Tag: #Paul

Dragons! I really like Dragons!

Published by mhelbert on February 7, 2023

I enjoy a good story as much as anyone. You know, “Once upon a time, in a land far, far away there lived a beautiful princess.” And, so the story moves on from that introduction to the problem. That can be a poison apple or a wicked stepmother. Or, it could be that the beautiful princess desperately wants to wear armor and carry a broad sword. She desires nothing less than to ride on on her white war horse and slay some great dragon that has been terrorizing the countryside. Of course, at this point the handsome young prince enters into the tale. His sole regard is to save the beautiful princess, get married, and live happily ever after. The End.
The best stories like this are when the beautiful princess knocks that arrogant prince right off of his horse and onto his pompous keester. She then rides off to slay that dragon alone. The New End.
I like these stories because they help to right many historic wrongs.
Wrong attitudes about princesses.
Wrong attitudes about princes.
Wrong attitudes about dragons! (Hey, even dragons need some lovin’!)
It seems that we humans have evolved in such a way that we need to be the best; the strongest; the most correct. We gotta get out there to prove to the princesses of the world that they really, really need a big, strong prince to save them from themselves. We must set them on the straight and narrow where everything is in its right place. Dragons, sadly, on the bottom. (Yeah! I really like dragons! Deal with it!)
This kind of stratified reality is something that most folks will go to great lengths to maintain. No one wants to be the one to step out of line and be the odd person out. We, as my Uncle Al used to say, “Gotta go with the flow.” I might agree with that as long as the flow is a class 5 rapid rushing to a waterfall. But, that’s me.
In our culture we tend to conform to what society says in the norm. Get a job. Find a mate. Raise a family. Oh, and make sure that your 401k is filling up nicely. We turn a blind eye to the players who seem to be the decision makers. In fact, if our political reality is any indication, we desperately want to get on the band wagon of those who seem to be the loudest and most cock-sure of themselves. These are the “winners.” No one wants to hang with the losers. Well, because they’re LOSERS! So, day after day, year after year, we follow. Always looking at who the popular trend-setter du jour is. When we get to our very own personal The End we look back and say, “Well, I got through that.”
I read, recently, where the Apostle Paul called what I just described living in the flesh. All that really means is that a person lives naturally. They follow their natural desires, inclinations, and appetites. They look to the powers that be for cues on what they should wear; eat; think. There is not much of a life in that. Eventually, The End. No credits. No postlude to inspire.
Paul also wrote about living a different way. He called this living in the Spirit. We can tell when someone is like this. They are like that princess kicking the prince to the curb so she can seek a greater purpose. They walk with confidence knowing that they are being their most genuine self. Perhaps, most importantly, they characterize something that is truly counter-cultural. They have love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
gentleness, self-control. For those paying attention, these are what the fruit of the Spirit looks like. Just like a ripe apple has a certain scent, a nice crispness, taste that is sweet and juicy, so folks who live their lives according to the Spirit can easily be identified by their own character that doesn’t warm up to the socially acceptable power-brokers or trend setters. They don’t follow people who are confident and assertive like a dog sniffing up the dog in front of them.
It’s not always the easiest thing to leave the prince sitting in the mud and horse-hockey. It takes a special kind of commitment to buck the system and forge a new path. But, no one said it would be easy.
Now, where’s that dragon?

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More Musing on Paul

Published by mhelbert on July 24, 2020

I’ve been having a lot of fun studying Paul in general and, right now, his first letter to the Church at Corinth. Every time that I open the text or read the commentaries something new pops out. The world in which Paul wrote is so very different from ours. Besides the language there are the customs and culture that we simply cannot fully understand from our vantage point some 2,000 years away.
Yet, people are people regardless of where, or when, we find them. In an old television program the announcer told us that the stories we were about to hear were true. The names, however, were changed to protect the innocent. We were then able to relate to the characters because, like the announcer said, “They were real”!
The Bible can sometimes be kind of like that. The people and their stories were real. Only in this case, it’s the Time that’s changed. We can still relate to those folks. They were just like us in more ways than, perhaps, we’d like to admit.
So, when I read something like 1 Cor. 5:10-11 I can see a reflection of myself in those words. These two verses contain a similar catalog of vices. I understand that these kinds of lists existed in many forms at that time. They were useful rhetorically to paint images that would be easily remembered by people in an oral tradition. They also gave people like Paul a base-line template from which to draw common vices that readers/hearers could easily understand and relate to. They were part of a “common lexicon” of terms.
The people in the Church would have absolutely grasped what Paul was trying to tell them regarding those who are “immoral” or “grasping” or “swindlers.” And, they would have realized that if they were supposed to stay away from such people, they would need to remove themselves from society.
But, Paul wasn’t talking about people who practiced any of those listed vices in general. His pen was not aimed at anyone who was not a part of the Church. He agreed that it would be impossible to live and work in society if we had to avoid indiscriminate mixing with these people.
Apparently, the folks in the Church chose to mis-read Paul. They looked at his instructions from what may have been a previous letter and said, “What a Maroon! He thinks that we should build walls around us and live like hermits not mixing with anyone who simply lives life like a normal person.”
Yeah, I’m taking some liberties here. But, it is not to far from the mark when we consider how the so-called “Wise” people of the Church were looking for any reason to denigrate Paul. They worked hard to discredit him because he wasn’t their Ideal as a wise person.
Paul, in these verses, clarified his position.
He told them that he was talking about any so-called Sister or Brother IN. THE. CHURCH.
Now, there are a couple things here that pop out. These are things that the Church today would be wise to grasp.
First, Paul is NOT talking about our obligation to be Prophetic voices in our culture. We are called, yeah, I wrote “called,” to speak Truth to Power. I’ve written this before and I’ll write it again in the future. The systems that are baked into culture are not immune to the rebuke of the Lord Jesus as it is spoken through His followers. Racism, classism, homophobia, xenophobia, capitalism, socialism, and on and on and on all need to be addressed thoughtfully and, in the case of the Church, prayerfully. (**Prayerfully does not mean that action doesn’t need to take place. Prayerfully may help us discern WHAT action to take.)
Marching, protesting, boycotting, writing and speaking are all good and viable ways to speak to Power and, yes, judge it.
Second, Paul seemed to say that whatever my non-believing neighbor does that I would consider ‘sin’ is simply not my concern. If my neighbor is unfaithful to his wife, it’s not my job to go knock on his door and confront him. Of course, if the topic comes up in a natural discussion with him I may mention my opinion. But, I have no business judging him for it.
That’s God’s job and way above my pay grade.
However, if someone in the Church who is considered a Sister or Brother is involved in some illicit behavior or attitude, the Church does have a responsibility to deal with it. I have tried to emphasize Paul’s concern for the Church. He is ultimately concerned with Unity and with Building Up. Everything else is subordinate to those two things. And, in Paul’s mind what was happening at Corinth was damaging the Church, not building it up.
That’s part of my purpose, too. I truly desire that the Church become the best representation of Yahweh as is possible. Yeah, I get testy sometimes. I call out hypocrisy and error when I find it. I also encourage and root for those who are getting it right.
Unfortunately, there seems to be more error than not these days. Especially, when it comes to the Church’s responsibility to speak prophetically to culture AND in keeping its own house in order.
So, here I am with my little platform typing away day by day not knowing if anyone is actually paying attention. But, like I mentioned above, this is part of my ‘calling.’
I appreciate those who humor me by reading my ramblings.
Thanks!

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Religious Right: Hangin’ With Hookers

Published by mhelbert on July 21, 2020

Sometimes I feel like that proverbial “Fish Out Of Water.”
Most of my vision and attention is on Christianity, specifically the Bible, and how it intersects with culture and church.
So much damage has been done to people because of the weaponization of both theology and Biblical study.
How many LGBT young people have been shunned by family and community as so-called religious leaders use the Scripture as a bludgeon to hammer these young folks like a blacksmith shaping iron?
“Hey, you Pious Pricks! These are humans made in the Image of God! Not something that you may objectify and form into your own likeness in the way that you have molded your god!”

Yet, sometimes I’m drawn out of the world of religion and into the world where people actually live and breathe. Hell, many of us argue that this ‘real world’ is the only place that religion is able to find its true footing. After all, Yahweh came and pitched God’s tent right here on Terra Firma in order to prove Divine Love for the Cosmos. When you think about that, it’s pretty amazing!

Today is one of those days that I find myself drawn into the world where faith and praxis intersect with culture. I am committed to trying to shine the Light of God and Faith into the darker recesses of our humanity. Places where injustice and oppression find themselves attempting to grow in God’s Garden like weeds and thistles.
(As an aside, I have been waging war on real thistles in my yard and garden. These intrusive weeds are ubiquitous to our area and are damned hard to kill. We have finally found a treatment for them. But, it requires cutting each individual plant and ‘painting’ the curative on the newly cut stem. Time consuming for sure. A pain in the back? Yep! But, it is effective. I’ve noticed a huge reduction in new sprouts. Maybe, just maybe, I can win this battle!)
That image is really quite relevant to the growth of weeds in the church at large. And, White Evangelicalism in particular.
Since the early 1980s when people like Jerry Falwell, Sr., Jim Dobson, Kenneth Copeland, Jimmy Swaggart, Jim & Tammy Faye Bakker, and others christened the so-called ‘Moral Majority’ and began to tout their brand of christianity there has been a decided shift in the winds of politics.
White Evangelicalism seemed to be drawn inexorably into the maelstrom of power. Since so much of their dogma was relegated to the outbox of relevancy, they chose to fire weapons of faith at their newly created Culture Wars.
In actuality, it wasn’t all that new. Religious powers had tried to enforce their particular brands of culture and morality on the world for pretty much Ever.
In the 1980s, however, their reach, or overreach, hit the airways of mass communication.
In a way that was good. It gave the wider world a chance to see the immoral power struggles that embraced religion in real time.
It was also, however, a means to ‘rally the troops.’ These conservative religious people sounded the clarion call to alert everyone that the world was on fire with atheists and communists and all sorts of mean & hateful people who were going to eat babies and wreak havoc on Mom, apple pie, and the ‘murican way!
Heaven have Mercy on us all!

What actually happened, though, was not a rescue mission to save the culture. It was not, in fact, even a religious call to repentance and faith.
The primarily White, conservative, Evangelical church became the de facto religious wing of the Republican party.
They traded their birthright, and absolutely abdicated any claim to the moral high ground, for a bowl of oatmeal.

The apostle Paul wrote, (you really didn’t think that I could resist bringing the Bible into this, did you?), a lot about how faith and culture should interact.
One image that I found while studying Paul is that of a person paying for sex with a prostitute. Paul was NOT writing to people who weren’t part of the Church. He wrote specifically to those who claimed to follow Jesus. And, while he was writing about a person actually interacting with a prostitute, the image, I think, bears on what is happening in the world of White Evangelicalism.
Paul wrote, “Don’t you know that whoever is united to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For it is said, ‘The two shall be one flesh’” (1 Cor. 6, NRSV).

I want to be clear that I believe that conservative religious people, particularly White Evangelicals, have climbed into bed with conservative politics, especially the Republican Party, and have engaged in relationships that have made you One Flesh with them.
How far can you fall before you reach the bottom?

I adjure you to consider the position that you are in. It’s precarious to say the least.
God is NOT for or against any political party or position.
God seeks the fruit of truth and justice.
All other fruit is tasteless and rotten.

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Un-Fathered

Published by mhelbert on July 16, 2020

Unseen vistas reveal themselves with every step I take into the world of God. I have walked the oft-trodden, yet rarely observed paths of the Spirit as She blows through the brilliant flowers, trees, and grasses that form the lines of the Scriptures.
It seems that the more I observe and marvel at, more and more beauty and grace appear.

This is not to say that the paths that the Breath of God leads me along are always pleasant for me. No, sometimes I am stung by some insect that follows me. Buzzing in my ear, brushing against my hair and skin, it is a reminder that the paths we walk are still real and within the bounds of this present life.
I read in those ancient texts stories of people who, like me, worried their way along these same pathways. They were led by the same Spirit. Perhaps, they were even stung by that same bothersome insect.
And, while their time and place are foreign to me, I can still feel what they felt and sense what they sensed.
We are, after all, born of the same stuff.

That’s why the text that we looked at last Sunday in the Bible study at St. Barnabas became alive to me in a brand, new way. There was a new vista revealed as I crested the hill.

We have spent the last several weeks working our way through the first 4 chapters of St. Paul’s first letter to the Church at Corinth. Paul wrote that he had been made aware of divisions and factions that had broken along the fault lines of honor and shame. The folks there seemed to find their own sense of honor and worth by casting their lots with one apostle over against another. This one follows Paul; the other Apollos. Paul would have none of that and wrote that the system they used to measure worth was deeply flawed. Through example, irony, and metaphor he urged them to seek the One True Measure which is God through Christ. If the folks at Corinth desired true Wisdom, they need look no further than the Cross of Christ. That, alone, exemplified God’s Wisdom.

In chapter 4, Paul seems to shame the people in that young Church. He pointedly revealed the foolishness of the path that they were taking.
But, he switched gears and told them,

“I am not writing this to shame you, but to warn you as my dear children.”
He continued,
“I became your father through the gospel.”

There it was!
A new sun rising above the horizon of my limited understanding.
Paul wrote this letter, not to wield a rod of correction. It was not so that he expound some great, spiritual truth to them. It wasn’t even really to cajole them into following his instructions.

It was to remind them that he was their father in the faith.

The folks in Corinth had Un-Fathered Paul.

And, that was the cause of much of his pain and concern.

I was reminded, then, of another story like this.
In the Gospel According to Luke the writer related a story about a father and his two sons.
This story is commonly referred to as the story of the Prodigal Son, although the Father is the main character.
The story begins with the younger of the two sons going to his father and requesting his inheritance. This may not appear all that big of a deal to those of us inhabiting the 21st century. However, at the time this story was told, that request would have been scandalous. What we miss is that the request was, in fact, the younger son’s wish that the father was dead so that he could take what he deemed was his.

“Father, I want my inheritance!”

To that the father could reply,

“When I die you will receive it!”
“No, Father, I want it NOW! For, you are dead to me”

That’s how this story would have been heard by those Jesus told it to.
How much this reveals about the Father’s love later in the story!
But, that’s a story that must wait for another time.

The younger son un-Fathered his own father.
He wished that his father HAD died.
His only concern was his own life and desires.

I saw this story brightly reflected in Paul’s response to his Children in the Faith.
I could feel his sense of loss and betrayal.
I could understand his heart as he tried to reveal the potential danger that these children of his were running toward.
“Stop! Wait! There’s a cliff there and you’re about to run off of the edge!”

For those who have experienced the pain of this type of loss, I don’t need to explain it.
For those who haven’t, well, let’s all just hope and pray that you never do.
It is pain above any other. Especially, because of the helplessness that is alive and biting, boring into the heart and soul.
Yeah, I get what Paul was doing here.
He was simply being a loving father to those who owned a piece of his heart.

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Why Follow Jesus?

Published by mhelbert on May 18, 2020

Of course, there are many reasons why people choose to follow Jesus.
“He was a great teacher,” some say.
Others may reply as his original disciples did, “You have the words of Life.”
Many, perhaps too many, say that they follow Jesus because of the promised blessings.
And, still others say that they are worried about an eternity in hell. Jesus provides them with the necessary fire insurance.

None of those reasons are really very good.
I mean, the Buddha was a great teacher. As were Confucious, Moses, and Muhammed.
These, and others, have also laid claim to having the words that lead to a full and satisfying life. Granted, other than Muhammed, the others don’t promise any blessings. But, Jesus is still not unique in this. Where hell is even mentioned, there have been many who profess a way to avoid it.

So, again, why should anyone follow Jesus?

The following text was one of the lections for worship yesterday,

22 So Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said, “Men of Athens, I observe that you are very religious in all respects.
23 “For while I was passing through and examining the objects of your worship, I also found an altar with this inscription, ‘TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.’ Therefore what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you.
24 “The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands;
25 nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all people life and breath and all things;
26 and He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation,
27 that they would seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us;
28 for in Him we live and move and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we also are His children.’
29 “Being then the children of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and thought of man.
30 “Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent,
31 because He has fixed a day in which He will judge cthe world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead.”

New American Standard Bible: 1995 update. (1995). (Ac 17:22–31). La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.

Within that short passage are the words,
“That they would seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us.”

Those few words have been grasped by folks who, in our post-enlightenment, post-modern Western culture, take that as a promise that everyone has a chance to know God if they only pay attention to the world around us.
God may be found in the delicate beauty of a flower or in the awesome vastness of the night sky. After all, Paul stated that God was the Creator of the world and all that is in it. We should be able to recognize God’s Hand in all things.
And, if we can detect God this way, then we may worship God as the true God worthy of our worship.
So, those religions that focus on nature may have a better understanding of the Creator God than others.

If that’s true, then again I ask, Why follow Jesus?

If there are ways to know God other than what the Christian Church has taught, what makes this Church special?

Again, back to Paul.

The context for the above passage tells the reader that Paul arrived in Athens after he was chased out of Thessonlinica and Berea by Jews who didn’t like him talking about a crucified Messiah.
While in Athens Paul walked around town observing things. He became distressed at all of the temples and idols that were there. So, he began to proclaim Jesus and the resurrection to the Jews in the synagogue and to anyone who would listen to him in the Agora, the marketplace.
Eventually, some of the locals decided that Paul was teaching about some foreign deity. They led him to the Areopagus where there was apparently a council who judged whether a philosophy or religion would be permitted to be taught in the city.
They questioned Paul, asking about this strange, new teaching.

Paul immediately opened his résumé that confirmed his status as a teacher of this new religion. After observing how religion was of great importance in Athens, he pointed out how he had spotted an altar To An Unknown God.
He said, “Therefore what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you.“
This is not to say that the Athenians truly worshiped God when they worshiped before this altar. How could they? They did not even know who this God was!

Paul stood before them and proclaimed, (the word that was used was one that inferred a Prophetic speech), Jesus the Messiah and His resurrection.

And, that’s part of the reason, Why follow Jesus.

Yes, God may be observed in Nature. God may be observed in some human actions like empathy and self-sacrifice.
But, rather than this developing a true Natural Theology, it invariably results in Natural Idolatry. This was the gist of Paul’s statement when he wrote to the Church at Rome,

“For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made.”

New American Standard Bible: 1995 update. (1995). (Ro 1:20). La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.

So, followers of Jesus have the privilege of letting people know who the Unknown God is.
We may share that this God is not far away, but is near to each of us. We are all part of God’s Grand Story. Those who follow Jesus are the storytellers who also are those who welcome others into God’s family.

Of course, writing this post like this begs the question,
What is that story?
Why is it worthwhile hearing?
Those questions are ones that I hope to muse on in upcoming posts.
So, I invite you along as we hear,
Once Upon a Time there was this God…

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A Head Really Does Need A Body

Published by mhelbert on November 3, 2019

Those of you who have visited here regularly, or who know me otherwise, know that I have a really passion for the Christian scriptures.
Maybe, not for reasons that some may think.
It’s not because the Scriptures themselves tell me to love them and meditate on them day and night.
It’s certainly not because I think that all of the answers to life’s questions can be found in them. (Spoiler alert: They can’t.

It’s because they hold so much stuff in them!
And, it’s fun to search them and mine for nuggets that I can take and put in my pocket.

Like today in our Bible study at St. Barnabas.
One of the lections for today was from the book of Daniel. It was from one of the visions recorded that Daniel experienced.
There were beasts and talking horns and a great throne with a white haired Guy sitting on it. There were flaming wheels and a molten river flowing from it.
There were at least a bazillion angelic attendants around the throne.
It was all quite a scene. Something from the mind of Spielberg, maybe.
We discussed how the genre of this passage is something called Apocalypse. It was a genre used to help people who were oppressed or otherwise persecuted get a glimpse behind the curtain in order to see that God was still with them and working on their behalf. It had nothing to do with actual beasts or kingdoms or some kind of obscure prophecy that simple minds like Hal Lindsey and John Hagee could come along and exploit for their own profit.
And, it was great fun to discuss this with folks.

One of my favorite things about reading the Scriptures, though, is when the writers agree with me.
Yep! That’s pretty cool.
Today I learned that the apostle Paul agrees with me on some things.
In fact, I think that if Paul was alive today, we would agree on a lot.
After all, he was a pretty smart guy.

In today’s New Testament lection, we read from Paul’s letter to the church at Ephesus.
He wrote about inheritances and calling and riches in glory. Good stuff!
But, what struck me was the last part of today’s passage.

Paul wrote about Jesus,

“And He put all things in subjection under His feet,
And gave Him as Head over all things to the Church,
Which is His body, the fullness of Him
Who fills all in all.”

If you read that carefully, you’ll notice that Paul seems to imply that the Church, or the Body, is somehow the fullness of Christ.
Christ appears to need the Church in order to be complete.

Now, I know that there are folks who are gonna stop and say,
“Whoa! Christ IS complete in Himself! He is Deity in human form.
He has NO NEED for anything else to complete him!”

Ok. I can get behind that.

But, what then is Paul talking about?

I’m glad that you asked that question. Because it gets right to the point where Paul agrees with me.
A Head with no body is, in fact, incomplete. A head can be a cool thing. But, actions like walking and touching and eating and such are pretty difficult without legs and hands and a stomach.
Let me paraphrase what one person said,
Christ’s love for the Church is so great that He can’t envision Himself as being complete without it somehow connected to Him, even as His own body.

We are needed and necessary to the plan of God’s redemption of the Cosmos. As I wrote before, we are co-workers with God as God establishes God’s reign on the Earth and in the Cosmos. We are not passive observers, fully fledged fellow laborers with Christ in the Garden of Christ’s redemption.

So, cudos to Paul for getting this right!
I always knew that he had it in him!

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Spirit is Spirit

Published by mhelbert on July 9, 2019

Listening to the news and current events can be disheartening.

Conflict rages all around the globe.

Corporations fight other corporations and governments in order to guarantee themselves a bigger slice of the economic pie.

Religious groups wage holy war against other religions and even factions within their own religious communities.

Conservatives and liberals line up in battle lines much like our ancestors did. Firing rounds indiscriminately hoping to hit someone on the opposite side.

It’s an understatement to say that we, as fellow inhabitants on this planet, have become polarized.

What is even more disheartening for me is the way in which those of us who chose to follow Christ are divided.

We kick and claw at one another.

“No, you’re wrong!” says one faction.

“How can you say that? The Bible is clear that YOU are in error!” screams another.

“I belong to Apollos!”

“I follow Paul!”

“No, you’re both wrong! Peter has the true way!”

It seems that this thing called the Church is not only vulnerable to all of the forces of human nature, it is also quite fragile.

It breaks and fractures easily.

The broken pieces crash to the floor and scatter every which way.

It’s almost impossible to not become discouraged and lose hope.

So, I did the only thing that I could think of in order to wrap my head around these things.

I prayed.

I asked God to put those of us who follow Christ in the shadow of God’s wings. Not to protect us. But, to empower us.

For what?

I’m glad you asked!

To empower us to be the Royal Priesthood and Holy Nation that the Scriptures claim that we should be. To be harbingers of the Reign of God in this world. Here. Now. Just as Jesus of Nazareth was 2 millennia ago.

Not, however, as so many people who lay claim to christianity do.

Recently, I’ve been studying Paul’s letter to the church at Galatia. In it, Paul had some interesting things to say about the state of affairs in that church. After Paul and his friends had established the young community and moved on to other places, it appears that some other folks came in to stir things up a bit. These others were, according to the text, teachers of the Jewish Law who also followed the Jewish Messiah, Jesus. They claimed that in order to be Real True Christians, the people in Galatia had to conform to Jewish rules that set them apart from other people. These so called works of the Law were male circumcision, dietary restrictions, and observation of the Sabbath and other Jewish Holy days.

The Galatians were confused. But, they listened to their elder brothers in Christ and began to embrace these requirements.

When Paul got wind of what was happening he just about burst a blood vessel. He wrote a rather pointed letter in which he called these later teachers, “Accursed!”

No, he wasn’t happy at all.

He then spent the rest of the letter explaining what the problem with these practices were and why they were so dangerous.

The underlying point to all that he wrote was, “What makes you think that what was started in the Spirit could possibly be completed in the flesh?”

To clarify, Paul’s usage of the term “flesh” in this entire letter refers to conforming to the Jewish rules of purity that those other teachers had insisted be followed.

And, to be equally clear, one of the most egregious results of following those rules is that they erect barriers that separate people from one another. And, in Paul’s argument, they can also separate people from God.

Ok, so what does any of this Paul stuff have to do with why I feel disheartened and in need of God’s empowering?

Because, many in today’s church follow the example of those Jewish teachers way back when. They say that they follow God and God’s Spirit. But, in reality they lay obstacles in the path of people who need God in their lives.

“You can’t follow God if you’re gay!”

“If you don’t stand for the national anthem, you can’t possibly be Christian!”

“Abortionist! Murderer! Not Christian!”

I could go on and on with the works of law that many people require of any Real True Christian.

That’s not what I see Paul saying to the people who were trying there best to follow the Way of Christ.

“What was begun in the Spirit must be completed in the Spirit.”

While that seems a simple statement, it requires the empowerment I wrote about earlier.

It requires people who take the idea of Royal Priesthood and Holy Nation seriously enough to realize that the rules and laws that so many people try to enforce simply have no place in the Kingdom of God.

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