The fear of God is the fear of our false image of God

What do the writers of antiquity mean when they speak of, “the fear of God” and should we integrate this into our worldview? I believe the poets and authors of the Jewish scriptures where truly afraid that the creator wasn’t completely benevolent or good. They dictated and prescribed the need to appease their God with animal blood sacrifice, while neighboring tribes prescribed human and child sacrifices. They hoped these actions would show the deity that they where earnest in their devotion and would win the favor. However along comes the advent of Jesus, he made big claims that a time was upon humanity when we would only need to worship and spirit and truth.

Jesus said all spaces and people where deemed sacred and that it was time for a new understanding of God. During a time where sacrifice and fear was apart of every day religious life Jesus proclaims good news. He further went on to affirm that we could hope that the creator is a caring good father alleviating from needing to strive to appease this being. Crazy making…don’t be afraid, be afraid, and don’t be afraid!!!…Jesus speaks on fearing God and man in Mathew chapter 10. How are we to fear the great God of love? This is nonsense from a literal standpoint, but for a teacher who wants us to live in the tension of the question, it makes perfect sense. He wants us to know that we are safe in our loving creators vision, that as his student John says, “Perfect love cast out all fear.”  However Jesus then tells us how to avoid the fear of man, it’s fearing a good God. So in light of this good news, what do we do with the concept, “the fear of God?” What kind of space and poster is Jesus inviting us into?

We must admit we have incorrect God images corporately and personally. The fear of God is to enter the cloud of unknowing, with a grounded faith that our creator is who Jesus said he is like. The fear of God is the fear of our false image of God. We all miss identify who God is. If God were fully knowable he would not be God. Lets embrace some mystery and with humility and healthy fear, fall into love, ironically a love that cast out all fear. Come to the camp of mystery and get off the tracks of literalism. Literalism will kill your soul and you wont have a mind or a soul worth saving if we don’t become flexible make room for a mysterious, dynamic and living God.

“Love God, Love others” a paraphrase from Jesus

People that desire to encounter their creator have been writing bibles, religious text, angry retributive rants and holy books for thousands of years. These writings are filled with their hopes, projections, faith and experiences that will be judged as sacred or profane by us who read their “prophetic utterances.” Gods of their own constructed imaginations and projections have long enslaved and repressed human thought though history. The religious gatekeepers then create a structure to control the masses in the name of these imagined gods. These imagined deities have been violent, temperamental, jealous, petty and hell bent on embodying the worst of humanity. The ancient Hebrews have been praised as the first group of people to largely adopt monotheism. Like all religions, they where on to some progressive stuff for their day, however they too adopted an image source that was still full of violence. Today many modern Christians have adopted this god image and try to literally live under his violent yoke. I’m so happy to say, this is not the revelation Jesus taught.

 

The Hebrew Scriptures, “an affair with violence,” contrasted with Jesus and his teaching on enemy love.

 

My hope is this; as we daily weigh all scriptures that we would do so by setting a higher standard of love and non-violence that Jesus modeled and taught to his followers. We should engage these ancient and modern text with conscience, intention, reason, and with in the spirit of God. As we sift through the ancient and contemporary voices that ponder the divine, let’s not promote those that embody regressive, violent and fearful faith. It’s up to us to judge the past and those in the future will judge us by the good or terror we enact based upon our convictions and faith. Be on the side of love, openness, expansion and goodness for heavens sake. Choose you will, but what and how you affirm your faith will be up to you. Just because we say something enough times, or load enough, or over many centuries doesn’t make it true or good. I can say, “God said,” all I like and after all, God did not say it, I did. Did your faith start with an ancient warlord, a politician, a desert sage, or a failed salesman? You should evaluate their teachings critically, with love and reason for the peace and future of our race and planet. If there is a God and he is violent, then he and most of our religious institutions embodied his violence. However if God is loving, full of compassion, patience and abhors violence, woe, to the human who did violence in his name! Woe to us if we promote hate in his name! Woe to you if our creator is forgiving and you practice hostility, exclusion and judgment! Woe be unto us! For if our creator is love and we do not embody love, what space will there be for us with this deity?

 

 

I just finished an excellent book called, “Disarming Scripture,” by Derek Flood. I am sick of oppression, alienation, judgment, and violence done in the name of Jesus and his father. I’m also frustrated by the violence, confusion, and fear in my own heart. Derek’s book offers a detailed neo-orthodoxy and hermeneutic for evaluating scripture that frees people to love and act radically in following of Jesus. If you want to embody Jesus and don’t wish to model your life after what most churches tell you, then this means you may want to also read this book. It gives a lot of answers to my above statements in great detail. Jesus taught enemy love, and I like so many who grew up in the church, had hardly a clue what this meant. I was taught America was a Christian nation, but I early on noticed that our nation acted nothing like Jesus or his teachings. A literalist orthodox reading of scripture promotes, genocide, violence, sexism, child abuse, oppression, nationalism, racism and other isms that to not belong to Jesus or his teachings. Its time we learn how to follow Jesus, our conscience, with in what we now know about science, phycology, morality and the way of love. Both Mohammad and Moses embraced violence and bloodshed as the way forward. The prophets and poets of the Hebrews reveled in the blood of their enemies and spoke as if God but did so in horrible violent terms. These men may have been progressive for their day, but they knew nothing of the way of Jesus, or his teachings. If you want to follow Jesus but feel leery of his followers, this is great. Your conscience is working and you may be well adapted for the way of Jesus. Jesus came to save us not from God, but from ourselves. God is love, he is our creator and Jesus understood this. We are invited into a new era of enemy love, no longer mirroring violence with violence, no longer projecting our worst human qualities onto our creator. There is much we don’t know about God that will in this life remain a mystery. However, if we put our hope in Jesus, we can trust that God is good and that we can follow a new life-giving path and way of understanding and encountering our creator.

 

 

I have been studying Jesus’s teachings and examples on violence for the past month. Its been very inspiring to be invited into his way of clowning power, shaming those who practice oppressive tactics and demonstrating new ways to rid society of evil. As we learn to practice these teachings, we will have great break through and also fall on our faces as we try. In my head I was changing, adopting new ways to deal with violence and then yesterday I guy ran into me surfing. Then my body and mouth took over with two birds on each hand and a fuck you escaped my mouth. I was horrified, how could I claim to practice following Jesus and have such provocative body and mind reactions? Well I’m human, far from perfect, but I can immediately repent with the same mouth and hands, which I prompt did to my assailant. In that same instant my heart cried out, no, this is not the way! Take down these flags of war and rage, for they will only create more of what I despise. I have violence and compassion stored up with in my heart and it’s a process Jesus invites us into where we learn to lay down our reactions, ego and adopt his teachings and example. I am deeply committed to learning how to follow Jesus and yet I often fail. What a blessing to be invited into this process where we are allowed to ask for forgiveness, and get back up and try to do it in the Spirit over and over again.

 

“Sponges not Swords” By Miguel Morrise

Lay down, lay down low,

You are being prepared to suffer and this will be our greatness.

Let go, let go your expectations,

Things are not as they seem,

Normative reactions and unintentional rhythms will not suffice.

Open; Open your heart to the pain, joy, and the present,

You are ready to begin to feel and be born again.

Begin as a child,

We are ready to walk not only in flesh, but Spirit.

There is life beyond ego,

There is divine purity within your violent heart.

We are the sponges of the creator, prepared to absorb this present moment and be wrung out to dry,

This is our war strategy equipped as sponges,

We are sponges in the hands of Spirit,

Prepared to absorb the violence that we have absorbed and allowed the wringing palms of God to transform our enemy and us.

“Life With The Bloody Knife” by Mike Morse

My body stiffens, a dim flame hallows out naive and young dogma,

Concrete solidifies within my veins as I fail to feel the light,

I’m sore and weary from these dark expansive forces,

Questions and tensions mount…I want to fight, reject, and recant my allegiance,

Am I to deny the ancients, the sages, and the prophet’s revelation?

On who’s shoulder do I stand, am I in the hands of the lord of war?

There is a bloody knife laid within this beautiful landscape,

The gore is on display for all to see,

It is in plain sight, surrounded by love and beauty.

The sparrow is cherished, rivers cleansed, all trees and seas dance within the divine gaze.

This holy violence! The divine horror show is everywhere.

It crushes light like a fat, belligerent, drunk who barges into the wedding celebration,

The rite is still wonderful, but stained with murderous guest and I personify both sides depending on the moment,

There is a facture and tension in nature that is on fire with in my soul,

One instant awe and wonder, then terror and anxiety, how can one rest within this bed of roses and thorns?

My head is grappled and wrenched to stair suffering in the face if I don’t gaze upon it with acceptance,

Indiscriminate violence and goodness stroll the sun kissed waters within the same flow of grace!

How terrible, how wonderful, what the fuck, and amen!

I’m horrified that my Father could be like nature, steeped in the owl’s crafty barbarisms.

Who am I to not be present to what is?

I refuse to burry my head, stick it up where the sun don’t shine and call this faith.

The wave destroys and the wave gives life destroying and creating with in the rhythms of grace.

This tension is vexing, but the tearing of this heart of flesh will bring me faithfully home to Spirit,

I am born again and all is one.

 

 

 

 

Today I celebrate this polarizing, contradictory, divisive, and scandalous teacher who dumps us in our deepest questions. He leaves us in our questions and on purpose leaves us in deep tension. All one needs to do is spend some time reading Jesus and one will find his soul lifted, yet his mind tormented at the same moment. I have been reading, “On Parables,” by Thomas Keating and the joy it has been to see how expansive Jesus was and how revolutionary he is fills my heart with gratefulness. At the same moment many teachers don’t acknowledge the massive elephant in the room, but would rather pretend it was not there. This beast fills the stories of Jesus and is there on purpose. Who am I as a liberal minded believer to ignore the dark side of faith? I must not make the mistake that the hell-toting conservatives make in making camp in the dark side of faith. I must not refuse the darkness but camp there too. The day and the night are the same to God. Tension, tension, tension… I sit in it, at the feet of Jesus. Cussing and praising a like, I stand in need of mercy, and like a child I cling to him afraid and yet comforted. Jesus did not offer us what many teachers do, ease of mind and heart. He paints a lovely picture with his stories about the wonderful Father we all share, but also lets us know that his kingdom will come at great cost to us. I call this leaving the bloody knife in the beautiful landscape. Have mercy on me son of David, for I am a sinner and I bear your divine Spirit. I am your glory and joy and the reason you had to suffer. I feel the tension you leave us in, it hurts, but as you break me, you comfort me.

 

The Teaching of Jesus #13

 

The Teaching: Sit in tension and mystery. Jesus came to bring peace and sword at the same time.

 

The Practice: Sit in it, don’t burry the elephant in the room. Stair at it, ponder the beast, it is part of our transformation.

 

 

 

 

 

The Parable of the Wedding Banquet

22 Jesus spoke to them again in parables, saying: 2 “The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son. 3 He sent his servants to those who had been invited to the banquet to tell them to come, but they refused to come.

4 “Then he sent some more servants and said, ‘Tell those who have been invited that I have prepared my dinner: My oxen and fattened cattle have been butchered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding banquet.’

5 “But they paid no attention and went off—one to his field, another to his business. 6 The rest seized his servants, mistreated them and killed them. 7 The king was enraged. He sent his army and destroyed those murderers and burned their city.

8 “Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding banquet is ready, but those I invited did not deserve to come. 9 So go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find.’ 10 So the servants went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find, the bad as well as the good, and the wedding hall was filled with guests.

11 “But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing wedding clothes. 12 He asked, ‘How did you get in here without wedding clothes, friend?’ The man was speechless.

13 “Then the king told the attendants, ‘Tie him hand and foot, and throw him outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’

14 “For many are invited, but few are chosen.”

 

Can you feel the weight of the elephant, do you see it in the room! Do you see the beauty? Do you feel the sting? This is what it means to follow Jesus. We all camp under the same stars and sun, the light is always present, even in the dark.

 

John 6

“This is a hard saying; who can listen to it…After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. So Jesus said to the Twelve, “Do you want to go away as well?” 68 Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, 69 and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.”

 

So with Peter I say, it aloud, Lord, to whom shall I go? You have the words of eternal life, and I have believed, I have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God!

“The great Allower”

Learning to trust in this state of allowance. Leaning to allow and have hope.

Shit happens and grace flows at the same time across our universe. If there is a God, why does the being sit by and not intervene when so much needs redemption? Why does God allow such evil, suffering? If God is all-powerful and why does he do next to nothing about it? Jesus gives us a small insight to this mystery in a few stories he told, but he still leaves us sitting in the tension of this difficult question. It seems that this is what faith is about, its about sitting in the tension, the unknowing, and learning to be ok with our own inability to grasp the fullness of reality. I have wondered if this kind of God, one that chooses allow evil to happen, how can he be good, how can this being be trusted or safe refuge. It is important to acknowledged the flipside of this coin, why do evil people and noble souls still receive such grace, the same grace as all creation is the lavished benefactor of. Jesus tells us that there will be redemption and justice, but not now. Jesus invites us to wait in our questions. He tells us that mercy, love and grace are abundant in the universe, and I believe this truth to be self-evident.

 

Jesus tells us that our father (God) causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.

He also tells a story about a farmer with weeds that gets planted into a farmer’s food crop and uses the story to give us a small window into the mind of God. Jesus says, Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned.”

 

Teaching of Jesus #12

The Teaching: There is a plan in the work that redeems all creation and God will wipe away systematic evil. He will stop injustice and his redemption plan will be praised and wildly celebrated as good when we experience it.

The Practice: Let the deepest questions about life and God burn in your heart. Don’t pass judgment on them, but allow the questions to change you here and now. When we make room for these questions in our souls we make room for God, faith and grace.

It seems that justice is apart of the divine order, but it’s not within our timing. We are told to let go, turn the other cheek, lay down our lives and invited into humility. It seems that Jesus invites us into a deep life of faith that one day, it will all make sense, but in this state of being. So we are asked to sit in the tension of these difficult questions with incomplete answers. We are challenged by life and all its paradox, and I cling to this, “Great Allower,” and trust that the plan is a good one, that redemption is a process, and that I don’t have all the answers.

One of the great kings of the ancient Hebrews said this to his son as advice for living a life of faith. “Trust in the Lord with all of your heart, lean not on your own understanding. In all of your ways submit to him and he will make your path straight.” Solomon, son of David

 

 

Let go, release, and you don’t need to white knuckle your life. Surrender to the divine, to Christ, and allow Spirit to transform your life. We must not insist on our own will, agenda, and vision, we are invited to a deep surrender and trust in the goodness of our creator. What I’m talking about is the path of transformation. Great love and great suffering are typically the triggers that drag or draw us into this journey. We don’t choose our furnace, but we do choose how we walk through the fire.

 

Teaching of Jesus #11

 

The Teaching: If you cling to your life, you will lose it; but if you give up your life for me, you will find it.

 

The Practice: Open your hands symbolically as you pray this week. This outward gesture is leading with your body, inviting the heart to follow in openness to the Spirit. Ask God to illuminate and name things, attitudes, people, situations, ect… that you need to surrender in order for your transformation process to continue. Continue to loose your life into the teachings of Jesus.

 

We must name what to let go of, or what has been taken from us. Jesus invites us into a new stance towards our suffering, he offers a new attitude that believes the father is good and will use all things, even what we consider bad, for our good transformation. What I’m talking about here is a daily practice that is not easily assimilated into our character. We must be continually adhered to the teaching, to not insist on our own life, but to radically trust in the teachings of Jesus, to put them on and allow the transforming work and power to flow within our lives. Then we can find the life God has hidden for us in Jesus. I am invited to surrender, and acceptance of the teachings with out my personal judgments. I must trust that this promised life is good, but like CS Lewis says, we only know our homespun mud pies, when the Spirit is inviting us into a holiday at the sea.

 

“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” C_S_Lewis

“Why are the people who go to our church weird,” I asked my dad when I was about fourteen years old. My father gave me a perspective that was sticky, an answer that was like a light, turning the words of Jesus into flesh, for my young and impressionable mind. In that moment he explained that Jesus came for people who knew they needed help (possibly weird, dorky, strange ect), He explained to me how these are the people are the ones who easily understand their need for God’s healing love and life giving spirit. Twenty-eight years latter I hear the words of Jesus below:

 

“Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice’ For I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.” Jesus

 

I know I’m imperfect, and that I unknowingly twist reality incorrectly, even in all my best intentions. I affirm that I always will need to be showered by the mercy of God and with Jesus, need to dispense this mercy I receive as a sinner. Wait for one second, let us take out the word sinner here, and replace it with imperfect. I did not come to call the “perfect”, but “imperfect.” We must first stop demanding a sacrifice for our penance or failings, we must first receive the free grace that God pours upon all of us his children. When we accept this mercy, we then give it out and this is what brings us in tune with the spirit of God.

 

Teaching of Jesus number 10

Teaching: give out mercy and don’t scapegoat

 

Practice: to receive mercy and let it flow to those around you

“He thinks that singing on Sunday’s going to save his soul.”Jack Johnson

 

Jesus teaches that it’s more important to be reconciled with others, than to go to a community to worship God. In fact I believe he is saying that reconciliation with each other is worshiping God. The religious right of the first century AD believed that going through organized and systematic rituals at a temple was the best way to worship their creator. Jesus says, if you do go to these religious events, be sure to first really do yourself and God a favor, be reconciled to each other. Once we begin “othering” our advisory, we make them less than honorable or worth reconciling with. This burns up our soul in a toxic way because, it the first step to de humanizing our fellow human. Once we remove their basic God given dignity, by name-calling we don’t have to reconcile, in fact we start to justify preemptively striking them, hedging them out, oppressing them, or even killing them. Our souls are in danger of creating hell here and now on earth when we insist on calling our brother an asshole, kook, fucking idiot, bastered, terrorist, communist, imperialist, and on and on the list goes. Jesus invites us to see the good in our brother, to call it out, to seek peace, to find reconciliation with all things and people. It becomes very obvious that Jesus is not apart of our political agendas in the twenty first century, nor was he apart of the agenda of the religious or political systems of his day either. Jesus says that following Gods way starts with our neighbor, what we call our advisory, and ask us not to waste our time singing on Sundays if we have not made peace with all our friends and foes. So, as followers of Jesus, lets follow this teaching. If you do go to a house of worship tomorrow, this Easter or whenever, consider its worth reconcile with those in your life wherever possible. If you’re not ready to practice this teaching, you’re not ready to go to a community of worship.

 

Jesus Teaching #9

 

The teaching: Stop negative name-calling and labeling! Be reconciled with others before you go to a house of worship.

 

The practice: Search you soul and heart with God and invite our creator into your intimate thoughts and sub conscious stirrings. Invite God into your hurt and ask him whom you need to make peace with. Once the answer comes, use every recourse you have acquired or can obtain and seek out wisely how to make peace.

 

“But whoever says, ‘You fool!’ shall be in danger of hell fire. “Therefore if you bring your gift to the altar (worship God), and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar, and go your way. First be reconciled to your brother and then come and offer your gift.” Jesus

The command: Judge Not

 

The Practice: Replace judgment with grace and acceptance this week

 

“Judge not, that you be not judged. For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you.” Jesus teaching #8

 

A few years back I tried to give up judging as much as humanly possible for the lent period. I quickly realized how much I judge and how subtle and full of nuance judgment is. I soon realized I am addicted to judgment, and that some judgment is of a healthy nature and a subtle twist can be utterly toxic. Try to see if you can set your intention to give up judgment for just one day or one week, if you really want to challenge yourself. Lets learn what Jesus meant in this teaching, practice it and learn about how addicted we are to this behavior. Jesus invites us into a new internal freedom; it’s ours for the taking. Don’t see this as a command as much as an invitation to deeper, healthier relationships and a world of compassion. It seems to me that grace and acceptance just may be the opposite of judgment and if judgment is measured back, so is grace.

Allowing Jesus’s teachings to inform our politics and worldview, Jesus’s teaching #7.

 

The Teaching:

Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you.

 

The Practice:

1. Loving yourself intentionally, otherwise you wont know how to love others well.

 

2. Reflect on your politics, worldview and ask if this teaching is impacting your vibe and ethos, do your best to let this teaching transform your temperature of living.

 

If civil war broke out in your town and country and you had to flee the violence, what kind of reception would you hope for from the people who lived in relative peace? Working as a volunteer in Greece with the Syrian Refugee crisis really helped give the teachings of Jesus a fresh perspective. Feels weird reading the economist about the Greek and Syrian issues, and I’m there in the mix watching it unfold before my own eyes. The politics had faces; hands, flesh and blood there and nationalistic agendas and budgets seemed irrelevant. I would hope for a chance to start my broken life over and given the chance to provide safety, community and dignity for my self and my family. I could see the desperation on their faces, and yet the dignity that they faced the crisis with is heroic. The Greeks and Syrians modeled to me how to practice the teachings of Jesus in these moments of assisting over crowed boats of Refugee’s to shore. What an honor it is to get to participate and practice loving others practically.