Getting a contented biblical view of biblical inspiration,f rom one’s conversion in (perhaps) one’s teens, to mature adulthood after much reflection, can be a long and changing journey, without reducing one’s love of scripture of intended or attempted submission to it.
When a child is born it reorients its parents and the world towards its vulnerability. That is a vocation and it decentralizes authority. The parents say that is love. God is love. When one looks at the world it offers centralized top down authority structures that take the form of politics, religion and wealth. These two types of kingdoms are structurally incompatible and are in tension with one another. Each child arriving creates a fracture in loyalty to hierarchy or kingship. The next child does the same, then another and another and so on.
An absolute kingship always fears the child first born and so attempts to suppress it, enlist it, or silence it to protect itself and avoid the fracture. And as best it can do that, the next child born still creates a new fracture.
In the story of Jesus he tells people to be like the child, be reborn, give up the life you have, do not harm the child and so on. People often have turned the message about the child into sentimental innocence ignoring structurally what the child did to the world just by arriving.
His story presents the two types of kingdoms, one visible in the world we can all see easily and one that is unseen by close at hand.
Hierarchy has its place for it distributes provisions that are necessaries of life, but it can drift if not restrained. Church systems are not about doctrines or rituals, but a place where each person is permitted to live out the vocation they had from birth. To be themselves. This idea of sanctuary isn't limited to religious systems either, as it can appear in many forms and so the arrival isn't decided by Pentecostals or Catholics or whoever. What helps one may hinder another.
Pentecost is the time when many who spoke different languages, now could speak to one another with one common language. It wasn't about speaking in tongues or bringing about an ordered structure, it was always about the vocation of the child. That is the common language that disrupts kingship and so is the model of the church.
You might have thought you were required to forgive others as a command, but it really is a consequence. When you see a person living for hierarchy the probably do not see the other kingdom, so you forgive them for serving the wrong one. It might be, in life, they have no option at the moment like the roman centurion.
Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
That is a beautiful image. We have an elderly cat who requires lots of attention. Today my wife said, “Why does a cat rule my life?” Knowing how’d she answer, I asked her why she let him. She said, “Because I love him.”
Getting a contented biblical view of biblical inspiration,f rom one’s conversion in (perhaps) one’s teens, to mature adulthood after much reflection, can be a long and changing journey, without reducing one’s love of scripture of intended or attempted submission to it.
Amen to that
When a child is born it reorients its parents and the world towards its vulnerability. That is a vocation and it decentralizes authority. The parents say that is love. God is love. When one looks at the world it offers centralized top down authority structures that take the form of politics, religion and wealth. These two types of kingdoms are structurally incompatible and are in tension with one another. Each child arriving creates a fracture in loyalty to hierarchy or kingship. The next child does the same, then another and another and so on.
An absolute kingship always fears the child first born and so attempts to suppress it, enlist it, or silence it to protect itself and avoid the fracture. And as best it can do that, the next child born still creates a new fracture.
In the story of Jesus he tells people to be like the child, be reborn, give up the life you have, do not harm the child and so on. People often have turned the message about the child into sentimental innocence ignoring structurally what the child did to the world just by arriving.
His story presents the two types of kingdoms, one visible in the world we can all see easily and one that is unseen by close at hand.
Hierarchy has its place for it distributes provisions that are necessaries of life, but it can drift if not restrained. Church systems are not about doctrines or rituals, but a place where each person is permitted to live out the vocation they had from birth. To be themselves. This idea of sanctuary isn't limited to religious systems either, as it can appear in many forms and so the arrival isn't decided by Pentecostals or Catholics or whoever. What helps one may hinder another.
Pentecost is the time when many who spoke different languages, now could speak to one another with one common language. It wasn't about speaking in tongues or bringing about an ordered structure, it was always about the vocation of the child. That is the common language that disrupts kingship and so is the model of the church.
You might have thought you were required to forgive others as a command, but it really is a consequence. When you see a person living for hierarchy the probably do not see the other kingdom, so you forgive them for serving the wrong one. It might be, in life, they have no option at the moment like the roman centurion.
Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
That is a beautiful image. We have an elderly cat who requires lots of attention. Today my wife said, “Why does a cat rule my life?” Knowing how’d she answer, I asked her why she let him. She said, “Because I love him.”