sorry

Hmm....

Not sure what exactly happened to my blog entry I posted.

Last night when I tried to log in here to post another, it would not even show the blogger.com nor blogspot.com websites - so not sure what kind of issues they had.

But I will have to start doing my blog in a word-processer program and then saving it there and copy and paste it here so that I do not lose it again and waste the time I put into it.
So check back over the weekend or Monday for an update....

"You search the scriptures because in them you THINK you have life."

No one during Jesus' day knew the Jewish scriptures better than the Pharisees and the scribes. They knew their scripture word for word. They could quote it, teach it, preach it better than anyone. But they were the very ones Jesus pronounced several "woes" unto in Matthew chpt 23 - and he even referred to them as serpents and vipers.

I have thought often over the last few years of what would happen if I went around to some of the churches around here and, after the pastor or priest finished his message, I were to get up and say "Woe to you. You serpent! You Viper!" LOL I do not doubt I would quickly be ushered out the door and told never to return.

The fact is, the religious leaders of today are no different than they were in Jesus' day. They use the scriptures to control people - some more subtly than others. And they themselves know and worship those scriptures, and their belief systems, more than they do God.

Jesus told the scribes and Pharisees to "search the scriptures for in them you think you have eternal life." (Jn 5:39)
They didn't know the real purpose nor the real meaning of the scriptures, even though they could quote them word for word and preach and teach them. They were so engrossed in the scriptures and what they believed and thought the scriptures meant that they thought that was where their very life came from.

I guarantee you - there are some of you reading this right now who think your life, your eternal life, comes from what you believe and what you think you know about your religion's scriptures. Let me assure you - the ONLY difference your beliefs make is in how what-you-believe affects your living now - not your "after-life".

During a time of fasting, it is said that Jesus was tempted to turn stones into bread. There is so much symbolism here - if you can see it. The stones can actually symbolize a couple of things in the scriptures. They can symbolize all of the scriptures themselves. They can symbolize the tablets of stone that Moses is said to have received the laws of God upon. The stones can also symbolize things we believe or experiences and encounters with God we had in the past. (Take the story of Jacob and his dream of the ladder to heaven - after the dream he took the stone he had used for a pillow and made a monument out of it.) And bread - well it can symbolize many things - the words spoken by teachers and prophets given to sustain the people, the bread of communion, the fellowship of believers (aka church), etc. Bread gives us sustenance.

So basically, this temptation of Jesus to take the stones and turn them into bread, was really a temptation to try to find his life in the scriptures. But Jesus countered that by saying that we should not find our true life and spiritual nourishment from that - "but by every word that proceeds(continually flows) from the mouth of God."

Jesus was, in essence, being tempted to live by the "letter - which kills" (which is what the Pharisees lived by) rather than by the "Spirit - which gives life."

Do you realize, Spirit lives in you? Not in a book.
This is grace. The divine influence in your heart.

Jesus: The Heretic

What a way to start an entry huh? Jesus the Heretic. Sort of gets your attention? Well, it was actually something Jesus heard alot while he was teaching. And I would venture to say that if he were here teaching today, there would be a surprising number of religious "Christian" leaders who would say the same thing. There are so many who claim to know him and his message and yet, in truth, they really do not have a clue.

Remember, this blog is primarily dealing with the message of grace and love. We are not here to discuss in depth every aspect of the teachings of Jesus nor the validity of the biblical version of his life. But I will say this - the higher on a pedestal you place the man Jesus, the harder it will be for you to truly understand and follow him and his teachings. The problem is - it has been shoved down people's throats for so long that "Jesus is God" that everyone forgets that Jesus was a man - a human being, capable of everything and anything that any other human being has ever done or will do. And it was as a man that Jesus taught and ministered as he did.

Jesus constantly questioned and even disputed claims held as truth by the sacred texts of his time. Even things credited to have been written by the patriarch Moses, Jesus flat out said "This is not the nature of God." And he was called a blasphemer and heretic because of it. There was even at least one time when the angry crowd took him to the edge of a cliff in order to throw him over and stone him to death because of his having said things such as this. This was recorded to have happened near the beginning of his ministry. Now think about all of this. Here is this virtual nobody from the ghetto (Nazareth/Galilee) who is bringing into question things attributed to one of the greatest patriarchs of your religion - the one who is said to have written a major set of your most sacred texts. Not only was Jesus a "nobody", most of those that knew him considered him to be either a bastard (literally) or at least to have been conceived illegitimately. So needless to say, Jesus was looked upon with disdain from his birth by this highly religious and pious community. So who was he to even think of questioning the sacred writings of his religion?

Why Is Grace Such a Scary Topic?

Grace seems to be a scary topic for most churches and religious people. Why is it so scary? I believe it is largely due to the fact that they really do not understand God's love - and grace and love are tied together inseparably. You cannot have love without grace and you can't have grace without love - at least not God's kind of love and grace. And God's love and grace, being inseparable, are both unconditional. People have a hard time with unconditional love. I guess it would be pretty safe to say that we, as a whole, typically have a hard time with "unconditional" anything.

We tend to put the same limitations on God that we ourselves think we have. Because we may find it hard to love unconditionally - we think God is incapable of it as well. We try to make God in our own image. It's somewhat funny and also very sad that we do this. I have seen so many people try to justify themselves by saying that God thinks the same thing or acts the same way when in fact, it really shows that they do not know God as well as they think they do. They will even try to use "sacred" texts such as those found in the ever popular "Holy Bible". But what they do not realize is that when, in fact, these "sacred" texts put any kind of limit on God's love and grace - it is precisely because the writer of that text had a much too limited view of God him or herself. But that would be blasphemous, wouldn't it, to say that these "sacred" texts present us with a possibly skewed view of God? Well, just ask Jesus.