Srex, you need to know what I am trying to do here. I am sharing my perspective, how I see the world and how I interface with God. I am doing it so that if anyone follows the conversation, including you, they might first and foremost join with me in Christ and be saved from this perishing world of death. I am doing it secondly so that if anyone follows and in the future finds themselves discussing these issues with others, they might be able to discuss my view (or those like it) more accurately, as opposed to some caricature of it.
I am cut off from you and everyone else – and we are each of us cut off from all others. Clearly I am not in control of normalizing belief such that I can represent this thing people commonly call “Christianity.” I am disinterested in this anyway. Metaphorically, I am looking at an image. I see it with certainty. I am trying to describe what I see. Others claim to see the same image. Many seem to see precisely what I see. Others claim something entirely different. I can ultimately only state what I see, trusting Christ to see it correctly for me and through me. That is why I have certainty. The certainty comes from the Christ Who is seeing reality for and through me. If I am wrong, then He is wrong – and He is not wrong.
What might we expect of a person who does not have real union with God? From the left we might expect uncertainty and a tendency to view uncertainty as an “honest” trait to be valued (since the left chronically refuses to acknowledge the truth). We might also expect from them anger and ridicule toward those who claim certainty. We might expect indifference. From the right we might expect rabid fanaticism born of the effort to convince others of a spiritual relationship that simply does not exist. We might also expect a great deal of anger when others reject our spiritual views because that rejection would by default aim to confirm our fear of spiritual ignorance rather than our relationship with God. One thing we should certainly not expect is the sort of secure openness you have shown here.
I don’t know where you are in the spiritual scheme of things, but I tell you the truth: I sincerely do not care if you reject what I am saying. If the entire world should to reject Christ and go to hell, I would not so much as give a shrug about it. Mind, I want everyone to accept Him because I don’t wish anyone to perish, but because I know the choice is not mine I have absolutely no concern about it. To put it another way, I am just throwing seed in a field. I have no power to make the seed grow. So I will not worry about that at all. I have one job to do – to make sure I throw the seed in the field. I am simply trusting God to do His thing after that – whatever he decides. So there won’t be any pressure at all from me to accept anything. No hard selling. No nothing. I’ll just answer your questions based upon my view of the image. I’ll answer anyone’s questions to the best of my ability. If folks take issue with that, well, its just too bad. They need to grow up.
Re: Your last questions:
But another inconsistency for me is that Jews were supposed to be his "favorites". Why would he love one group of humans over another?
According to the Scriptures, when God chose Abraham, He did a marvelous thing. In Abraham He simultaneously chose the first Jew and the first Gentile as His favorite (see Romans 4:9-12 - I’ll explain the text if you wish). He gave this Gentile-become-Jew a promise that his line would be preserved and protected to eventually produce the Blessing of the world. From that promise onward, God then shepherded recalcitrant Jews through history, looking toward the time when the One Jew named Jesus would fulfill God’s promise to Abraham. There is nothing particularly handsome about ethnic Jews that God should choose them over others. They are not Chosen in that sense and the proof of it is that vast numbers of Jews have been cursed through history right along with everyone else. Vast numbers of Jews even reject the One Jew through Whom salvation comes to men. God made a promise to Abraham and kept it, using the Jews to transmit His words and law until they were fulfilled in Christ.
When God looked upon the world for the first time and declared it “Very Good,” He was in fact claiming that the world was an extension of His Identity, that He had recreated Himself through it, that it was “very God.”
Something happened in the world such that it lost its Godness and left us in our current state wherein we are partitioned from each other, from meaning, from knowledge, from value, from life, from God Himself. We are now nothing but an empty cycle of death, where nothing has any real value at all.
God is not limited to four dimensions as we appear to be. He is not contained inside of anything as we are. Though we are partitioned from Him, He is not cut off from us. He has entered our meaninglessness to make the world “Very God” once again, through the Christ.
Note that I am not trying to be disrespectful. When I read my posts it kind of comes across that way. But they are legitimate questions that have. I like the opportunity to ask someone who is both honest about the subject and knowledgeable.
As I said. Fire away. There is no disrespect at all. And your questions are legitimate indeed. I am simply sharing what I see. If you can accept it, then accept it. Else, don’t. We’ll still be friends however it works out. I don’t expect you to fall on your electronic knees here and get “Warshed in de blud ‘o de lamb.” But perhaps when you are with yourself you will at some point in the future find your spirit inexplicably widening, your sense of reality growing keener as the world appears increasingly vain and futile. |
