Just Another Inkling

Click to listen to an address for bringing in the New Year:  2012.

There is a challenge within this address for all of us…myself, included.  God bless you this upcoming year–and may you bless God in return.

(I should warn you in advance:  we have to keep eyes in all corners of our minds with this particular God to whom I am referring.  Our Designer is a very shrewd Heavenly Father…and, oddly enough, He expects us to be equally as shrewd in all of our dealings and affairs).

Estranging ourselves from our fellows must deeply grieve the Holy Spirit

God may prefer our "having it out" with one another to our "casting out" of one another.

God is attempting to build a society that strives to keep each of us inside of the heart of things.

My challenge for this upcoming year is for all of us to work diligently to keep one another in our own Christian heart of things…which is the very society that our Father in Heaven is calling us all up hither to participate within.  Mark my words.   The Kingdom of Heaven is no Utopia.  This life, with all of its pain, suffering, trials, tribulations–this life may seem intolerable on certain days.  But this is only because we need to change our expectations about this life and its purpose…its meaning.

If we were to merely begin with a bit of pretense about our beliefs concerning this life…pretending for one day that this life is truly more comparable with our very own thoroughgoing “boot camp,” our very own training and preparation for a life beyond this one…a life with far fewer limitations than this life, and therefore, a life with an astonishingly greater responsibility, on our part.  If we can pretend this for a single day, then perhaps we will begin to expect our fellows to be unfit, out of shape, and completely unprepared for what lies ahead.

Perhaps we may even become aware–if even for one fleeting inkling of a moment–that we, ourselves, are pathetically unprepared for such a stern and splendid society as the one into which the Jewish God has so graciously called each and every one of us.

If we choose to estrange ourselves from certain low down good for nothing others…in this small and limited three-dimensional reality, how is it that we can logically conclude that we shall be in any manner “prepared” for the weight of Glory which exists within God’s Reality–the fullness of His Society…His Reality?

The sacrifice God demands of us, today, is not a Levitical sacrifice.  The sacrifice He demands from you and I is a sacrifice of LOVE.  Our RIGHTEOUSNESS is none of our business…and can never be earned.  Our true RIGHTEOUSNESS has been gifted to us as an inheritance through the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross.

This is not a righteousness that is gained through SELF-DETERMINATION.  This is not a man-made righteousness, which would be nothing short of the self-righteousness that had Jesus Christ teaching the morally dominant and superior, first century Pharisees and teachers of religious law that their father…was the father of lies–meaning, Satan, himself!

The RIGHTEOUSNESS that God has freely given to us can never be paid to us as some wage that we have earned for our obviously meritorious conduct, here below.

That is, unless we view our vow to NEVER press charges against a single solitary one of our Christian fellows…for a single solitary one of their crimes and offenses against us…regardless of how repetitive these offenses prove to be…unless we view such a vow to be meritorious…

Our Father in Heaven is very shrewd in His dealings with us…because He has to be shrewd, with the likes of us.  We humans will justify our pathetic refusal to turn our vessels over to the captaincy of Jesus Christ more shrewdly than the wealthy among us  justify their passive reclining in the midst of a very real and present “war on hunger!”

Our “goodly” excuses for rightly prosecuting and casting our fellows from our synagogues are not only very lengthy…but very shrewd!  I mean–if I were to be accused by any one of my fellows of being selfish…let’s face it:  how the hell could I ever hope to possibly build any form of a solid defense against this?  I am immediately placed into check, and the “game” is now over for me.  I am obviously unfit for society with such a prosecutor.

Perhaps the libraries over at Harvard University do not contain very many volumes concerning the legislature of mercy.  I have never studied law, therefore, this is a mere assumption based upon my research into my own human nature, and my generalization of this onto my fellow humans and their nature.

The logical reasoning discourse conveyed to any student of law who happens to find herself locked within such a voluminous library as those at Harvard University must certainly be…must be incredibly shrewd, guys.  But I believe that I would rather be an Atticus Finch, if I were to study human law, than a prosecuting attorney.

If we were to become most shrewd, however–which is highly encouraged of us by our own God–then we would do well to oscillate between being, in one moment, a prosecuting attorney toward our own judgmental misconduct, condemning this and casting it away, and being a defending attorney for both our own selves and the selves belonging to each of our fellows–defending the criminal…the cherished human being, in order to brilliantly and shrewdly work toward keeping everyone safe within the heart of things, which is society.

If we were to become most shrewd, we would learn to separate the sin from the sinner…the crime from the criminal…the offense from the offender.  We would learn how to scorn the injuries committed against us, while patiently loving the bumbling idiot, who is, as well, a child of the Living God…patiently loving them by providing for them many more than 77×7 chances for those bumbling comrades of ours to practice:

Getting their house cleaned up…

Getting their conduct in order…

And partnering with God to behave accordingly with what they most certainly are–children of the King of the Universe–if they confess to us that they are indeed, Christians.

We would believe the best in our comrades, in spite of reports of the worst–even in spite of observations of the worst!  We would yet believe the best in them.  For, in doing this to the least of those who are Christ’s little ones, we are in fact doing this to Christ, Himself.

If God can put the clock back for us at the start of each novel day, then hadn’t we become shrews enough to make attempts at following God’s lead?  Or do we clever humans still suspect that we may yet possess a grander logic than the Logic of our God?

Jesus Christ was the Logic of God in the flesh.  Our Heavenly Father said to us of Jesus Christ, “This is my son.  Listen to Him!”

Here is what Christ said that we must become shrewd enough to obey:

1.  “Why are you afraid?  Stop doubting and believe.”

2.  “You must forgive any grudges you have against your fellows, so that your Father in Heaven will forgive your crimes and offenses,” and I will add that this would most certainly include both misdemeanor and felony, alike!

Unless we should like to become experts in a higher LAW, we will do well to do just as our Council has advised us to do.

“Judge not and you will not be judged.”

“Forgive and you will be forgiven.”

Prosecute not, and you will not be dragged into court, yourself!

Refrain from casting others out of your society, and you, yourself, will not be cast away.

There is only one court where one might gain favorable results from casting the self at the mercy of the court.  However, if we’ve not yet learned, in this life, how to swiftly work to throw our own opponents best interest at the mercy of the court, then…well, even LOVE is capable of being provoked to anger against us!  If we one day find ourselves in some celestial dock awaiting our own prosecution, due to our negligence to have fully apprehended the details within a higher LAW, and if we have spent our lives prosecuting, condemning, and casting others away, well…our only hope will reside in the hands of the very ones whom we chose to prosecute.  It will then be up to them to either consent to dropping the charges that shall be brought against us…or, not?

I tell you the truth.  When I arrive…if I find myself in such a courtroom, I have made my decision, today.  My decision is simple.  I will stand before my great Judge with great calm and preparation.  I will turn toward Him and declare:

“Why–there are no charges for me to bring against her, my LORD.  I cast her harms and injuries as far as the east is from the west…long, long ago.  I charged her crimes…not her, kind Master.  As for her?  I have one thing to say.”  And I would forthwith turn toward my sister and say, “You did well, sister.  You are welcome into my heart of things…forever welcome into full society with myself!  For, I have no recollection of any wrongdoing that you have committed that should in any way change my belief that you are my blessed and cherished sister, and always will be.”

According to our own Christian documents, our Father in Heaven is not really the sort to cast any one of us into that lonesome place we call, Hell.  It is more likely that our Father in Heaven is very like the father in the parable of the prodigal son.  You see, this father stood on the outside of the heart of things within his small society…outside of that heart of things.  He stood out there pleading with the older brother to enter into that heart of things.  Yet, the older brother refused to go in there with…him.  The older brother was not kept from entering into the heart of things, guys.  His father urgently invited him to enter in…even pleaded with him to do so.

And what kept the older brother from entering into the very heart of things within his own cherished society?  It was bitter resentment against his kid brother…resentment that likely possessed a deep history.  And that resentment against his kid brother had suddenly generalized over and onto his very own father!  After all, it was his father who had slaughtered the calf that they had been fattening during those difficult economic times…his father had prepared the lost son…his father had prepared for his lost, repentant son…a party, a feast celebrating his safe return.

We never care much about celebrating with those against whom we hold grudges.  After all, it is the business of resentment to plot and scheme some form of revenge or another.  Of course, the best form of revenge would be to cast our enemies out of society with ourselves…or perhaps I should say that, it is easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle, than it is for us to keep all of those low down good for nothing sinners–regardless of how repentant they are constantly claiming to be–to keep them inside of our heart of things…to refrain from changing how we interact with them…to continue putting all of our resources into believing the best out of them…believing that they will eventually catch on…eventually improve…eventually meet our expectations.

It would be easier for a leviathon to pass through the eye of a needle, then it would be for us to let go of all of our grudges…all of our subsequent, if not subtle at times, retaliations…all of the changes we are tempted to make within our relations with others…to let this go…all of it.

To welcome our Christian fellows in…anew, every morning.  To put back the clock again for yet another chance for our fellows to do things differently…to do things better, if you will.