Tolerance and the ass

 

In a previous post I wrote about how love is the only commandment and often what we perceive as "love" could be better termed as "affection". This love that is the greatest commandment is not affection, it is tolerance, and not just tolerance, it is massive tolerance.

The Pharisees considered tolerance to be averse to the ways of God but God is all mercy and tolerance.  When speaking to a group of self-righteous Pharisees; lovers of the law; Jesus said, 

"(Love) is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.  On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."   

He was speaking here to Jews, telling them if they truly wanted to follow the law, they needed to obey this one command, to love, and another command just like it. Love for neighbors. That’s it. Love. Fulfill that one commandment, and its mirror image, and you will have fulfilled them all.

When Jesus was asked later to define "who is a neighbor" he told the story of a man, assumed here to be a Jew, who was robbed of all, including his clothes, then beaten and left for dead. This man was first passed up by a priest, then a Levite, the religious men of his day, but was ignored and shunned by both. The man who eventually showed him love and tolerance was a Samaritan man and this Samaritan is a man who would have been considered unworthy to even enter the temple by this Jew yet he was this Jew's "neighbor". The others who passed by were too busy in their religious pursuits to take time to help this man but it is this "unrighteous" Samaritan, a man not considered to be of the proper Jewish faith, considered an “infidel”, who cared for this "righteous" Jew delicately, without prejudice, and met all of his needs out of his own pocket. 

Showing compassion and mercy to all, no matter their lot in life, or religious views, is how we love our neighbor. These two men, with discordant cultures and beliefs were in fact…neighbors. That seems a simple, yet difficult, concept for mankind to grasp. 

Churches like the ABC are schools of Pharisaical thinking and are not places that teach the love and tolerance Jesus spoke about in the parables. Churches like the ABC look to confine, enslave, then control others through rote learning and without love. They are not places that tolerate anything outside what is perceived by the leaders to be “accepted doctrine”.  I believe the Corinthians were caught up in this same net. Paul wrote to them and gave them a distinct, almost poetic, list of the pieces of love.

Love is patient

Love is kind.

Love does not envy

Love does not boast

Love is not proud.

Love does not dishonor others

Love is not self-seeking

Love is not easily angered

Love keeps no record of wrongs

Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth.

Love always protects

Love always trusts

Love always hopes

Love always perseveres

I lay no claim to being perfect in all things on this list. Neither does anyone else on this earth. It is something we strive for but likely will not ever fulfill in our short span of life. 

The commandment to love our neighbor, as if they were ourselves, is where churches, such as the ABC, are severely deficient. They are blinded to their own reality by the pride of knowledge. Many will take offense at my words, and defend the status quo, but that’s just the nature of man. We don’t like to feel we have been wrong because it makes our history seem worth less. Repentance is the first layer of our foundation and repentance is a difficult thing if we are lifted up with the pride of knowledge. 

It is widely taught Repentance is metaneo, change our mind. That is accurate, but some miss the meaning of the other half of that statement; “from dead works”. The Pharisees sought God through their actions, their works, their much study, long prayers in the streets and their synagogues. They loved to be seen of men as more righteous through their religious actions. God ignores our actions, sees our heart and asks; Is it full of love? Do we tolerate our neighbor who will likely never see eye to eye with us? This is what love is. Those who saw this man beaten and bloodied by robbers, and just walked on by, were exhibiting hate, even though they did not think they hated in their heart. Hate and pride are brothers.

In an effort to seek and please God churches, such as the ABC, seek to be seen through their feasts, studies, charts, graphs, head coverings, long prayers to be seen of men, meetings and then even more studies in a vain attempt to be "closer to God". It's a long list. They saddle themselves with burdens, then seek to afflict others with these same heavy burdens. When the burden does not wear well, and becomes too heavy, they then blame the ass rather than the load. 

We think the story of Balaam is about how he did not discern he was going the wrong direction, or how he did not see the angel standing in the way, but the story of Balaam is really about how he failed love and wished his ass dead. When he wished the ass dead, the ass then spoke up to him and said essentially, “Have I ever wanted you dead? Even though it is you who have burdened me all these years and not I who has burdened you?” Blaming the ass did not work well for Balaam, and it doesn’t work well for us either.

Churches, such as the ABC, must examine love to learn it's truth. Fulfill the one commandment of loving your brother, and its mirror image, to love your neighbor as if it were you in a mirror. We must love the one who is our polar opposite to fulfill all the commandments. Serve God and keep his commandment(s), this is the entire duty of man. Much study is a weariness to the flesh. These are simple concepts that make the burden light, yet many find that simplicity challenging and so begin to lay more load on themselves and others. By doing so we seek our own righteousness, just like the Pharisees, instead of the simplicity that is in Christ. We begin to inflict the ass, wishing it harm, rather than reflect on ourselves and the load we have laid that has caused the excess burden.

 TO MAIN SITE

 

Birds aren't real!

When things don't make sense our minds can run to absurd conspiracies. Conspiracy theories are nothing new and, if we lack proper objectivity, it's possible to hang onto these absurdities as an attempt at calming or agitating our minds. Some fall for quite ridiculous theories, despite all evidence showing the belief can't possibly be true. One of the more absurd movements in our current age is the "Birds Aren't Real" movement. Anyone watching these arguments with an open mind can see the satire, but still there are a few who latch onto this theory and actually believe the US government has killed all the birds and replaced them with mechanical drones that recharge on power lines. It's ridiculous. I assure you, if that were true, there are bird hunters everywhere who would be quite upset.

I love this quirky type of satire and humor because  it sometimes gives better commentary on human nature and truth than straight up truth. A visit to the “Birds Aren’t Real” website reveals some very talented writing and acting and I applaud their pluck.  

In an interview with "Sixty Minutes" the man who started this movement, Peter McIndoe, was asked why he created this. He explained briefly he grew up in a fundamentalist Christian organization surrounded constantly by conspiracy theories. He rejected these theories, as a child, then as a teen began to protest against the absurdities foisted on him by his church. This led to satirizing these conspiracy theories in high school and now college and this just happened to be the one that stuck. 

 

In the early days of my life my father had theories on the date Jesus would return. His "date of return" theories changed throughout his life as the dates, predicted or assumed from others, passed unfulfilled. Most of his theories, perhaps all, were based on the date Israel became a nation, May 14,1948. Using this date, then pairing it with words in Matthew, “Now learn this lesson from the fig tree: As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near. Even so, when you see all these things, you know that it is near, right at the door. I tell you the truth, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened..., my father believed Jesus would return in his lifetime. This assumes the figurative fig tree is the physical nation of Israel. 

 

Jesus did not return in my father's lifetime and he died many years ago. Jesus has not, as of yet, returned in my lifetime as well. Given the “tribulation” is to last seven years, three and a half years of peace and three and a half years of utter chaos, and this has not yet occurred, this event is not likely to occur in my lifetime as well.

 

The key word in that piece of Matthew is "generation". What actually constitutes a generation? Merriam Webster gives one definition as “the average span of time between the birth of parents and that of their offspring” Some quote the ninetieth Psalm, “The years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty; yet their span is but toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away.” I think, in this day and age, where people in developed countries live quite often into their nineties and one-hundreds, we can agree this is poetic language and not an absolute. However, if one uses this Psalm as a mathematical base, or average, this would mean Jesus would return by the year 2028 at the latest. This would then mean the tribulation would have started in 2021 with the three and a half years of peace brought about by a global leader. Given that we are currently on the precipice of World War III, and are not being led by a global dictator, demanding all must worship him, that three and a half years of peace has not yet happened.  

If we are to believe Luke, he speaks of multiple “watches” and “the Son of Man is coming at an hour that you do not expect”. That’s a much safer position than to make supposition of his return and disguise our own opinion as prophesy.

 

I am not in a position to argue when Jesus will, or will not, return. If we believe the account in Matthew, Jesus stated no one actually knows. I have heard it said Matthew only states day or hour, not year or month. OK, whatever. The point is this. If we profess we know when Jesus will return, as so many have done that came before, we are not being truthful.

 

In 1972 my father was convinced, using a formula, that a generation is 32 years long. Attaching that formula to the date Israel was reborn, this meant the tribulation would start in about one year; 1973. (1948+32=1980-7 years of tribulation=1973) The group was convinced of this date and sent three men, Earl, Tom, and Jim, up into the foothills of the Northern Cascade mountains to find a place we could escape the coming troubles. This did not go well. A blizzard hit, they were quite unprepared, and they almost died. The tribulation never actually began though, so we were all good.

 

Over the years there were other prophesies and predictions of things that would happen within my dad’s lifetime. California was expected to suffer a large earthquake and part of it would fall into the Pacific Ocean. Pictures were shown at meetings of vast underwater caves and pillars to prove this “prophesy”. There was supposedly a large rock in San Francisco one could run to and be safe if they happened to be there during the quake. I do not know where that rock is located. I looked for it once, but it eluded me.

 

Another prophesy was the Japanese would rearm and take over the United States through the port of Port Angeles, Washington. This was entirely based on a dream my father had one night. It is understandable he would have such a dream as he fought the Japanese in close combat during World War II and returned with PTSD that lasted a number of years. 

 

Yet another theory that still has legs today is the US government will, at some point, declare anyone who is a true spirit filled Christian to be an enemy of the people. It is said prison camps have already been built, and all true Christians will be rounded up and put away in these camps so the truth cannot be told.  I sincerely doubt this one.

 

None of these things ever happened. These were all man-made theories, not prophesies or even facts. Fundamentalism is full of these sorts of paranoid theories and today these types of theories seem  rampant.

 

In the first letter to John, the author writes.

 

Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God. And this is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you have heard was coming, and is now already in the world.

 

If we are to believe there is a spirit of Antichrist in the world today, it is actually those who do not believe Christ came in the flesh as human and suffered all of mankind’s pain and frailty. When I spoke this simple truth, the judgment came down upon me swift and fierce. Curious that.

 

If someone professes to have the formula or mathematics of when things will happen in Revelation, Isaiah, Matthew, etc., know this;  those alive at the time of Christ’s death also believed he would return within their lifetime. Two thousand years ago! He didn’t. All through history men have stated they “have the formula” for when Jesus will return. Most of those men have now passed on. Also know this, the book of Revelation speaks about things that happened, things that were currently happening, and things that will happen. It's not all about the future.

 

Write the things which you have seen (past), and the things which are (present), and the things which will take place (future) after this… Past, present, future. Revelation spans the entire expanse of time and is not just a prophecy for the future. Not a popular opinion but true nonetheless.

 

One person intimated to me the current coronavirus pandemic is evidence of the end times. A similar pandemic happened about one hundred years ago, and it was felt then the end times were upon us in full swing. A Google search will yield hundreds of formulas and theories that have been presented, modified, and died on the vine with Jesus not returning. No one can definitively say when Jesus will return.

 

There is no doubt the earth is decaying, not evolving into something greater. Isaiah spoke of this, …Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look on the earth beneath. For the heavens will vanish away like smoke, the earth will grow old like a garment, and those who dwell in it will die in like manner…

 

Scientists speak of evolution when they should really be speaking of morphing and change. But that change is decay, not advancement. It is difficult to argue with the physical evidence of so many creatures that once inhabited the earth and have long ago disappeared. Animals and fish were once much larger, but the earth is in a state of decay. These are all inarguable facts. 

 

There are multiple ways of interpreting the evidence, but they all lead to the fact the earth is decaying and is not moving forward to a better future. The evidence of this decay, part of which is being grossly accelerated by mankind, should not be confused with evidence of the return of Jesus. When pandemics, wars, famine, etc., strike the earth these things have happened in many watches, many time periods before. If it is occurring in this time period, this watch, it is not definite proof his return is imminent. This same type of “evidence” has been occurring throughout the history of earth and used many times to prove an erroneous theory of Jesus return.

 

The scriptures say Jesus will come as a thief in the night. No one makes an appointment with a thief as to what month or year they will rob your home. If someone claims to know the year or month or day or hour, that spirit should be tried to see if it is truth. It probably isn't.

 

 

TO MAIN SITE

 

 

 

The Other Side of the Boat

 By now I am quite certain there are some in the ABC who feel I have just gone off the deep end.  At least that is what people have been told anyhow. Time will tell, I guess. I am sure my views on the Holy Bible do not sit well with many, even though there is a solid underlying message in what I am actually saying, not what people assume or perceive I am saying. People tend to pendulum swing so finding the middle of that actual message may be difficult for some. 

The Holy Bible contains books and letters which some define as “the scriptures”. These various individual texts were written over many eras but the Holy Bible is not, however, as complete as the name would imply. Bitter pill to accept that? Sure. But “The Holy Bible”, is an anthology of just a very few of the written texts that actually exist from all of these other eras. This is not to diminish the writings as invalid, it is just to say they are very incomplete. Even the writings in the Holy Bible prove this with it's own cross references to writings to which we no longer have access. The writings "The Holy Bible" contain were chosen by the Catholic church as accepted texts to support a specific doctrine of the time. That does not invalidate these texts, but it does  limit the collection mankind is able to view and it certainly limits our knowledge.

In the early church there was no Bible, no anthology of compiled texts. There was only the Didache, or simply “the teaching” along with a few various scrolls and letters that were passed around between cities. “The teaching” could be related to another in a short amount of time and was predominantly related orally. We see this with the story of the Philippian jailer.

And they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house. And he took them the same hour of the night and washed their wounds; and he was baptized at once, he and all his family. Then he brought them up into his house and set food before them. And he rejoiced along with his entire household that he had believed in God.

They didn’t then give him an address of the closest ABC meeting, sell him a notebook of Greek texts, suggest he buy a Panin's, perhaps a Vine's, a Stegenga's, a Strong's Concordance, an interlinear and then enroll him into their new church. They gave him the message, then they likely never saw him again. There were no “Bible studies”, there were no “Bible study books”, no concordance, no commentaries…, just, "the teaching”. If one was a Jew, during these times, they often continued going to the temple to read the scriptures.

There is a document called “The Didache” which is alleged to have been discovered in 1873, with additional sections alleged to have been “discovered” in 1900. This document sounds remarkably like the modern Catechism of the Catholic Church and is suspect. The Didache, in the early first and second century church times, was not this document. It was simply a basic teaching passed along orally.  

In the early days of the Christian church there were Jews or Gentiles. There were not all of these Christian factions or denominations we see today. Certainly, in the Jewish faith, which is much older than the Christian faith, enough time had passed for factions to form, but the early Christian church was, for the most part, still unified behind a single message; the Didache. Then it began to fracture. The beginnings of these fractures can be seen in some of the letters to some of the cities. 

Fast forward now to our modern era, with more books and commentaries than one can possibly list. The points of contention between people  has now become super fine and the war over words is in full swing.

One of the most prolific letter writers, after Jesus’ days, was Paul. Although it is accepted some of the letters attributed to him were actually written by his various secretaries; Tertius (Romans), Sosthenes (1 Corinthians), Timothy (2 Corinthians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians and Philemon), Silvanus (Thessalonians), Luke (1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Titus, and Hebrews), etc.  Today we would call them “ghost writers”. 

The anthology we call the Holy Bible contains 66 books; 39 Old Testament, 27 New Testament, of which many New Testament books were written by Paul, or one of his secretaries. These few writings we have in the Bible were selected by the Catholic Church as the texts the “laity” would be allowed to see. The rest of the texts were locked away permanently around the 1400’s and are now housed in the Vatican library vault. In this vault are thousands of other writings by Paul, Apollos, Timothy, Luke, etc, all held inaccessible to most of mankind. The library is open only to University Professors, PHD students and professional researchers. Even then, it is only by infrequent appointment  since the whole world clamors to view these documents and one is given a specific time slot to view the library, but only if they meet the qualifications. Words are power and this power is now centralized and locked away from most. This makes a huge number of writings of the early church inaccessible. What is in these texts we don’t know? Is it important information?  I can give you a definitive answer. It doesn’t matter. Righteousness is composed of faith and love which is held together by hope, not by an ever-increasing knowledge base. What is now designated as the thirteenth chapter of the first letter to the Corinthians makes this clear.

 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.

Faith plus love equals righteousness. Remove one and you have zero. To take the little bit of information we now have access to, then build a “solid doctrine”, without error, is impossible. To repeat myself, there are only two doctrines that matter, faith and love. Hope, not knowledge is the thing that binds these two together.

In the letter James wrote to the Jewish tribes he talked about how “having faith”, yet ignoring the actual hunger or suffering of others, is essentially dead faith. Useless. If a man comes seeking real world help, the ABC hands them a notebook and a pen, claiming Jesus is the bread of life and the only way to achieve satiety is to learn Greek words in the right order. They have nothing more to offer than this. I can recount one men’s meeting where someone asked us to pray about a woman whose husband had just died, leaving behind three children with no money to care for them. We prayed for them but then I asked two questions. Did he work? The answer was affirmative. Were they married?  Again, yes. I worked for the Social Security Administration and pointed out they would provide the family a decent income until the children were at least age eighteen. For asking these questions “in the meeting”, I was later belittled for not seeking a more “spiritual answer”. To those who belittled me, I say this. If you are on a ship, and it’s beginning to sink, you better start praying really hard and ignore all those lifeboats dropping from the side and wait instead for a hand to reach down from the heavens and snatch you away. If that doesn’t happen, bon voyage on your short trip into the eternal.

There was a second similar episode when I was driving an old vehicle that had an electrical fire under the dash.  I jumped from the vehicle, threw open the hood, removed the battery cable then, lacking an extinguisher, let the fire burn itself out. That vehicle never ran again. For this I was chastised for not “praying first” before I jumped from the vehicle and disconnected the battery. Seriously? We are human beings, we live on a physical planet, in a physical realm. Not every answer is a spiritual answer. We are not heard for our much speaking or our frequent lengthy prayers.

Not long before I was ambushed, one person chastised me for not saying grace when I stopped at a convenience store and bought a candy bar. Perhaps I should have stood in the middle of 7-11, smote my breast and loudly proclaimed my thankfulness that I had sixty-five cents to buy a snack. I have eaten in a restaurant where an entire table will join hands then pray loudly for their meal as a show. Matthew addressed this subject.

And when you pray, you shall not be like the hypocrites. For they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the corners of the streets, that they may be seen by men. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward.  But you, when you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly.”

A number of years ago I had the rare opportunity to take a fascinating tour at a glass bottle factory not far from where I live. The glass returned at the curb, or in drop boxes, ends up at this facility in huge dump bins and is all mixed together. It then passes into the plant via conveyor and is somehow sorted by a computer as it enters. Green, amber, clear all go to separate lines and the computer then mixes the clear and green together in just the right quantities to create the clear bottles used for salad dressing etc. After the glass leaves the sorter and remixer, it enters a giant kiln that is about forty feet high. It takes an enormous amount of natural gas to melt these glass fragments into a syrupy liquid used to form new bottles and, as it heats, the glass begins to glow so intense if one were to open a portal and peer in, they would soon be blinded. But the melted glass still must be monitored so there are several small flaps on the side of the kiln. Behind each flap is a piece of pitch-black glass. When you peer at the molten glass through this pitch-black barrier, what you are actually seeing is a figurative image of the molten glass bubbling inside, not the actual glass itself. This is the view we have of God and all things pertaining to. No matter how many hours we spend studying in Greek or English we will never see any better than looking through that darkened window. It never gets any better than this during our time on earth. The letter to the Corinthians speaks about this.

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.  And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.

Righteousness is obtained only through faith and love; hope is what holds the two together.  Proverbs addresses this when it says “Hope deferred makes the heart sick…” Once you remove hope you have utterly destroyed faith and love. The letter to the Galatians addressed this well.  

 Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye are fallen from grace. For we through the Spirit wait for the hope of righteousness by faith.  For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision; but faith which worketh by love.

We all have a dim view of what lies ahead and what came before. We cannot improve our view...ever. Adamancy about anything is a spiritual crime.  If we profess to know much, we are liars since we know very little. We have just those few letters and books found in the Holy Bible as a mere glimpse but even if one had access to all seventy thousand plus other books and letters held captive in a vault in Italy, we cannot ever pretend to have a complete answer. When one talks about “nailing down the answer”, having all “see eye to eye”, these things are impossibilities. We all have a dim view of the universal truths about God. As much as having a library of books, making charts, graphs and lists feels good, it is never perfect and will never lead us to perfection. When the letter to the Hebrews talks about “going on unto perfection”, it does not indicate there is an actual end point to that road on earth.  

If you look at the ministry of Jesus, he sat people down so they could rest, fed them real food, healed their real maladies, told them a figurative story, then he moved on. We often read the Bible as if it were a law book and instruction manual. It’s not. Many of the writings speak of the things they did in the early church historically, but not all of them were edifying. (i.e., beginning to live communally…)

The Israelites were cursed with the law because they were not satisfied with just ten commandments. Much too nebulous for their taste. Open to arguments. Didn’t nail everything down. Once we start needing to “nail everything down” we make Christ of no effect because we have abandoned righteousness. The hope of faith and love is supplanted by the seeking of a new set of laws and rules. Love is the only commandment.

When some of the early followers of Jesus (they were not yet called “Christians) were starving, and failing at fishing for a meal, Jesus appeared to them and told them to throw their net on the other side of the boat instead. They then pulled in so many fish they almost sunk the boat. This story may be true, or it may actually be a parable, who knows, but the basic message is this. The ABC has reached very few people on this earth, in the last fifty plus years, with their message of Greek word studies. This method of study was taken directly from the teachings of James A Watt at Broadway Tabernacle in Seattle Washington, an Assembly of God affiliated church. When one comes seeking bread, they offer up instead intense Greek word studies then encourage the joining together into a cancerous mass behind a virtual wall they built to protect themselves from the rest of humanity.  Perhaps they are fishing from the wrong side of the boat.

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel land and sea to win one proselyte, and when he is won, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves.    Matthew

proselyte

pros·​e·​lyte | \ ˈprä-sə-ˌlīt

a new convert to a faith or cause

 

TO MAIN SITE