Yes, your 'church' is about you - not Jesus

Ok – back to our chronological walk through the Gospels. We're seeking and finding the real Jesus as He presented Himself to us – and not in the sinful human ways those who've so long called themselves His "Church" have reinvented Him (as He warned us they would). 

As always, you can find all our previous posts in this series, going through the Gospels chronologically to find the real Jesus, here.

And as always you'll find the scriptures for today are here. (Note that you can change the human-translation version on this scripture page, as suits you. I have NO theological or other tie to the online-bible site I use for this blog – it just lists many human translations to choose from, including the NASB, KJV, The Message, and the NRSV, which are the ones mentioned by those I chat and email with.)

This week, we see Jesus back among those He grew up with – and we find them so ignorant of God's truth they not only refused to recognize God standing right in front of them, but also refused His blessing and healing. If we look, we can easily see the same thing in ourselves, and in what's most loudly called itself "The Church" through the centuries.

Now, at least partly we can understand their failure to really see who Jesus is. They had known Him when He was just a boy, watched Him grow up, known Him as part of His biological family and the social culture of this town. In some ways, it may have been harder for them to recognize who He really was and could do because they'd grown accustomed to understanding Him within a certain mold: son of Mary and Joseph, brother to His brothers and sisters, a craftsman low in social and financial status who made and sold simple, practical things of metal and wood with His family.

Indeed, when Jesus came back He was anything but the guy who used to sit in the dirt and repair plows for the local farmers. Now Jesus was a miracle worker and a wise man, far different from how they wanted to keep understanding Him. And they didn't just ignore or write Him off – they actually got offended. And as we learned last Gospel study, Jesus' healings and blessings matched what people were willing to believe about Him. Therefore, those who should have been closest to Him got almost nothing from Him at all.

Today we make huge mistakes like this all the time, with all sorts of people. We often continue to understand people in the awful ways they were before, ignoring or getting crappy if they seem to be above and beyond that now. In some ways, it's offensive to us when someone stops boozing it up, or backbiting, or stepping on others to get ahead, or rejects living the materialistic lifestyle we're taught to see as "success" (and even as "God's blessing"), if that's the thing we still want to keep doing. Like, how dare someone prove what a life of falsehood and crud I'm choosing, by choosing what's better than that!

But there's another way we do this, a way easily far more dangerous to our souls, if we've been raised in what calls itself "The Church".

For those of us who've grown up in "The Church", or who came to it later and have embraced it long enough to absorb its way of interpreting Jesus, the message of the real Jesus can seem incredibly foreign – and even threatening. We've grown up in the "hometown" of what most loudly calls itself "His Church", and we rest our whole identity on our "hometown" understanding of Jesus, certain beyond certainty that OF COURSE we understand Him better than anyone else – WE GREW UP WITH HIM!

But that understanding is just as flawed as was the understanding the people of Jesus' physical hometown had 2,000 years ago. And when we're confronted with the huge difference between the Jesus we think we know better than anyone and the real Jesus of power and wisdom, oh boy can we get offended! People of "The Church" have turned their backs on, kicked out, born false witness against, attacked, tortured, and even slaughtered people for centuries, all because these other people challenged their "hometown" understanding of Jesus Christ. Sometimes that's just been "hometown" people fighting other "hometown" people over some stupid theological doctrine that means nothing to God. But sometimes it's been "hometown" people just simply refusing to allow Jesus to be who He really is.

Why? Why would "hometown" people refuse to accept Jesus for who He really is?  

• Sometimes we refuse because we like the gilded dirt hole we've committed years of our lives and our egos to. We like the human hierarchy, the remakes of the old covenant temple, the live-in-a-box spirituality that tells us we're doing God's work even though we're not doing it, or we're passionately doing it for all the wrong reasons (which Jesus says doesn't count). Those things make us "feel spiritual" and "connected to God" – even though they are exactly opposite anything Jesus and the rest of the New Testament said to do or live. We forget or ignore that all religions make their members "feel spiritual" and "connected" – so it isn't the feeling that saves us, but following the real Jesus and doing what He says, that actually makes us real Christians.

• Sometimes we refuse because our "hometown" "church" has taught us to fear any thinking that would challenge its authority over our minds and hearts. We shake our heads when we hear of cults that have lead their members even to death – but then we follow, just like the people of 2,000 years ago, our "church" when it leads us even to spiritual death. 

• Sometimes we refuse because if we accepted the real Jesus, and did what He really said, then we'd have to give up pretending to live godly lives, while our hearts were just full of ourselves. So-called "ministers" are most guilty of this. "If I actually accept the real Jesus, then I'll have to give up the position, authority, money, retirement fund, extra-respect, and extra-honor I went to minister-school to get!" But others do this as well, "If I actually accept the real Jesus, then I'd have to give up my pride of position in church, and I'd have to stop chasing money, and I'd have to do more than just kick in a few bucks in the collection plate to be right with God." In this case, we don't "get" the real Jesus, and we even get hugely offended by Him, because our worldly goodies depend on our not "getting" Him.

This is all just another reason it is SO dangerous to just join or stay in a "church", if what we want is the real Jesus. The "Church" we see most easily around us, with its "sanctuaries" and seminary-educated "ministers" and centuries of accumulated and trumpeted doo-dads, is simply a pagan remake of the old – and by Jesus' death on the Cross cancelled – Jewish temple. So it doesn't even have the real authority and God-connection the Jewish temple had!

Instead, the "Church" we see most easily around us, and which we may have spent many years growing up in, is a purely human reinvention of God's real plan. It uses Jesus' face, and pretends to do His work with His heart, but points those who live in its "hometown" to the Jesus IT knows, and the Jesus IT isn't offended by. If you want to understand why "The Church" so easily supports and participates in war, economic oppression, sexism, racism, homophobia, materialism, and more, the answer is here: that "Church" is not and never has been about the real Jesus. Instead, it's primary function has been to enjoy, pass on, and protect its own limited and sinful understanding of Jesus.

So it's no wonder this "Church" only gets and falls for "miracles" from the devil, if it gets "miracles" at all. It's no wonder its members feel so comfortable in a "faith" no different in real substance than any other pagan faith, full of good religious feelings but completely devoid of the real Jesus Christ. "The Church" today, whether it calls itself "Roman Catholic", or "Methodist", or "Baptist", or "Nondenominational", or whatever, is no less God-rejecting and pagan than is polytheistic "Mormonism", Jesus-denying "Jehovah's Witness", Bible-twisting "Christian Science", or New Age "Ascended Masters".

The real Jesus Christ offends these "Churches" – and so the real Jesus has nothing to give them.

What about you? Where are you in moving out of the limited and sinful "hometown" mentality that finds the real Jesus something to ignore at best, and offensive at worst?

In my own life, I spent a lot of years in that "hometown". I soaked in all the teachings of the False Church, in its various manifestations in Roman Catholicism and its Protestant daughters.

First, I didn't even know enough to realize I'd been duped. I was quite comfortable in what my human elders preserved for and taught me. Sure I was living the godly life, I was most in danger of hellfire at this time – not because God wanted me there, but because, despite my insistence to the contrary, I wasn't really choosing God. I was like someone who claims to be going to Boston, but keeps insisting on traveling a road that only goes to Sacramento.

Later, God blessed me with a growing dissatisfaction with "The Church". Something was wrong, though I couldn't figure out why. Something was "missing". I wasn't as "fulfilled" any more. At first, as you might guess, I thought the answer was to become MORE in and about "The Church". I didn't just do the learning, I learned it all. I didn't just do the Roman or Protestant rituals, I did them ten times over. I didn't just pray, I prayed all day. And at first, it seemed to work – but it would always fail again and that nagging dissatisfaction came back into my heart. I prayed for God to make it go away, even to restore my "faith" - but He proved His love for me by making it grow worse and even more nagging, with each passing day and year.

It was that blessed irritation, that sanctified dissatisfaction, that slowly began to make me realize my spiritual life and heart was full of human junk – not Jesus. It was God's gift of stamina, and my willingness to go it alone at times, that helped me wander out of the gilded dirt hole of what most loudly calls itself "Christianity" so that I could seek and find the real Jesus Christ.

What about you? Are you still in the gilded dirt hole, or wishing you could be? I'd guess that if you're here, reading this blog, then you at least have a tiny bit of that blessed irritation, that sanctified dissatisfaction, that God's using to get you up out of the dirt and into Jesus' (real) arms. Otherwise, you'd be too offended by my "disrespect" for what claims most loudly to be "The Church" and its "ministers" to stay.

Are you afraid of going it alone? Of being without "a church"? Jesus said He would be with you always. He also said His real followers would have to give up even their closest relationships if those relationships block His followers from Him. Trust Jesus! And look for those others who are also wanting to be just about Jesus. They are His real church – they are your real family.

Are you still craving the religious doo-dads and goodies you get from only-faking-Jesus "Christianity"? Are you TRULY willing to trade eternal heaven with God because you like the pride, the trancing out, the rituals and do-goods you could get from participation in ANY religion (which means all your "godly" feeling is actually nothing special at all)? Jesus isn't kidding around – and neither is the devil. Drop those religious things and titles and so on like the hot hell-rocks they are, and fill yourself with the real Jesus!
If you'd like to talk more or pray about this, and you don't have a local no-junk-just-Jesus sister or brother to fellowship with, email me and let's talk. Going after the real Jesus can be a shorter walk when you don't have to find the whole way yourself without others who've already made more of the trip and can help you with the signposts along the way.

Jesus didn't come to earth and die so that we'd be stuck in fake temples and wearing Jesus-masks. He came to earth to completely shake things up – to heal people others don't believe worth healing, to put first people others think should be last, and to cancel religion and its inevitable path to forever-death.

Find and keep the real Jesus Christ.

He's waiting for you! 
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This article written by Lynne at http://NoJunkJustJesus.blogspot.com/. You can contact Lynne at NoJunkJustJesus@gmail.com.

Just how DOES God act in the world?

We're still in our (chronological) study of the real Jesus of the Gospels, which we're finding is far outside how He's always portrayed by the Good Religious People of the world and their "Church".

Today, Jesus talks about how God works in the world, but also how we hit or miss the mark in our search for a relationship with God, and – just like we saw last week – He delivers His message in parables.

As always, you can find all our previous posts in this series, going through the Gospels chronologically to find the real Jesus, here.

And as always you'll find the scriptures for today are here. (Note that you can change the human-translation version on this scripture page, as suits you. I have NO theological or other tie to the online-bible site I use for this blog – it just lists many human translations to choose from, including the NASB, KJV, The Message, and the NRSV, which are the ones mentioned by those I chat and email with.)

First, Jesus tells the parable of the mustard seed. I'll only quickly note that the scholars and other "Big Thinkers" of the world have long debated over this tiny mustard seed Jesus referred to, pointing out that mustard seed was not the smallest seed known to Jesus' listeners, and the mustard plant – even when it reached its biggest height of about ten feet – was never big enough to be called a tree or for (most) birds to perch in it.

Such big-thinker-ism is a good example of why relying only on one's intellectual resources to understand God – and therefore falling into literalism and what we can measure and deduce – means a big, fat failure. It's an example of why we shouldn't be pegging our salvation on what the smart people of the world can figure out, because they too often get so tangled up in "explaining" things that they miss the whole point of the message. They're like people who hear, "It's as hot as the sun in here!", but because they're too busy arguing and preaching and lording over what their thermometers find and under what circumstances anything on earth could truly be as hot as the sun and so on and so forth – they burn up in the fire everyone else fled.

This does NOT mean: "God doesn't mean for you to use your brains." Obviously, He does. But part of using our brains is figuring out when a message or point is being made with what's called hyperbole, or exaggerating for effect. That's certainly a story technique that Jesus uses sometimes, and it's one He uses here.

The second thing to realize as we go through this and other parables, is that we have the benefit of "seeing the answers", because we can read even what the disciples had to have explained to them later. But when Jesus was speaking these parables, no one had a "cheat sheet" called the Bible, and so people then had to rely on how much of God's Spirit they had in their hearts to help them understand what Jesus was showing them. That means many people – Good Religious People who did every Religious thing they knew to go – never understood a word Jesus had said. To them, even though they counted themselves as God's People, Jesus might as well of been speaking on gibberish: they never "got it", because they never "got" Jesus.

However, the fact that we can claim to "get" what Jesus' point was in these parables because we know what these parables mean doesn't mean we actually "get it" any more than most people 2,000 years ago did. As we've said, WE have the "cheat sheet". So we are actually in more danger of never "getting it" than the Good Religious People Jesus was originally speaking to, because we can know the words intellectually, but not spiritually, as measured in our lives. In that case, we're like people in an algebra class, who, when test day come assume we've learned all there is to know from it – but who have only memorized the answer sheet for the final, and therefore can't actually do algebra at all.

Once again, what matters to Jesus isn't what we can show with our mouths and what we can memorize and even teach others, but what we can live with our hearts and minds and spirits.

• The people listening to Jesus heard His words – but only a tiny, tiny few ever understood His point. yet these were highly religious people, well-schooled in God's rules and ways. How dangerous is it to just assume that, because we go to church to hear the Bible preached, we are getting Jesus' point? 
• It doesn't take a Bible scholar to realize that the vast majority of those who call themselves "Christian" don't even come close to living like Jesus (though they're really good at living like what they call "Christian"). Even God-rejecters can see that. In what ways do you call yourself "Christian", but have actually only memorized the Bible answer-sheet and not really learned Jesus' lessons? Are you ready to turn away from your "answer sheet Christianity"?

Ok – so what is Jesus talking about with the parable of the mustard seed? He tells us that the kingdom of heaven – God's way, in other words – is like a tiny, tiny thing that grows unexpectedly, astoundingly, even "abnormally", huge. So huge, in fact, that even those not expected to find shelter in it can and do.

Another parable. Jesus says God's way is like yeast – another tiny, tiny thing – that gets mixed all through everything, so that in time it's everywhere.

• God starts with a lot of tiny things, and then grows or mixes them everywhere. He started with one little human being, and grew us into billions. He started with one Man from a tiny, backwater part of the world, and mixed that Man's message all through the world. Is God planting something tiny in your life, working to grow that something all through who you are so that you also become a resource for others to shelter in?

Then we come to Jesus' parable of the weeds – a parable that we should find great comfort in, when we wonder why God allows evil and evil people in the world. Through this parable, Jesus tells us that God "planted" good, but that the devil came along later and planted bad among God's good. But if God were to rip out the bad people from among us now, others who are good might be destroyed also – something He won't allow. Instead, He tells us, both good and bad people will inhabit the world – until, that is, Jesus comes again to sort us out for good.

• There are many people – either because they've been turned off of Jesus because of the crappy example of "Christian" Good Religious People, or simply because their hearts haven't opened to God yet – who would count even right now as "bad" people. Yet because God hasn't chosen to "harvest" yet, they aren't sent off to hell with the people who simply will always reject God because they love evil. Have you in your own life been a "bad" person that God has allowed to stay mixed in with the good people until you could heal into the good person God created you to be? 
• Does this give you comfort, understanding that God is still in control, His plan hasn't "failed", and He still cares deeply for us, even when our lives are impacted by the "bad" people of the world? Are there others you could share this comfort-message with in your life, today?
• Jesus speaks more than anyone else in the Bible about the reality of hell as a place where good-rejecters end up. But He also speaks (as do many others in the Old and New Testaments) about God's continued attempts to save people from hell by inviting them to the real good they can only achieve through God. How should knowing this affect our lives? How does it currently affect your own life?

Jesus said God's way is like a buyer of fine goods who's seeking for something really special. When he finds it, he gives up everything he has to buy it.

• The buyer could be us. Have you discovered in the Gospel THE treasure you've been searching for? Have you given up everything to be part of it? 
• The buyer could be God. Have you considered that Jesus searches everywhere for you, and that He gave up everything to make you part of His People?

Jesus said God's way catches up everyone – every kind of person there is – and in the end the angels separate the good from the bad, gathering up the good to keep, and tossing the bad into hell.

• Jesus said God chooses good people over bad – not straight over Gay, or white over Black, or male over female, or rich over poor. What do you imagine a heaven full of God's people will look like? Does it look partly like you?

See you next week, when we'll take a look at how God's supernatural power can act in the world, and what that means for our lives today.

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This article written by Lynne at http://NoJunkJustJesus.blogspot.com/. You can contact Lynne at NoJunkJustJesus@gmail.com.

Who is (really) part of God's family?

Yep! We're still going through the (chronological) Gospels, seeking and therefore finding the real Jesus – the one that not only doesn't require any church or "clergy" or "denomination" to know, but who can't be known if those are the spiritual "tools" we're using to discover and follow him.

As always, you can find all our previous posts in this series, going through the Gospels chronologically to find the real Jesus, here.

And as always you'll find the scriptures for today are here. (Note that you can change the human-translation version on this scripture page as suits you. I default to the NASB to get the more literal translation, but do use the one that works for you. Note also that I have no theological or other tie to the bible site I list above – it's just one that lists the NASB, KJV, and The Message, and most folks I've corresponded with seem to use one of those. However, another brother likes the NRSV human translation, and says you can find that at bible.oremus.org. Send me yours, if it isn't already listed!)

Today we're looking at: Who does God (not "church", not "denomination", not "minister") define as His family, and what are the requirements for being part of it?

In the very short scripture for today, we see Jesus is once again surrounded by a big, pressing crowd of people. So big, so pressing, in fact, that when His biological mother and brothers (and possibly His sisters, as well) show up, they can't push through to get to Him.

In that culture 2,000 years ago, so fiercely obsessed with biological ties and the unending power of the biological family over the lives of those in it, of course people in the crowd passed on the message to Jesus that His mother and brothers were here and trying to get through to Him. And of course the people in this crowd (and His biological family) would have had no doubt whatsoever that Jesus would have immediately dropped everything else to tend to His biological family. In Israel 2,000 years ago, to not obey and fail to put one's family before everything else meant risking one's place in the family – and that could cost someone a huge economic and social downfall (that's why women who were divorced by their husbands were at such risk, and why Jesus spoke against such divorce).

Yet, once again we see Jesus stunning the crowd with His very different response. Jesus, we see, redefined who He belonged to, and who belonged to Him. He changed that relationship from something defined by people, to something defined by God. "MY family," He said, "is made up of those who do what God wants."

In our culture, we can't even imagine how that would have shocked the people who heard it. Their mouths would have dropped open, their faces curled up in offense, their tongues wagged in agitation. Obviously (to them), once again He was being a "bad" guy!

But first of all,was Jesus poo-pooing His biological family? In some way, yes, He was. He stayed connected with the crowd of seekers, and didn't do anything that made those who felt they had the biggest ties to and hold on Him any special treatment whatsoever. Does that mean His biological family had no place with Him whatsoever? Oh, no – they had the same place in God's family everyone else does. His biological family was just also invited to be part of the seeker-crowd, no better, no worse, no more or less special than everyone else who was seeking after Jesus and doing what God says to do.

This shines a big God-spotlight on those "Christian" practices that hold some "Christians" as "higher", "more special", "more holy", "more worthy", etc than others. The Roman "church" and its centuries of elevating human beings in "saint" worship – especially of Jesus' biological mother – is an absolute rejection of how God's defined our relationship with our fellow believers (both present and past). But just as big a God-rejection is the Protestant and Roman "church" elevation of some human beings as "clergy" (the pastor/priest/pope syndrome). Jesus didn't give even the tiniest hint of special treatment even to the woman who gave birth to Him. Yet Good Religious People just LOVE LOVE LOVE to give special education, special seating, special housing, special deference, special attention, special titles, special clothing, and innumerable other special honors to those who are truly no more than anyone else (and who, in fact, make themselves Jesus-rejecters and LESS than any in God's true family, because of their acceptance and love of being "special").

Once again, Good Religious People – for all their centuries of self-congratulation regarding their "special" place with God, and with all their centuries of "Christian" scholarship, and with all the years and years each of their "clergy" people spend memorizing and regurgitating all that "scholarship" – prove by their lives that they have once again completely missed Jesus' point. Once again, they have absolutely nothing of real-God value to share with anyone!

Of course, there's nothing wrong with looking up to someone who's a (real) elder in the faith, or gaining wisdom and strength from someone who's going through trials we relate to or are spiritually impressed or humbled by. But there is a problem with thinking we find those things within Good Religious Churches or Good Religious Denominations and their centuries of saint and clergy worship, so that they become somehow "more holy" or "closer to God" or someone we should follow with little/no question. Then we're putting human beings in the place only Jesus is supposed to occupy.

Does your heart crave looking up to and venerating a human being? Then look up to and venerate the Only One worthy of your praise and respect: Jesus!

• Many Good Religious Christians today are almost as obsessed with their biological families today as were Good Religious Jews of 2,000 years ago. They spout off all the time about being "Family" oriented, don't they? They make it seem as if the biological family is THE most important thing about being a "Good Christian". Does that even make sense, when we look over Jesus' life and His relationships? 
• While Jesus never put human family above God's (real) family, He also never told us to reject or not take care of those of our biological families, either. What does this say to you about the various priorities you have in your day-to-day life? How can you satisfy the requirements of being a real part of God's family, and also taking care of those who depend on you, as well?
• What human beings have you elevated above yourself or others in your life? Did you learn to do so from "church" or other Good Religious Sources? What prevents you from putting only Jesus in that high place? 
• When we try to be part of God's Family by belonging to some church, we misunderstand Jesus' whole point just as badly as the Good Religious People do – and that's the most spiritually dangerous position we can be in! Have there been times in your life (perhaps now?) when you've missed Jesus' point, as well? Who taught you the wrong way? Are you letting Jesus teach you His right way? 
• We've already seen that Jesus says no one can accomplish good through evil – and putting oneself or someone else in Jesus' place IS evil. Yet Good Religious People continue to believe fiercely that elevating some of their people above others (making them "clergy") is a good, Godly thing – even though it puts them on the level only Jesus is supposed to be at, among His (real) people. Were you infected with "clergy"-worship at some time in your life? Did you at some point decide to step up into being "clergy" yourself? Are you ready to repent of those blasphemies? 
• It's not surprising that it only took three years for Good Religious People to murder Jesus (it's probably more surprising it took them that long!). Every way He lived, and everything He said, was a constant irritation and rebuttal to the true-God rejecting way Good Religious People lived. He refused to elevate them to the spiritual heights they imagined they inhabited. He never stop illuminating just how empty of God and how full of themselves and demons they actually were. And so they tortured and killed Him. After Jesus went back up into heaven, though, His rejection of them remained – but He was no longer around to murder. Is it hard to figure out why Jesus' TRUE message, then, would be "murdered" by the Good Religious People over the next twenty centuries? Is it hard to imagine why Good Religious People work so hard to re-write (through "translation" and interpretation) the parts of the Bible they want to say something different than what God intended? Is it even surprising that they would ignore, fight against, and bury the hugely simple and Good-Religious-People-Condemning message of Jesus Christ under their centuries of "theology", "scholarship", "tradition", "hierarchy", and "clergyhood", and then train people through their "seminaries" and "Bible studies" to memorize and push forward the complex mass of sewage they call "Christianity"?

A final thought for today.

If you've been following along with our Gospel study, have you noticed how often the message is that human ways of being religious are not only completely opposite how God wants us to be, but are actually dangerous, because they entice us to believe we've got the right answer (after all, it's the same answer the "educated" people believe, and it's the same answer Good Religious People have believed for centuries!), when actually we couldn't be more wrong?

There's a reason we're given the Bible – but just reading it, just absorbing the "official" Good Religious People message of what it means, and just accepting the translations and interpretations "The Church" gives us, means we're following sinful God-rejecters, and conforming our lives to what pleases the sinful nature of human beings, and not what pleases God.

• Today, come up with three ways you can squeeze the Good Religious Slime from your and others' eyes, so that the real Jesus and His real saving message becomes visible.

• Repent of your desires for those pretty Good Religious ways of being "Christian" or part of the "Christian Church", and ask Jesus to help you and your heart to find and live in the true beauty of a life in Jesus Christ.

• Look around and see what you can do to join or create fellowship that doesn't settle for "church" buildings and "clergy" and "tithes", but instead reaches out for the true treasure Jesus came to make sure we can have – if we'll only choose it.

Take care until next week! :-)
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This article written by Lynne at http://NoJunkJustJesus.blogspot.com/. You can contact Lynne at NoJunkJustJesus@gmail.com.

ARE you doing what Jesus says?

Ok – I'm still in job-transition, but I'm grabbing a short time here today to get out our next look at the real Jesus (outside how He's portrayed by what's most loudly called itself "Christianity" the last many centuries).

As always, you can find all our previous posts in this series, going through the Gospels chronologically to find the real Jesus, here.

And as always you'll find the scriptures for today are here. (Note that you can change the translation version on this scripture page as suits you. I default to the NASB to get the more literal translation, but do use the one that works for you).

Our next reading in the chronological Gospels lands us in a recounting by Luke of a similar "sermon" or speech that Jesus made ("in a level place"). Some say this is the same speech remembered differently, but most more likely guess that it was given at another time – and it certainly does cover some things Jesus' "Sermon on the Mount" speech (given on a hill-rise of some kind) did not.

I won't go over what's repeated (though the passage isn't long, so please do read all of it to make sure you get the whole context). Let's talk about what's different or added in this speech.

First of all, Jesus is talking once again to a huge crowd – this one full of people who've come from all over to hear him, get healing, touch Him, and just check out the great power that was said to come from Him. And He tells them something that would have been considered even more strange and impossible in their day than it is in ours:

• "When you're Mine and poor, hungry, hurting, and/or hated for My sake, you're going to get God's care and reward.

• But if you're rich, never-hungry, content, and/or well-respected I count that you've already gotten your reward and don't deserve more from God."

Imagine Jesus speaking to a huge crowd of slave laborers in Asia, or of destitute, oppressed dirt farmers in Central America, or of famine victims in Africa, and telling them and the few rich people also listening that all the fat-cats living so well now are going to get squat when God institutes HIS way in this world, while the people like them are going to get everything: free run of God's kingdom, perfect satisfaction, never another reason to cry, and nothing but dignity as far as the eye can see.

It's just the human world that says that people who are poor or suffering or persecuted deserve it somehow. Even when we say we don't believe that, we nearly always do (we can tell because we continue to believe that if we are well-off it's because we did something to deserve it while a poor person didn't, or earned God's favor while a poor person didn't. We never manage to realize that in this world, one person gains more only on the suffering of someone else. Think of that next time you buy a cheap shirt made in China or gain from stocks in companies that lay off workers or poison the environment others have to live in).

The world wants God to believe we deserve our well-off lifestyles, too.

But God isn't fooled. It takes Him no time at all to recognize that people not living the world's gravy train always end up worse off than when they started, treated like crap, trashed and bad-mouthed, but that those who play by human rules move up in the world – gain money (at other people's expense), stay well-fed (while others are hungry), laugh it up (while others cry).

And if the Bible tells us nothing else, it's that while God has been willing to tolerate, ignore, and even use human wealth when needed, He's never stopped concentrating His care and attention on the oppressed, the suffering, the abused, the abandoned, and so on (He even showed up on earth as one of the oppressed, suffering, abused, abandoned people!) And He's certainly never re-written His own standards or re-created His kingdom to match the tacky décor of the human whorehouse we call gleefully call "Everything we should strive for!".

God moves among and cares about the well-off, it's true. But – sorry, world! – it's those who are hurt, left behind, or used by those who are well-off that merit His greatest healing and reward in His kingdom.

• The Bible tells us that it's always been the people doing things God's real way that pay the big price, suffer the most, and are persecuted (most often by the people only faking doing "God's" way). It also tells us that God cares about healing and fixing the problems and hurts caused by those who have more (money, power, prestige, hierarchy, etc), on the people who have less.  Why, then, do you think so many centuries of "Christianity" and "Judaism" have instead taught that the good-life (as defined by the world) is not only proof that God favors those who have over those who don't have, but that their great life lived now will simply continue into the next? Who has taught and protected that false teaching?

Next that's different here is Jesus' parable about the blind leading the blind. You will end up, He says, just like the one you take on as "teacher".

That was a big warning to those in the crowd that day who took all their understanding of God and what God wanted from them from the day's priests, Pharisees, Sadducees, and other Good Religious People. As we've already covered in this study, those were exactly the self-proclaimed "experts" Jesus tells us we have to do BETTER than if we expect to get into heaven.

People, and our unending intent to fail rather than abandon anything we love in this world, just don't change, though. Most of those believing themselves "God's people" back then blindly followed the blind Good Religious People right into a hell-pit, becoming no better than their hell-bound but "expert" teachers. And most of today's "God's People" are just as blindly insisting on following their pastor, priest, Sunday school teacher, confessor, pope, denomination, seminary instructor, even family members into the same Good Religious People pit of hell-slime. They'll be the ones that get to the End and go, "Wait a minute! I thought this was the heaven-line! Why am I at the 'I never knew you' gate?"

Two things here.

First of all, Jesus tells us again how to tell who's really a real-Jesus follower, and who's just a pretender – a world-worshiper with a smiling Jesus-mask on. Look, He says, to what their hearts produce. We don't get grapes from thistle bushes. We don't get figs from sticker bushes. But we still expect to get real-Jesus from "church" and "pastor" and "priest" and "denomination"? We still insist that all it takes to prove one's real-Jesus loyalty is smiling sweetly when in public, giving time and money to the poor, and doing a lot "for the church" – even though Jesus said earlier that those things mean diddly when the heart is full of arrogance, greediness, envy, self-focus, ladder-climbing, domination, bullying, lying, cheating, oppression of others, sexual attacks and molestation, and more.

Jesus isn't fooled. Jesus isn't blind. We shouldn't be either!

• In the Old Testament, God said that He was going to make Himself our teacher, and write His way directly into our hearts. Jesus and others in the New Testament go out of their way to make sure we understand that Good Religious People are the last ones we should turn to to figure out what God wants from us and our lives. What prevents you, right now, from making the real Jesus your first-and-foremost teacher? What human being, human institution, or human tradition (Good Religious or otherwise) have you allowed to blindly lead you along its own path and its own re-imagined version of "Jesus"?

Finally (for today), Jesus asked the crowd a question we ourselves should be asking of ourselves and each other every day:

"Why do you call Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ but don't do what I say?"

We know what will happen to those of us who only mouth "Christian" things but don't actually live real Christian lives, doing what Jesus (not the "church", not the "pastor", not the "denomination", not "tradition", not the "pope") said to do. Our whole spiritual foundation will sag in the end, washing out from under us and leaving us far, far from our eternal home with God.

• Spend the next week, month, year asking yourself each morning and evening, "What didn't I do today that wasn't what Jesus said to do? What did He say to do that I ignored today?" Ask not only for His forgiveness, but also for Him to come into your heart and be your Teacher. Trust in Him to make your heart clean and new, as you allow the Holy Spirit to heal and guide you each day!

Have a great week! My week upcoming is still over-busy with the new job. I just finished my two-weeks notice on the last one (been working 60+ hour weeks), but now I'm in big-training on the new. I will aim for another post next Thursday, but may have to wiggle on that a few days back or forth, depending! May God grant me a settled schedule again soon! :-)

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This article written by Lynne at http://NoJunkJustJesus.blogspot.com/. You can contact Lynne at NoJunkJustJesus@gmail.com.

What does it take to actually "get" the real Jesus?

[Here are the scriptures I'm referencing today].

I'm continuing chronologically through the Gospels, and I'm asking this week:

Who is Jesus, really? And what does it mean to recognize and to accept Him?

I see, for example, that the first thing the apostle John tells us is that Jesus is God – our Creator, our Life, our Light. But John didn't start off instinctively knowing Jesus is God any more than we can or could. So he's sharing here wisdom he'd already spent some time learning – not information he understood from the start.

And that's something we all have in common with the apostle John: knowing instinctively who Jesus really is just doesn't happen, even among people raised to be God's People. John tells us that when Jesus came He was God Himself in human flesh, working next to other people, talking with other people, teaching other people – and still almost no one on the whole planet understood, much less recognized Him. Even worse, when God Himself even walked among them, almost no one among those who counted themselves as HIS PEOPLE (even THE BEST OF His People) accepted Him even as a good teacher, much less as God.

And that's all still so true of today that it stinks. Which means our lives – even/especially our "Good Christian" lives – can stink, until we ourselves actually recognize and accept the real Jesus for who He really is.

So, how goes recognizing and accepting the real Jesus start? How does the Bible show us how to start – and how not to start – recognizing and accepting God alive among us?

Reading this week, first we see God recognizing Jesus, and sharing His Spirit. In our process here, that's kind of "cheating", to recognize yourself, but it was mightily important to the people of that day, who had to understand that while God hadn't physically walked among them before, He was not only doing it now but also pleased with, recognizing, and putting His stamp of approval on the result. And that's cool. Anything "spiritual" or "godly" or "church-approved" or "tradition-approved" that doesn't actually show God's stamp of approval is either demonic or human garbage. Might be pretty, but I wouldn't put it in your mouth.

Second one to show is John the Baptist – that filthy church-rejecter we met in earlier parts of the Gospel story (and talked a bit more about in an earlier post).

Jesus came to John the Baptist to be baptized, and John balked. Was that because he fully recognized Jesus was God? It's not certain here, but it is certain that John already knew that Jesus was something the likes of which no human being (except Moses, Eve, and Adam) had ever laid eyes on before. Maybe we should give John the Baptist at least a half-point here, because at the very least he saw:

• Jesus received the Spirit of God and was announced by God as having His stamp of approval,
• Jesus had a natural power and place that made him a piece of nothing by comparison, 
• Jesus was the one who was going to be sacrificed for the sins of the world and,
• Jesus was the Son of God.

Did John the Baptist fully comprehend at this early stage exactly and completely what all that actually meant or would mean? Various opinions could be justified answering that. But we do know from the Bible that John had and got a greater spiritual understanding from his birth (remember God's plan for him was to show up just before and announce the Messiah's arrival), but more important to us and what we can learn from John the Baptist for our own lives is that he stayed with God's truth – and not the truth of the organized religion he was born part of. God granted an extra measure of understanding to John the Baptist, and then John remained outside of everything (spiritually, physically, etc) that might have clouded or turned his understanding.

Do we do that, in our lives? When God grants us an extra measure of His truth, do we do whatever it takes to stay true to it? Or do we say we're sticking with God's truth, when we're actually sticking with the too-human "truth" of fake Christianity and the goodies it delivers us in this world?

Third person to show up recognizing Jesus? Satan. But we can say "recognizing", yes – but not truly understanding. We'd have to say that the devil doesn't truly understand God at all, or he'd have never gone off and decided to work up all the problems he's created since even before he messed up Eve and Adam. And he certainly wouldn't have tried to tempt Jesus into giving up the human race, the love of His life, for a few pieces of the kinds of crap the rest of us fall for over and over again ("for the good of the church / family / world!", of course).

In what ways do we (me, you, everyone) get in God's face and then act like the devil? How much "good"-evil has been done in the last thousands of years by "Good Religious People" (including Christians, though, as my fundamentalist grandmother used to say, "being Christian means you should know better more than anyone else")? How often do we recognize Jesus, sure, but we don't understand Him or what He's all about enough to not hurt our kid, much less not drive thousands of people to suicide or murder millions in war, all in "God's" name?

Next people to notice Jesus were all the Good Religious People in Israel, who marched right out with the best of everything they had to offer in offerings and worship, led by the Good Religious Leaders.

WRONG.

The Good Religious People – including the Good Religious Leaders – didn't start to notice Jesus until He started torquing them off by not being impressed with them, and by teaching God's truth in ways that didn't benefit them personally. But we'll get to them later, when they do in fact start showing up as being important at all to any part of the Gospel story.

So, the next people who really did start paying attention to Jesus? At least two of them were originally disciples of John the Baptist, and noticed Jesus because John the Baptist gave them an intriguing hint about who Jesus was. Because they were John the Baptist's disciples, we can tell they were dissatisfied with what passed for orthodoxy in those days, and they were hungry for what they sensed of God's REAL truth elsewhere – but where?

What about you? Ever been told there's something wrong with you or your spiritual wandering, if you're dissatisfied with the religious gruel ("but it has SPRINKLES!!!") being offered by "official" church each week? Ever ponder how many of the people Jesus met who were also wanderers, also malcontents? In fact, the only people who ever met the real Jesus Christ "in church" only met Him because HE was just wandering through – and they had to follow Him outside, if they intended to stick with Him.
Next were people who started meeting Jesus through people who'd met Jesus and been impressed that here was someone different, someone special – someone their guts told them matched what God had promised to send: the Messiah. The Savior of the World.
How many people would have gotten to meet the real Jesus if others hadn't shared Him with them? How often do you share Jesus with those in your life who either haven't met Him at all, or who've only been taught the cardboard, McDonald's version of Him?

Among all these people, though (except for perhaps John the Baptist), none of them truly understood the full reality of who Jesus really was. They recognized and understood some of what He was, but they had to keep learning, and casting off old religious beliefs that proved to be human-nonsense, the whole time Jesus was on earth (all the way to His resurrection, in fact!). Then, in truth, very, very few of the many tens of thousands who met God on earth face to face and heard Him speak actually managed to stick with Him and His truth, the whole way.

We're like that too. We'll eagerly go with Jesus and His way – but only to the point where we would have to give up our "pastor"-entitlements, or where we would have to let go of some family, or where we might have to choose truly loving instead of hurting back, or where we might have to fly as a solo-Christian until such time as we met others like us, and so on. Almost inevitably, when we reach that point we turn right back around. Like 99% of people who met Jesus Christ in the flesh, we decide on some level that He asks too much, and then we go back to the human organizations made up of and run by others who've also decided He asks too much. We enjoy their company and the assurances of their re-make of Jesus' original truth - and we congratulate ourselves all the way to hell on what great Christians we are, and on how much we love the Lord.

But we don't have to be like that. In fact, we don't even have to be perfect in our sticking with Jesus and just Jesus. The Bible shows us that even from the start Jesus' disciples never, ever got anything totally right. In fact, until the very end, after a long haul and a lot of spiritual personal and world-battles, they never truly understood all of who God is, or recognized or accepted Him for who He is.

And that's a comfort we can take from the Bible and its stories about the first people to believe in Jesus Christ:  

We don't have to be perfect; we just have to be making a sincere effort in Jesus' way of doing things.

Do that, and, just like the first disciples, we eventually learn that God takes care of the rest.

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This article written by Lynne at No Junk. Just Jesus. You can contact Lynne at NoJunkJustJesus@gmail.com.

Are you gonna follow that church leader all the way to hell?

Church leadership just keeps coming up again and again in my circle these days. No doubt because it's church leaders (or, at least those human beings count as church leaders, whether God does or not) who determine where most Christians will go in their spiritual walk. It's church leaders who describe and draw the boundaries for the various paths most Christians will follow.

And it's sorta-kinda supposed to be that way. According to the Bible, a "church leader" (also described as an "elder" and such, in the New Testament) is supposed to be someone like your football coach, or your older sister, or someone else who, yes, is also just another sinful human being like you are, but who also has real-world experience and knowledge in living as a true follower of Jesus Christ. A church leader's shared experience and wisdom, offered with corrective love and hope, is supposed to keep us all continually re-pointed back to Jesus Christ (while everything else in the world keeps trying to point us away). Their function within the Body of Christ is to help keep themselves, each other, and all their "younger siblings" on that narrow Jesus-path until Jesus comes again. 

But anyone truly paying attention to what's happened to the "Christian Church" in the last 1,900 years or so can see how quickly "church leadership" degenerated after those who'd learned firsthand from Jesus Himself died (and so were no longer around to call B.S. on nonsense) – and how "church leadership" stayed degenerated even into today. Despite the Bible's direction, even today almost all "church leaders" are only truly about Jesus Christ (and making the sacrifices and going through the trials following Him demands) when doing so does not conflict with or counter the human-created religious traditions, cultural norms, social expectations, attendance counts, and job and ego security understood as "core" of the religious organization or group they belong to. And that's just as true of "fundamentalist" churches as it is of "progressive" ones. Just as true of "evangelical" churches as it is of "emergent" ones. Just as true of "modern" churches as it is of "post-modern" ones.

We're so proud of ourselves, and we remember always to praise God -- right after we get done thinking so highly of ourselves for how much "better" we've made the religion of "Jesus" in the last 2,000 years.

And all that means if we just go along with whatever "old" or "new" church fad that tickles our fancy, or better addresses our politics or our emotional needs, then we're just wandering around a cheap carnival fun house that has Jesus' face painted on the front and some hymnals scattered around the back.

And that's because most practicing and preparing-to-become "church leaders" today have a "calling" from their own ego, or from a severe misunderstanding of Jesus' truth -- and not actually from the Holy Spirit.

For true church leaders, though, who aren't simply memorizing (and benefiting themselves from) human-crap-of-death that was based on human-crap-of-death which was itself based on human-crap-of-death all the way back to the human-crap-of-death the first disciples named as anti-Jesus, what's really God-required for church leaders to be and do is right there in the Bible. Right there for our understanding to soak in, once we pump the spiritual bilge water from our hearts and minds.

Take a look at Acts 20, for example. I'm starting at verse 17 (end about verse 35). Then look over Titus 1, reading from about Titus 1:5 to about Titus 2:1 (my text below will follow those sequences, if you want to follow along in your own Bible). Compare Paul's Holy Spirit-led, real world experience and wisdom-sharing about what church leaders are to truly do, know, and be – and then compare that to what we see today in "church leaders", whether those "church leaders" are on television or radio or internet, or in local pulpits, megachurches, "creative" churches, "house" churches, and so on.

I'm just going to grab here at the most obvious examples:

Paul says he served Jesus not only with humility, but also through all the tears and trials that came via evil plottings of "good religious people".

Discernment opportunity: Which "church leaders" today are actually the self-satisfied "good religious people" doing the evil plotting or working against those that don't conform to their own ego-boundaries or human-inspired doctrines, instead of being those grieved and suffering because of trying to be about Jesus in spite of them? 

Doesn't matter how "good" or "spiritual" or "religious" they are -- they do not have their hearts on the real Jesus -- and therefore don't qualify as God-chosen church leaders.

Paul says he never shrank from publicly testifying to everyone about (1) the need to repent to God from evil choices, (2) to keep faith in Jesus Christ, and (3) the good news of God's love even for those who've never deserved it for one millisecond. 

Discernment opportunity: Which "church leaders" ignore the need for us all to repent because telling people they're making evil choices "turns people off" (and therefore lowers the ministry's follower numbers and/or tithes) or just doesn't match how they've imagined "love" to be? Which church leaders push people to keep faith in their own particular human denominational/doctrinal/etc interpretation of Jesus Christ, as if that were the same as Jesus Christ?

Doesn't matter how "good" or "spiritual" or "religious" they are -- they do not have their hearts on the real Jesus -- and therefore don't qualify as God-chosen church leaders. 

Paul says he's innocent of causing anyone else to end up in hell, because he's taught God's whole intent and not just picked and chosen what he liked and ignored the rest. 

Discernment opportunity: Which "church leaders" – of "right" or "left", "evangelical" or "emergent", "modern" or "post-modern" – only pick and choose what they emphasize about God (like, for example, teaching that God is about hating sin without also showing from their lives God's boundless love for all humankind, or teaching that God is about nothing but love without also showing from their lives God's triumphant justice and rejection of evil?).

Doesn't matter how "good" or "spiritual" or "religious" they are -- they do not have their hearts on the real Jesus -- and therefore don't qualify as God-chosen church leaders. 

Paul says church leaders need to be on guard for themselves, each other, and for everyone God has seen fit to make them an elder-sibling over, to make sure they properly shepherd what God shed His own blood for to buy us back from destruction.

Discernment opportunity: Which "church leaders" claim to "guard the flock" but actually help fleece the flock of dollars and adoration that belong only to God, while enforcing human rules, human traditions, and human ideas as if they were from God?

Doesn't matter how "good" or "spiritual" or "religious" they are -- they do not have their hearts on the real Jesus -- and therefore don't qualify as God-chosen church leaders. 

Paul says that after he's dead, evil-minded people are going to emerge from inside churches, and are going to be ripping up and ripping off those people within them, teaching things that pervert the real Good News of Jesus Christ, and getting people to leave real fellowships and follow them instead.

Discernment opportunity: Which "church leaders" (past and present) are doing just this, while using Bible quotes and church law and appeals to tradition to "justify" it, so that people even  believe this kind of "Christianity" is "normal" and "healthy" and "godly"?

Doesn't matter how "good" or "spiritual" or "religious" they are -- they do not have their hearts on the real Jesus -- and therefore don't qualify as God-chosen church leaders. 

Paul says church leaders therefore must be on the alert, expecting these anti-Jesus wolves to show up, and tearfully warning each other of even possible slipups.

Discernment opportunity: Which "church leaders" simply "go along to get along", not "rocking the boat" in their fellowship, church, denomination, or world so things still have the appearance of being godly and cozy, even when people are being taught a false way to salvation, when children are being raped, when women are stuck in battering relationships, when the poor and oppressed are suffering, when people are being convinced God hates them, when people are being convinced that human-add-ons are requirements of the Gospel, and so on? 

Doesn't matter how "good" or "spiritual" or "religious" they are -- they do not have their hearts on the real Jesus -- and therefore don't qualify as God-chosen church leaders. 

Paul says that God Himself is able to build up church leaders, to give them what they need to be sanctified and true.

Discernment opportunity: Which "church leaders" rely on themselves, their denominational position, their theological education, their religious doo-dads, or something else besides God to "prove" them holy-living godly church leaders who should be followed or even "obeyed"?

Doesn't matter how "good" or "spiritual" or "religious" they are -- they do not have their hearts on the real Jesus -- and therefore don't qualify as God-chosen church leaders. 

Paul says as a church leader he never had a thought about gaining others' money and such, and that with his own hands he took care of his own needs and the needs of the other ministers working with him. He says that by working hard like this, church leaders can and must help those who are weak, remembering always that Jesus Himself said that it's better to give than receive.

Discernment opportunity: Which "church leaders" have made or hope to make a good career out of ministry, especially in "administration" of buildings, programs, "ministry teams", college courses, and denominational politics, as if anything like that means diddly compared to the simple Jesus-acts of personally getting someone in need a meal, hugging someone covered in filth, or teaching lost people about the Good News of Jesus Christ?

Doesn't matter how "good" or "spiritual" or "religious" they are -- they do not have their hearts on the real Jesus -- and therefore don't qualify as God-chosen church leaders. 

(Now I'm working my way through Titus 1):

Many churches (especially but not only "right-wing" ones) like to believe they've satisfied the requirements for church leadership -- but what they actually do is pick as "church leaders" people who satisfy worldly standards (like picking business people to "run" the church and its "finances"), and/or by picking church leaders who conform to their own human doctrines, traditions, cliques, biases, and politics -- but don't conform to the Gospel of Jesus Christ as it was given by Jesus Christ.

Consider:

How many "church leaders" are said to be "above reproach", but by their ugly and/or empty hearts and their "church over Jesus" belief systems they've brought tremendous shame on the Body of Christ? Well, that means they are not "above reproach" at all!

When "good religious people" are said to be in "rebellion" in the New Testament, it means they are in rebellion against God's way of doing things. So how many "church leaders" even just today are easily accused of being in "rebellion", since they put more value on religious deeds and doo-dads that only make show (even though they don't fool God, of course)? How many run "churches" and teach things in complete opposition to things Jesus taught, yet still count what they're doing as "according to God's will"? These are people in rebellion!

Do we even need to cover "prosperity preachers", "televangelists", but also all other "church leaders" who've managed to make a huge living at representing the God who said that those who have good things in this world won't get squat in the next, and who said you simply cannot have your mind and heart on God and money at the same time? These are people fond of "sordid gain", and who are stewards of their own interests, not Gods!

Paul wrote someone qualified to be a church leader will "[hold] fast the faithful word which is in accordance with the teaching" passed down from Jesus to His first disciples, so the church leader is "able both to exhort in sound doctrine and to refute those who contradict [it]." How many "church leaders" of the past nineteen centuries have even pretended to stick only with the simple Good News of Jesus Christ, as taught and commanded by God Himself, and not instead added and/or adored the human accretions layered on top of it like muddy dirt and filth on gold? How many church leaders – "right" or "left", "evangelical" or "emergent" or "catholic", "modern" or "post-modern" – won't correct or chew themselves or each other out when they're following or teaching human-crap-of-death, refusing to stand up at all costs to themselves, "their" ministry, "their" church, and so on to counter those who twist Jesus Christ and His message into their own human-shaped pretzel? These are not people faithful to God's Word.

How many "church leaders" of any brand won't even acknowledge that church people who don't do things God's way, who spout their own nonsense, who deceive people, or who obsess on only parts of the Bible message are – Paul says – supposed to be made to shut the %)#@*% up? How many "church leaders" just continue to absorb (or seek) all the bennies promised to their human church position and assignments, doing right by themselves while ignoring, passing off, or justifying the loss of all those turned away from the Gospel or otherwise hurt by "the Church" (no doubt they are "prayerfully working on the problem from within" -- for years, decades, centuries...)? These are not servants of Jesus Christ.

How many "church leaders" won't severely accuse destructive, anti-Jesus "Christians" (even though that would give them an opportunity to get their spiritual heads on right and stop hurting other people and blaspheming God)? More, how many won't call wrong wrong because they don't want to risk the political poo-storm it would cause to stir up the sleeping demons in their "church"? How many won't do this because "God is love" and therefore they are going to demonstrate "God's love" by letting the devil destroy people's lives and faith? These people reject God's way.

How many "church leaders" – instead of knowing and standing up for Jesus and doing what He said to do – actually themselves "profess to know God, but by their deeds they deny Him, being detestable and disobedient and worthless for any good deed"?

As always, it all comes down to this:

Whether we count ourselves as "church leaders", or as followers of "church leaders": do we take Jesus and (real) His teachings (as given us through His first disciples) seriously, or don't we?

The fact that the vast majority of those calling themselves "Christian" do NOT take Jesus seriously is demonstrated continually in our support of politicians (republican, democrat, whatever -- all the same), religious figures (protestant, catholic, emergent, whatever -- all the same), business leaders and their various economic systems (all the same), and others (all the same) who start or continue or don't act against war, torture, oppression of the poor and minorities, falsification of the Good News of Jesus Christ, and other demonic practices.

And we learn to be "good Christians" who defy Jesus Christ to His face and happily do the exact opposite of what He says (while still expecting His praise, of course), from following and learning from "church leaders" who may be very nice people who want to love and serve the Lord but who just don't qualify according to the simple standards set out for us by God in His Bible. 

So, what's the Jesus-deal? 

The deal is: take Jesus as seriously as He takes you. And only follow and learn from those other human beings whose lives and faith lead and point you only to Him. 

• Remember, as you look for real "elder-siblings" to help you out, that they may or may not be found in actual church buildings (or even in "house churches", etc), because these days few such places have enough Jesus left in them to do anything but (at best) wear people out spiritually, and the real Body of Christ is found everywhere. Keep an eye and heart out in all the places such folks might be found: online, at your work, in a Bible study, and so on. God's been amazing in all the places He's dropped "elder-siblings" into my life. 

• Remember that nothing in the Bible says being an "elder-sibling" is supposed to be some kind of ritualized or formal relationship. That's how human beings like to do things -- not like Jesus did or does things. Look for friendships and fellowships, not someone with a title or collar or organizational position. Most of the time, it won't even be recognized as an "elder-sibling" thing at all, but as simply a neighbor-thing, or a friend-thing, or whatever. Lots of the best "elder-siblings" are found amongst the "least of these" in the world, because they've actually gone through real trials (often at the hands and hearts of the "good religous people" in their lives), and they've learned through Jesus Christ how to deal with and be better despite such things. 

• Remember that if you yourself are a "church leader", you also need God-chosen church leaders to keep YOU on the right path, because you're just as human as everyone else, and you also will for the rest of your life need to learn from and listen to only those who actually match what the Bible says qualifies someone to be an "elder-sibling". This ridiculous and shameful ego thing of pretending to be so "holy" you (unlike everyone else) no longer desperately need strong counsel and a good butt-kicking more days than not is exactly what makes so-called "ministers" into drunks, drug addicts, perverts, ego-maniacs, spiritual-masturbators, wealth-chasers, and God-trashers. If you aren't willing to be the truly humble person first in line each day for godly correction and teaching, then do the rest of the world a favor and "minister" instead in a Church of Satan, where you will at least be honest about who you're really serving. 

• Finally, always remember that having (real) "elder-siblings" in your life is a very nice thing to have, and can sometimes keep us from doing a face-plant into the thorn bushes along the narrow path -- but elder-siblings aren't required for our salvation. Only Jesus is required for that. He'll provide all the other stuff as we're willing to look and to accept them, and as He determines we need them. But in any case, He's our ultimate safety, only real Teacher, and only true Elder (pastor, priest, etc).  

Until next week -- God continue to bless and keep you, and to grow you, and to open your mind and heart in all the ways that make Him more and more your only Source, each day!

In God's love,

Lynne

---This article written by Lynne at No Junk. Just Jesus. You can contact Lynne at NoJunkJustJesus@gmail.com.

Friday Thoughts

[Since so many links are now going out over my twitter page, I don't want to duplicate efforts here. So instead I'll share something else each Friday..]

Someone once asked the Sadhu Sundar Singh if he enjoyed the honor his friends gave him as a minister of the Lord. He answered:

"When Jesus entered Jerusalem, many people spread their clothing and palm branches on the street to honor the Lord. Jesus was riding on a donkey. In this way, the feet of Jesus did not touch the street adorned with clothes and branches, but instead the donkey walked over them.

It would have been very stupid of the donkey if she imagined that she was very important. It was not for her that the people threw their clothes in the streets."

Corrie ten Boom continued:

"Stupid are those who spread the good news of Jesus and expect to receive glory themselves. The glory should go to Jesus. The more people came to this godly man after his meetings, the more the Sadhu Sundar Singh withdrew from the crowd, to be in the silence where God spoke to him. No sensation. No show. He brought them the living Word, Jesus."

With our remembering and rejoicing in Jesus coming into the world, I give thanks to God for elders like the Sadhu Sundar Singh, who point the way, but never stand in the Lord's light!
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This article written by Lynne at No Junk. Just Jesus. You can contact Lynne at NoJunkJustJesus@gmail.com.

If Christians were Christian - 002 (An Unreal Dream)

[This is a continuation of my series "If Christians were Christian (an Unreal Dream)". You can find the rest of the series here]. 

The Ugly Reality:

Recently, a pastor/priest/pope decided that a really good way to demonstrate Christ to the people around him was to take away the ability to afford seeing a doctor from 19 people whose families he didn't like. So, to please his god, he did some hatemongering, and some bearing false witness, and some rebelling against government authority he didn't like in order to get just enough others on his band wagon to make his dream other people's nightmare.

All in God's name, of course.

Unfortunately, in his eagerness to make God seem like a evil jerk, and his enthusiasm to spit on Jesus' teachings, he didn't get all his legal i's dotted and t's crossed -- and he also managed to take away the ability to afford seeing a doctor from some 200 people whose families he does like, as well.

Does he regret hurting people he does like in order to hurt people he doesn't? Of course not. That would require having the Holy Spirit -- and not an evil spirit -- in one's heart. Instead, he says he only did "what's right". He also reminds everyone that we now have to respect his will, which he re-made into the governmental "will of the people" -- even though he hasn't respected anything at all.

The Daydream Not to Hold Your Breath For:

If this pastor/priest/pope was part of a real Christian community, a number of the people of his church would have noticed and felt deeply against his ungodly feelings toward others and the lack of the real Holy Spirit in his heart. They would have individually, lovingly admonished him, reminding him of Christ's tale of the Good Samaritan, and of how we Christians are to remain separate from the world rather than becoming so entangled in it that we start taking on its hate-filled and oppressive attitudes and values. 

If this pastor/priest/pope wouldn't repent, the church would have called in the elders of the church to strip him of any authority in the church until he was healed, and then to pray for him, and to exorcise him, as needed. 

If he still would not repent and allow the real Holy Spirit within his heart, with great sorrow and prayers for him to return to the real God, they would have removed him from fellowship and sought to see what they could do to repair the damage he'd done to God's name and all the families who'd been stolen from.

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This article written by Lynne at No Junk. Just Jesus. You can contact Lynne at NoJunkJustJesus@gmail.com.

If Christians were Christian - 001 (An Unreal Dream)

One of the things that makes being a real Christian, interested in the real Jesus, so difficult in our modern day is the great stinking cloud of untruth about what real Christians, actually taking Jesus and the Bible seriously, would be and do in this world. Wouldn't you just love to see real Christianity demonstrated around your world, more than just once in awhile? I know I would. 

Well, until that happens (which will be when Jesus comes again), here's a bit of ugly reality I came across this week, and my daydream about how much different it could be, if only "Christians were Christian".

The Ugly Reality:

I watched the documentary "Holy Water-Gate: Abuse Cover-up in the Catholic Church" this morning. Ugh. As many of you know, I myself was Roman Catholic for some time, until disgust with the whole system and discovering real-Jesus-truth meant I couldn't stomach belonging to it any longer. But even now, every time I believe I can't think any less of the Roman Catholic Church and its demonic hierarchy, something comes along -- like this film -- to prove me wrong.

In the film we see first in the Roman Church, of course, the fact that men who want and do sexually abuse and rape children are accepted and protected as "ministers" of the Gospel. And it goes on for years, and for thousands upon thousands of victims. But then the film goes on to show the Roman Church "leaders":

• telling lie after lie, 
• pretending to be interested and concerned (slicker than most politicians, in fact), 
• refusing to make any real fix, 
• being more concerned to "protect the rights of priests" than children, 
• suing victims in court for "defaming" the reputations of pedophile priests and the Roman Church, 
• sending "investigators" to harass and intimidate victims and their families to make them "zip it up",
• persecuting those within the hierarchy who ask for change, 
• making the whole Roman Church accomplice to child rape and seeing child rape as "just another sin to be unconcerned with",
• being entirely focused about what this all means under Roman Catholic "canon law" (meaning, the human-created doctrines and rules they've spent centuries making up and scaring, hurting, and killing people with), and never showing any interest in God's law and how that might actually differ from any even be more important than their "canon law". 
• Never showing any Holy Spirit from their hearts. 

All of this goes right in with all the other horrible crimes of violence, rape, oppression, mass murder, and more that the Roman Church has been guilty of for more than 1,700 years. And it's all because there has never been any Holy Spirit or real Jesus presence in the Roman Church. How can I say that? Because I judge whether something is real or not the way that Jesus tells me to.

The Daydream Not to Hold Your Breath for:

If these Roman "Christians" were really Christian, reports would occasionally surface of a minister of the Gospel who sexually abused a child (just like occasionally a report would surface of a minister of the Gospel who had murdered someone, or stolen something). However, since the church leadership had dealt with these problems centuries ago when they were first reported, they already had standard measures in place to deal with those very few rotten apples who somehow slip through the cracks and into ministry work.

Their centuries-old standard procedures would involve the church helping the victim, family, and others heal emotionally, physically, and spiritually from the damage done by the false minister. Part of that healing would involve the fully and always open investigation (and its results), kept open to not only the victim and her/his family, but also to the rest of the church and community. In this way, accountability was maintained by all, further discussion could come up regarding anything that needed to be changed, and trust of the local church would be actually earned once again. God would be glorified and given thanks (instead of being cursed by people who have been taught to associate Him with child rape). 

There would be no lawsuits, because there wouldn't need to be any. There would be no shaming or silencing of the victim, because the people of the church would take full responsibility for how it did (or did not) demonstrate Christ to others within its community and to the world. There would only be love and care for others above self and one's own, and repentance when that mark was missed -- just like Holy Spirit-filled hearts conduct themselves.

3 reasons to be delivered from being Christian Left

I talked last week about the dangers of being part of the "Christian Right". But that's only one side of the wide road that leads to destruction.

There's just as much danger in being part of the "Christian Left" (or a "Jesus Radical" or "Sojourner", or any of the other latest euphemisms for the same thing). Here are three reasons to pray you'll be delivered from being "Christian Left:

1. While the Christian Right ignores and rebels against God's authority, the Christian Left ignores and rebels against God's justice. 

Now, the Left (religious and otherwise) is known for talking about justice -- but what they nearly always mean is human beings fixing problems of some abusing others. Human justice, in other words. It's very, very rare these days to hear anyone in the Christian Left calling for God's justice. 

For example, just this last weekend I listened to a wonderful Christian Left man who obviously has a great, loving heart, and who stretched that out to say that it's not right to believe God won't save every last human being on the planet. Why? Because, he'd tell you, "God is love".

But that's a very happy but extremely limited way of interpreting God's love, and it completely rewrites God's Old and New Testament promises of justice. Think about it: if God were to save every human being on the planet, that means that going into heaven with all the sinners who chose and yielded to His wiser way would be all those human beings who instead -- all the way to the end of their lives, and no matter how many times offered ways to realize their bad choice -- chose evil. If God saves every person on the planet, then that means heaven is going to be filled with people who:

• Killed family, friends, coworkers, neighbors, other soldiers, "civilians", or one or more others -- and remained proud or pleased or aloof about it to their dying day.
• Raped women, children, men, even animals -- and remained proud or pleased or aloof about it to their dying day.
• Tortured or did "experiments" on other human beings (and animals when it was unnecessary for anything but power and career standing) -- and remained proud or pleased or aloof about it to their dying day.
• Abused, cheated or otherwise took advantage of the poor, the mentally or emotionally vulnerable, and/or those who are vulnerable because of sexual orientation, race, religion, sex, and so on -- and remained proud or pleased or aloof about it to their dying day.
• Spent their time and energies on their own sense pleasures, material wealth, and career standing instead of on the suffering going on within their own families, neighborhoods, countries, or the world -- and remained proud or pleased or aloof about it to their dying day.
• And more...

Which means that if God saves every human being on the planet, then heaven is going to be just as much a filth hole as the planet earth.

If God doesn't exercise justice, then we're all sunk because He lied to Eve and the rest of us about coming to save us from the evil we're trapped in and among. .

If God doesn't get to cull those who never stopped enjoying evil -- the tares -- from among those who did -- the wheat -- then He's a sadist who created us just to suffer as a race for thousands of years only to then be mind-wiped and placed like plastic people in a heavenly model railroad.

And that's just not the God we're told about in the Bible.

Those on the Christian Left (often) have their hearts in the right place, but the philosophies and theologies of the Christian Left want to settle for human justice -- despite the unending result of human justice to collapse into evil no matter how well its intentions started.

Until the Christian Left once again (as it did 100 years ago) starts calling for and relying on God's justice alone, it will never be anything but a smiling, loving, but still hurtful movement that discounts the real needs of those who are oppressed and harmed in this world, trying instead to fill those needs with itself.

As C.S. Lewis said:

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."

2. While the Christian Right reimagines God as a "good" demonic power, the Christian Left remakes God into someone they don't have to be "embarrassed" by. 

While both Right and Left stake claims on the Holy Spirit, the Christian Right actually takes great apparent delight in having an evil spirit in its churches and organizations, and the Christian Left almost invariably goes out of its way to have no spirit. Here's one example of what I mean:

I attended a Christian Left church years ago and during the pastor/priest/pope's sermon she mentioned that the week before she'd run into an old left-wing friend from before she'd decided to go to seminary and he asked her what she was doing now. She said when she told him she'd become a Christian leader, he became disgusted and angry with her, asking why she would waste her time on such ridiculous stuff as Christianity. Her feelings? Embarrassment and shame. Her response? She tried to explain away and diminish her "guilt" with him by saying things to make it apparent she and he were still on the same page, still the same kind of people, still "serious" and "scientific" and "ok". And it was quite clear in all her "Christian leadership" (that day and others, I mean) that she was quite embarrassed at anything and everything that might even hint she had anything in her heart but good old Material Secular Leftism. I used to wonder again and again: if you are so "above" or ashamed to be the Christian the Bible tells you to be, why are you in church? What are you doing here???

I've run into similar Christian Left churches and organizations over the years, and I've met others who've also gone and also come out wanting to ask the Christian Leftists there: Why are you here??? Because truly it just doesn't make sense to call yourself something that you're actually embarrassed to be called. And -- whether you are so-called "laity" or "clergy" -- if you claim to "love" and respect Jesus while throwing away and disrespecting everything He said and did that the Material World doesn't like, then why make yourself part of something claiming to be part of His church or values? Why not just be a secular Leftist? 

Here's my guess. Either you are:

• Truly called by God to be one of His people, but you haven't yet learned to let go of the temporal goodies (like being part of the popular team, advancing up the career/money ladder, etc) that come from being part of the world. (In which case, there's still hope for you, as millions of us can attest to from first hand experience!)
  

Or, you are:

• Not called by God at all, but by the devil, or by your own ego, or your own wish to boss others, be applauded and get paid for it without having to get a real job or be seen for who you really are. (In which case, there's no hope for you at all unless you allow God to heal and rid you of some very serious psychological issues and from your want to continue enjoying them).

There are no such things as "Christian bystanders". Your politics doesn't matter, and even your heart doesn't matter, if you aren't also proclaiming and being willing to share Jesus with others.

3. The Christian Right rewrites and picks and chooses out of the Bible -- and so does the Christian Left.

There is a Christian Left church in my town that's filled with good-hearted people, who are very loving to others, and who -- wait for it -- teach people that most of what's in the Bible is simple mythology or human re-writes, that we don't have anything to learn from most of the Bible, and that Jesus wasn't divine at all but simply a really good guy that we should pay attention to and follow in love (but nothing else).

Personally, especially as a Gay Christian, if I had a dollar for every time some well-meaning Christian Leftist tried to save me from the "oppression" of taking the Bible seriously, I'd be sipping on pineapple juice and writing you from my own tropical island right now (you could all come with me -- I promise).

Here's an illustrative picture: the Christian Right drowns Baby Jesus in the bathtub, but the Christian Left, wanting to be more loving and appropriate than the Christian Right, simply throws Him out with the bathwater.

Truly, the answer to all the evil done by the Christian Right is not to throw out or remake the Bible, or to dethrone the Son of God. 

The answer instead is to do the work they will not: 

• Getting and spreading God's real meaning, in its original contexts and such, in the example of our hearts as lived out in our lives
• Humbly teaching each other and being taught, understanding that none of us will ever have even most of The Truth right and we need to rely on each other to figure more out,
• Competing with each other to be the lowest servant to the servants (and not the fake "servant" idolatry of our modern concept of "clergy"),
• Not cutting each other off over doctrinal disagreements over what we've created or held to that has nothing to do with God but everything to do with our own sinful human egos.
• and so on.
  

If you are part of the Christian Left, I know your heart is in the right place.

Are you sure, though, that you still elevate God as THE reason to hate oppression and end torture and feed the poor and so on? 

Because truly, if your motivation comes only from human inspiration, then -- however noble -- it will always fail. It will seem to feed good, while it will inevitably cause more evil than good. And haven't we seen that again and again in the Left, when all intentions and want to accomplish things for the poor and oppressed turned into horror? We have only to look honestly at examples like Maoist China or the Soviet Union which degenerated quickly into oppression and murder for hundreds of millions, or at the Left "free" 1960s (which lead us to hundreds of millions of lives lost to drug abuse and a dead idealism that's led to narcissism and spiritual rot), and so on, to understand that nothing "good" human beings can imagine can ever stay good for very long.

But God's good is eternal.

It's only when our want to do good comes first and only from and through Jesus Christ openly and soundly in our heart -- even when the secular left and world wants to shame us for that -- that we're truly doing any good at all. It's only when we're doing the Lord's work while knowing Jesus as our divine and only God that we have anything real to give to those in need.

If you have put Jesus' anti-oppression values in your heart, but not truly allowed the real Jesus in there to lead and teach and heal you, do so now! Proclaim and wait for God's justice! Be proud of Jesus in the face of all those who want to shame you, instead. And take on the blessings of learning and belonging that come from being part of God's history in the world.

You have it in your heart. Make it real. Make it happen!