humdrum discussion. We are talking here
a very fundamental Baptistally bent person, a devout lifetime Catholic, and a
sockdologizing old bald fat coot with a heart of gold and an ankle of mush who
has tripped through Southern Baptist, American Baptist, Roman Catholic,
Episcopalian, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and Lutheran Church –
Missouri Synod. I guess I could also mention dalliances into Eric Berne and
Claude Steiner with the somebody’s ok somebody’s not ok analyze my transaction
school, Henri Nouwen, Paul Tillich, Dietrich Bonhoffer, Charles Stanley, Andy
Stanley, Jamie Bakker, Jack (aka C.S. Lewis), Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov and
Robert Heinlein. My apologies to the others I have forgotten. In my bottom
line, you might ask, what is it that I fundamentally believe as the Disciple of
the Lord I profess to be. Lots of
things are variable and optional among those I know to be Disciples and those
who profess to be Christians, but the salient points of import to me are:
1.
The Great
Commission – found in Matthew 28:16-20
Meanwhile, the eleven disciples were on
their way to Galilee, headed for the mountain Jesus had set for their reunion. The
moment they saw him they worshiped him. Some, though, held back, not sure about
worship, about risking themselves totally. Jesus, undeterred, went right ahead
and gave his charge: "God authorized and commanded me to commission you: Go
out and train everyone you meet, far and near, in this way of life, marking
them by baptism in the threefold name: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Then
instruct them in the practice of all I have commanded you. I’ll be with you as
you do this, day after day after day, right up to the end of the age."
2.
One Way
– found in John 3, along with the 3:16 on the sign of the rainbow afro bespectaled
guy at every football and basketball game:
folks, if was all just that “God so loved the world that he gave his
only begotten son that whosoever believeth in him shall not perish but have
everlasting life,” things would be so
simple. I have to read verses before and after to get the context:
5 Unless a person submits to this original
creation—the ‘wind hovering over the water’ creation, the invisible moving the
visible, a baptism into a new life—it’s not possible to enter God’s kingdom.
6 When
you look at a baby, it’s just that: a body you can look at and touch. But the
person who takes shape within is formed by something you can’t see and
touch—the Spirit—and becomes a living spirit.
7
"So don’t be so surprised when I tell you that you have to be ‘born
from above’—out of this world, so to speak.
8
You know well enough how the wind blows this way and that. You hear it
rustling through the trees, but you have no idea where it comes from or where
it’s headed next. That’s the way it is with everyone ‘born from above’ by the
wind of God, the Spirit of God."
9
Nicodemus asked, "What do you mean by this? How does this
happen?"
10
Jesus said, "You’re a respected teacher of Israel and you don’t
know these basics?
11
Listen carefully. I’m speaking sober truth to you. I speak only of what I know by experience; I give
witness only to what I have seen with my own eyes. There is
nothing secondhand here, no hearsay. Yet instead of facing the evidence and accepting it, you procrastinate
with questions.
12
If I tell you things that are plain as the hand before your face and you
don’t believe me, what use is there in telling you of things you can’t see, the
things of God?
13
"No one has ever gone up into the presence of God except the One
who came down from that Presence, the Son of Man.
14
In the same way that Moses lifted the serpent in the desert so people
could have something to see and then believe, it is necessary for the Son of
Man to be lifted up—
15
and everyone who looks up to him, trusting and expectant, will gain a
real life, eternal life.
16 "This
is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And
this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can
have a whole and lasting life.
17
God didn’t go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an
accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the
world right again.
18 Anyone who trusts in him is acquitted; anyone
who refuses to trust him has long since been under the death sentence without
knowing it. And why? Because of
that person’s failure to believe in the one-of-a-kind Son of God when
introduced to him.
3.
One End
– Revelation 21:
6Then
he said, "It’s happened. I’m A to Z. I’m the Beginning, I’m the
Conclusion. From Water-of-Life Well I give freely to the thirsty.
7
Conquerors inherit all this. I’ll be God to them, they’ll be sons and
daughters to me.
8
But for the rest—the feckless and faithless, degenerates and murderers,
sex peddlers and sorcerers, idolaters and all liars—for them it’s Lake Fire and
Brimstone. Second death!"
Terse
recap and leaving everyone hanging now until I pick up part 3, and strictly
because this is already longer than a 1-day read should be:
It
is our job, directly commanded to Disciples by the Lord, to go into the world and preach the gospel to
everybody. Not just the ones who want to hear it, not just where we want to go,
not just where they want us to go. It’s like Stansfield in The Professional screaming”I MEAN EVERYBODY!!!”
That
gospel we preach is what we live: there is only one Way to get out. Unless a
person submits to this original creation it’s not possible to enter God’s
kingdom. Anyone who
trusts in Him is acquitted; anyone who refuses to trust him has long since been
under the death sentence without knowing it. Totally binary, yes no, 0-1, zero
sum game, no push, no edge to the house or the player, straight up.
The end result is binary,
too. Yes no. In out. Zero sum. Paradise as the sons and daughters of God orthe Lake Fire and Brimstone,
second death. Not maybe. Not for a while. No purgatory thing. The word is forever, kinda like kids saying what-ev’-er today. Always. Eternity.
Really long; even longer than that.
Think
about that overnight. I may be up again as soon as tomorrow.
