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.

It's safer being a sinner than a Good Religious Person

That sinner, the Queen of Sheba, getting God-wisdom

We're continuing today through the (chronological) Gospels – taking a good look at who Jesus really was and is, outside of the way He's always been portrayed by what most loudly calls itself "Christianity".

Last week, we started a look at (among other things) demons in the New Testament. Today, we'll look at a few more, and talk about the demonic in relation to Good Religious People.

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 says you can also get the NRSV human translation at bible.oremus.org. If you prefer yet another human-translation that isn't on one of these other pages, do send it to me. I will also list it here).

Today we see that "demon-possessed" people were brought to Jesus. What does that mean, "demon-possessed"? Does the Bible or science tell us the real truth about demons? Or is there perhaps truth in both – or neither?

To modern human philosophies, which discount everything that doesn't fit within a certain narrow way of testing and thinking about the biological and psychological world, demons just don't exist. The modern cultures with the most power in the western world today teach us that "demons" are only psychological or mythological mind-creations of "backward", or psychologically disturbed, or "overly-religious" people (who are often presumed by the most insistent believers in modern philosophies to be "backward" and "psychologically disturbed", as well).

Problem is, being made of fallible human beings just like religion is made up of fallible human beings, what most loudly calls itself "Science" has degenerated in the last century into a mess no more logical than "Religion". In fact (and to my great sorrow, since I have a lifelong love of real science), "Good Science People" today are really no different from "Good Religious People". Both:

• Either don't make a study, or make a poor one, of those parts of their base wisdom-materials (world or Bible) they accept as "reality", and then
• Either consciously or unconsciously decide what they will find, and then
• Use their base wisdom materials to "prove" what they decided was the truth, and then
• Refuse to think outside the tiny box they've invented for their minds.

This is true all over, in physics, biological sciences (including medicine), geology, and more – just as it's true in fundamentalist Protestantism, Roman Catholicism, and the "tweeners" like denominational Protestantism, emerging/emergent "churches", and so on. Why is it true? Because human beings are human beings, and without a lot of self-reflection and being willing to give up our self-focused crap, we naturally gravitate to ways of thinking and understanding that back up and "prove" our crap. There are people, both among those interested in science and in religion, who truly work to find the real thing beyond their own garbage – but they are few and far between, and in science just as in religion, they are ignored and trashed and even punished by the science/religion majority.

So what we’ve ended up with – in both "science" and "religion" realms – is a lot of exceptionally educated people who know crap. They're "educated idiots", heads full of years of documented study the majority conformity-culture says is "reality" – but what they've really done is just memorize a particular human philosophy, and then gone out into the world to help coat and re-coat reality with their philosophy.

So, what does all this have to do with demons? Well, the truth of the matter is, the Bible doesn't tell us a whole lot about demons, and almost all of what passes for religious "knowledge" about demons is simply human philosophy about demons – not demon-reality. Unfortunately, what most loudly calls itself "Science" today has nothing more to offer in helping us understand demons than "Religion" does, because in the slap-fight it started with its sibling "Religion" several centuries back, it decided that anything that Religion even talks about is automatically NOT REAL.

So we have two large, self-focused, domineering human philosophies, neither of them doing any real work to figure demons out based on the evidence that's there or might be there, telling us what to believe about demons. What a mess.

So all we "non-experts" can do is do our own work and decide for ourselves what we believe. And hopefully we do that in a way that isn't as full of our own crap! Several years ago I did discover a book that goes more specifically and only into what the Bible actually says and doesn't say about demons. Check it out if you're interested!

• Have you made an actual study of what the Bible itself actually says and doesn't say about demons? Where do you get your understanding of who they are (or aren't) and what they can do (or can't do)? Does your understanding need updating or refining? 
• If you decide demons don't really exist, or decide that they do exist, how does that change or set your understanding of the various forces at work in the world today? 

In our scriptures today we see that when Jesus healed someone who was demon-possessed and also had a physical ailment (like blindness), the physical ailment went away when the demon did. One of the important things to see here is the strong reaction this caused among those who were witnesses to it. The miracle-healing and throwing out of demons made them think, made them debate within and among themselves as individuals and as a collective people:

Is this God or God's power standing right here among us? Or is there something evil going on?

As we talked about last week, of course, Jesus reminds them that if evil was using evil to remove evil power, then evil would fall – and evil isn't that stupid. So here again is God visibly and powerfully using supernatural power in the world so that the people He told to look for these kinds of supernatural events to prove it was Him (and not some huckster pretending to be Him) with them would be able to recognize Him. We know, of course, that in the end very few of His Chosen People were even willing to recognize Him, even as He stood right there in front of them doing things no human or demonic power could ever do. Remember what John (the disciple/Gospel writer, not the Baptist) said? 

There was the true Light which, coming into the world, enlightens everyone. He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. [John 1:9-13]

Almost all of the Jews of the day believed that simply being Jewish made them one of God's people, as if nothing more was required of them than religious rituals and attendance. And believing so, their hearts and minds weren't willing to see the greatest miracle of all: God standing right in their midst. In the end, nearly all the Jews of that day rejected God, and so they made a mockery of believing they were "God's People". And who ended up really being God's People? John tells us: those Jews and non-Jews whose hearts and minds were willing to see and accept God as He lived among them. Suddenly, being one of God's People didn't require anything from the Old Testament Mosaic Law, and didn't require being of a certain people – it just required being willing.

• We also have to ask today when we see miraculous or big spiritual things happening, "Is this God's power at work here, or is something evil going on?" Jesus and others in the Bible tell us to always question and test to make sure what we're following or seeing is truly from God, and not some evil fake. So the question itself is good. The Good Religious People back then just made it a reason to reject the real God because their fake-"God" suited them better. When in your life have you questioned whether something's really about God or not, for the right reasons? When in your life have you questioned like a Good Religious Person, and therefore done it for the wrong reasons? 
• "Churches" and "denominations" today are rank with the insistence that we have to join up with them to be saved or one of God's People. It wasn't too long ago, in fact, when Good Religious People even had the power to torture and murder people who refused to submit to their version of "God" and being "God's People". Yet by filling their hearts and minds with their own version of "God" in the same way the Good Religious People 2,000 years ago did, they can't even recognize and accept the real One. Have you been guilty of this in the past? (I have!) Have you since recognized the error and sought healing and the true Jesus? 
• The institutions and philosophies that Good Religious People create can be intensely addicting and absorbing, so that it can seem impossible to be free from the fear, guilt, and/or shame that keep us attached to them (physically, emotionally, and/or spiritually) even long after we've otherwise rejected them. One could even say that their complete possession of especially (but not only) those of us who were raised in their "reality" seems demonic, because of the dominating power they can have over us. Does Jesus need to heal you of any Good Religious Demons? Are you fully aware of the physical, psychological, and/or spiritual ailments you will also be free of, when Jesus drives the demon of religion out of you?

When Jesus confronted the Good Religious People in today's scripture, He told them something else very interesting – something He'd warned them about several times before, and would warn them about again, in other ways:

It's safer to be a repentant God-rejecter, than a Good Religious Person.

Why safer? Because the sincere repentance of even the evil pagans of Ninevah, and the sincere search for true-God-wisdom made by the idol-worshipping queen of the South, actually produced people able to recognize the true God and the need to live in His ways. This so much so that those who had been God-rejecters now had enough God-understanding to recognize and condemn the kind of false-God-connection the Good Religious People lived.

Good Religious People accused Jesus of being demon-possessed and demon-powered, yet who really was? Here again we see talk of demons – also called evil or unclean spirits – but this time in relationship to Good Religious People (go back and check today's scripture again, if you missed this context). Jesus says that giving ourselves a good spiritual housecleaning means nothing toward really making and keeping us spiritually clean. When we simply empty ourselves of evil (say, at a revival meeting, or during a church service, etc), but don't turn around and fill ourselves with God, then we stay religious – and Good Religious – but then end up even more evil than when we started.

Those of us not still trapped in this kind of Good Religious Trade-One-Devil-for-Seven Spirituality certainly can see this. We automatically curl our lip or step back defensively (physically, emotionally, financially, whatever) from those we find out are Big Christians or big churchgoers or big Bible-readers. Good Religious People like to pretend that people only reject them because they reject God, but in fact the Bible says that (many) people actually reject God because of Good Religious People.

Whether we are female, Gay, poor, a citizen of a weaker nation, or just an Average Joe on the street or in a workplace or family, we suffer under the huge amount of self-righteousness, self-centeredness, nation-worship, violence-worship, hate, condemnation, sexual and other kinds of abuse (of adults and children), Bible-twisting, clergy-elevation, and even just plain old lying, cheating, and stealing we see on a regular basis from Good Religious People (Christian and otherwise). And all of the evil ugliness we see in Good Religious People – whether 6,000 years ago, 2,000 years ago, 1,000 years ago, or today – is all part of what Jesus is describing here: religiously cleaning out one demon, but then ending up with seven demons. Starting out as a Level 1 Jerko, and ending up a Level 7 Smiling Ass. When we go the Good Religious Route, instead of the real Jesus route, our condition does go from bad to worse. It truly would have been better had we never become Good Religious People in the first place, but just gone from simple sinner to simple repentant sinner.

• People decide to focus on a lot of different things in the Bible. For example, Good Religious Heterosexuals like to pretend that the Bible is mostly about God blessing and obsessing on what their sex organs can do. Good Religious Power Worshippers like to pretend the Bible is mostly about domination, violence, and acquisition at home, work, at war, etc. And so on. But one of the things that fills a good deal of the Bible, but is rarely talked about (or even seen) by Good Religious People, is the amount of effort God has put in to trying to get Good Religious People to be and do what they claim to be (His real followers, doing His real things) – and how nearly every time Good Religious People have absolutely refused to do anything but their own way. Oh, they turn around now and again, usually after a huge punishment takes away all their material goods and feel-good religious rituals. But then they go back – again, and again, and again – to doing things their own way. How has this happened within your own life? How much effort has God had to put into trying to get you to be His (real) follower, instead of a Good Religious Person? What can you do to stop getting in the way of His efforts?

See you next week, when we'll talk about who Jesus counts as His family, and who Jesus says "gets" His message and doesn't - and why.

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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 be even greater than John the Baptist?

A quick note: I've normally been posting on Thursdays. My schedule with the new job has changed, though, so I'm going to aim for Fridays instead.

Ok – we're continuing our journey through the (chronological) Gospels, checking out Jesus as He really was and is, and how different that is from how He's been portrayed by Good Religious People for nearly all of what most loudly calls itself "Christianity".

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 says you can also get the NRSV human translation at bible.oremus.org. If you prefer yet another human-translation that isn't on one of these other pages, do send it to me. I will also list it here).

This week we meet the famous John the Baptist again – the same John we met earlier in the Gospels:

• Amazingly-born into the elderly priest-family of Elizabeth and Zachariah and destined from birth to be filled with the Holy Spirit,
• Chosen to be God's announcer to the Jewish people that the Messiah He'd promised them for so many centuries was at last here,
• Baptizer of Jewish people who wanted to use baptism as a outward sign of their inner heart's turning away from their own way and back towards God's way (although the Good Religious People of then – no different than the Good Religious People of today – who wanted the experience of doing the outward sign without actually having the inner heart change, of course, showed up too), 
• Rejecter of anything but give-it-all-up-for-God, speak-only-God's-truth-and-never-shut-up, especially when it torques off the Good Religious People and political/financial powerhouses, and,
• Baptizer of his cousin, Jesus, even though he recognized that Jesus had no need for a sin-rejection / God-embracing baptism, as everyone else did.

When we meet John the Baptist again, he's been off still doing what he's been doing for some time now: calling people on their crap, and baptizing those who wanted to clean themselves up for God. But now John's own followers have been telling him some of the things Jesus has been doing – which included things like touching the dead (even though that's religiously disgusting, according to the Mosaic Law) and violating the Sabbath (even though that was such a violation of the Mosaic law that it technically required the death penalty). John had believed in Jesus before – recognized Him as having God's-spark like no other ever had. But even John had questions of faith. So (not able to go himself, since he was in prison for telling a high government official how immoral this official was by God's standards), John sent two of his followers to ask Jesus just what in the world is going on: "ARE You the Messiah? Or are You just a great prophet Yourself, and we should be waiting for the actual Messiah still?"

The answer Jesus gave back to John not only proved who He was according to scripture, but it also invited John (and everyone else) to decide based on their own eyes and ears. Jesus told him:

The scripture says the Messiah will heal blindness, lameness, disease, deafness, and even death, and will comfort the have-nots with the truth that God's going to fill them to overflowing – and that's exactly what's happening now, through Me. So you're completely right-on if you don't reject Me because I don't match Good Religious Expectations for the Messiah.

John's followers took the message back to John, and John must have felt so much better. Since his whole life had been about not only waiting like everyone else for the Messiah, but also about risking and giving up everything (literally) to proclaim the Messiah's coming and the need to repent to God's People, John could now sit even in the filth and horror of an ancient prison and know that he'd accomplished exactly what God had set for him to do – that all his work on his own heart, all his giving up everything to a real follower of God's way, had not been for nothing. What a great life!

• Since even John the Baptist had questions about faith in Jesus, does that provide you comfort that you're still ok with God when you have uncertainty? Who did John go to to help solve his faith issues? Who should we go to, to get the answers we need?
• John the Baptist took the harsh road of total denial of all the world considers "good" or even "necessary", so that he was only about God and speaking God's truth to His people. When the world around them was so corrupt that God's (real) truth wasn't allowed in the political or religious realms, that's what God's (true) prophets did: they sat outside it all, not allowing corruption to taint their own hearts or message, and did and said what God put in their hearts to do and say – even when it cost them everything. As corrupt at our "churches" are today, could John the Baptist's message or living be any different if he were living and speaking today? How is that people calling themselves "prophets" today imagine they can live and work as part of the "church" system and not become corrupt, even though no real prophet seen in the Bible ever could? 
• The Jews of the day recognized John as a real prophet because he lived like what they had seen from their scripture as being a real prophet. What should we scripturally expect a real prophet of today to live and sound like?

After John's followers left, though, Jesus started speaking to the crowd about John. He asked them:

"When John was still proclaiming God's way in the desert and you went out to experience what John was doing, who did you think you'd find? A weakling that just goes this way and that? No? Well, what kind of man did you expect to find? Someone who lives in nice, soft clothing and enjoys big money in his pocket? No way – those kinds of people live in the high places of the world. So what did you go out to see? A prophet? Oh yeah – a prophet! And someone even more than a prophet. John's the one God spoke of in the Old Testament when He said, 'I'm going to send someone to announce I'm coming, to prepare people's hearts for Me.' But hear this: among human beings, there's no one greater than John, but as great as John is, everyone who lives like God says to live is even greater than that! So pay attention, because from when John started doing his thing until now, God's way has been shoving its way back into the world, and you've got to be a 'fanatic' like John to get on that train."

• One of the ways that Good Religious Bible Scholars re-write God's Word is proved in this passage. Jesus literally says above, "But what did you go out to see? A man dressed in soft clothing? Those who wear soft clothing are in kings' palaces". And the word translated "soft" here literally means "soft" – it's the Greek word malakoi. Yet many Good Religious Bible Scholars decide in 1 Corinthians 6:9 that when Paul is writing about the kinds of people who don't get to go to heaven, the Greek word malakoi suddenly means "effeminate" or "homosexual" instead (though, of course, those two words don't mean the same thing either). So, when the Bible context isn't condemning, "soft" to them means "soft" like Jesus said it: the pampered, powerful rich. But when the Bible context is condemning, suddenly now "soft" means Gay or a feminine male. So instead of translating exactly what Paul wrote and what God meant us to understand, in a way that matches other contexts in the Bible, they changed what Paul wrote – changed what God meant for us to understand – so that it matches what they want it to say and condemns people they want to condemn (feminine males and/or Gay people) and let's off the hook the people they don't want to condemn (the pampered, powerful rich). How do they "justify" that? If they bother at all, they say it's because Good Religious Scholars a few centuries after Paul decided that the word here means "effeminate". The fact that those ancient Good Religious Scholars were from a Greek/Roman culture that so worshiped violently aggressive masculinity that they would have called every man today who isn't a bloody, raging cage-fighter "effeminate" means nothing to today's Good Religious Scholars. They re-write it like they want to see it. So what does that mean to you, seeing such a blatant re-make of God's Word by "experts" and "Good Christians" who claim to know and teach the Bible better than anyone else? Should you listen to these people without always making an intense study of everything they have to say? If they can provide "justification" for an entire false-"Christian" culture to hate, bear false witness against, deny job and family protections to, and otherwise abuse Gay people and feminine males (which totally violates all of God's Old and New Testament insistence that we protect and assist those who are oppressed or persecuted, and not help their oppressors), can they be said to even know the real Jesus? Or are they just more of the blind-leading-the-blind right into hell's pit, just as Jesus described? How have such re-writes of scripture impacted your life, your family's life, your community's life? What can you do to help make God's real truth known? 
• Jesus obviously had very high esteem for John the Baptist – and yet Jesus tells us that when we live God's (real) way, we are even higher up the esteem-ladder than John was. Jesus didn't mean for us to think that made John less – but rather, us more! How does it change your life and your living to know that as someone who's working to live God's way, you can't even imagine how highly you are esteemed in God's kingdom? 
• Some people who have a violent nature themselves have tried to make Jesus' statement about being zealous in our pursuit of God's kingdom mean that God wants us to be violent or aggressive in "His" work. Does that even make sense, though, considering the way that Jesus lived in the world (even when dealing with His mortal enemies), and how those who first learned from Him (Peter, Paul, etc) lived in the world?

But Jesus said even more to the crowd, didn't He? He said God's people of that day accomplished no more than do children trying to get other children to play their (and no one else's) game. He said:

"John the Baptist gave up even the bare essentials of food and fun to live God's way, and you say he's crazy. But I don't give up the bare essentials of food and fun, and you say I'm a food-hog and a drunk, someone who's friends with sinful and hated people. But you know what? We're proven right because what we accomplish is right."

• Since what calls itself "The Church" is split into different "denominations" and "churches" and so on, and since there is line-drawing and spatting and infighting (and now even agreements not to "steal each other's sheep"), is there any better image today (and for the last many centuries) for the "Christian" "Church" than of a bunch of pouting, scrabbling little kids pushing people to "play Christian" their way, and not some other kid's way? What would happen if all these "Christians" put down their own egos and their own identification with human ways of re-imaging God? 
• Have you even been caught in someone's condemnation of you no matter what you did? What do people who do that to us "get" out of it? When they are Good Religious People, are they even focused on what God's calls important?

See you next Friday!

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