YOU ARE BAPTISED INTO ULTRA LIFE
27/11/24 16:27
I have seen a little of the Taylor Swift movie ‘Eras’ in which she sings songs based on seasons of her growing to an adult - some seasons of pain/rejection and unrequited love. You see shots of young women weeping - not just because of ‘Celebrity’ but because Swift articulates the pain of being human. We may often weep when deep calls to deep as we see deep humanity portrayed in the human story. Or in recollection of our own pain. Or because we have been brought in contact with the deep love of Jesus through spirit-filled ministry.
Having spent some time in prayer ministry I have seen people weep as the Spirit guides us to pray into parts of their lives, unknown to us, that are crying out for Christ’s love. These weepers realise that the Christ who is love is speaking to them personally. It Spurs me on to present Jesus as the Healer and restorer of Being.
MORBIDITY
I have known Christians who wallowed in inhibition and morbidity, mistaking this for godliness. The worst kind of Christianity is an expression of the knowledge of good and evil as though this is life. In these decayed cultures much pleasure and the joy of life is portrayed as sin because the misguided believer is forced to divide life according to fleshly religion.
EFFETE HERESY
There are versions of Christianity that seek credibility in promoting versions of piety which are religious at their best and deformed righteousness’s at their worst. They are puny and enable a false sense of holiness in the keeping of them. I’m talking peculiar denominational icons and distinctives – otherwise known as self-made grace. But much legalistic religious culture is not this deformed. It is just not alive.
HOLINESS IS NOT UN-YOU
During the course of my life I have come across versions of godliness that consist to a large extent in being inhibited and estranged from our true self. Some of these, I would characterise as a trivial pursuit masquerading as Godliness – when actually what it is, is mind/body dualism, meaning the humbug of the non-acceptance of the body. The mind good/body bad dualistic dichotomy can be seen across many religions along with the hypocrisy that goes with it. We need to get a hold of the significance that Christ (God) came in the flesh and that our flesh is redeemed in Christ.
IN CHRIST – NOT IN THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL
This di-cot pattern is the result of not being able to distinguish being human and being sinful – a condition that is one of the symptoms of legalism and its lack of ability to distinguish the part from the whole. Or because the inmates of this kind of religion do not know that the Gospel of Jesus is Christ our life. They are imprisoned in some strained variation of selfhood trying to live holy by denying their humanity.
There is a useful book entitled ‘For God’s Sake be Human’ which exposes false holiness influenced by Platonism and the mind/body dualism of the Greeks, the fundamentalists and the generally confused.
SONS OF GOD
One can live passionately without being a sinner, especially since we are no longer defined as sinners but as sons and daughters of God. Sons because we have been joined to God in real life and in real time by Jesus Christ.
MORBID MESSAGE
I sat under a lecturer in English literature at a tertiary college in my youth. This poor man was steeped in an anti-pleasure mentality and a puritanical horror of sensuality. (Who gave us senses anyway?) Sensuousness was ok in his opinion, but not sensuality. Never mind that both the latter and the former came from God – but maybe not the kind of effete god he worshiped. He was splitting hairs I thought. Either God made the senses and sexuality or He didn’t. Of course He did, which is why we need to reject body-horror, puritanical stances towards food/sex/pleasure and the austere notion that pop music is of the devil.
MAKES YOU REAL
Thomas Torrance wrote, “God does not override man but recreates, reaffirms him and stands him up before himself as his dear child, and man does not seek to use or manipulate knowledge of God for the fulfilment of his own ends in self-will and self-understanding, but loves him objectively for his own sake and is so liberated from himself that he can love his neighbour objectively also. (1)
WHAT IS YOUR DOOR?
I have worked with colleagues who exclaim that pleasures like dancing may be ‘the thin edge of the wedge’ that leads to depravity. Sadly, some versions of Christianity are the wide way that leads to twaddle. I wonder how much religion and particularly fundamentalism and whacky gospels have led to ruined lives? Bad religion can leave you just as depraved and demonically pestered as any socially defined sinning.
This is why Christ our life is the key to life without limit and genuine holiness. We are constrained in the person of Christ and liberated into His creation and ours by His person expressed as us.
(1) Torrance, Theology in Reconstruction, p. 237.
Having spent some time in prayer ministry I have seen people weep as the Spirit guides us to pray into parts of their lives, unknown to us, that are crying out for Christ’s love. These weepers realise that the Christ who is love is speaking to them personally. It Spurs me on to present Jesus as the Healer and restorer of Being.
MORBIDITY
I have known Christians who wallowed in inhibition and morbidity, mistaking this for godliness. The worst kind of Christianity is an expression of the knowledge of good and evil as though this is life. In these decayed cultures much pleasure and the joy of life is portrayed as sin because the misguided believer is forced to divide life according to fleshly religion.
EFFETE HERESY
There are versions of Christianity that seek credibility in promoting versions of piety which are religious at their best and deformed righteousness’s at their worst. They are puny and enable a false sense of holiness in the keeping of them. I’m talking peculiar denominational icons and distinctives – otherwise known as self-made grace. But much legalistic religious culture is not this deformed. It is just not alive.
HOLINESS IS NOT UN-YOU
During the course of my life I have come across versions of godliness that consist to a large extent in being inhibited and estranged from our true self. Some of these, I would characterise as a trivial pursuit masquerading as Godliness – when actually what it is, is mind/body dualism, meaning the humbug of the non-acceptance of the body. The mind good/body bad dualistic dichotomy can be seen across many religions along with the hypocrisy that goes with it. We need to get a hold of the significance that Christ (God) came in the flesh and that our flesh is redeemed in Christ.
IN CHRIST – NOT IN THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL
This di-cot pattern is the result of not being able to distinguish being human and being sinful – a condition that is one of the symptoms of legalism and its lack of ability to distinguish the part from the whole. Or because the inmates of this kind of religion do not know that the Gospel of Jesus is Christ our life. They are imprisoned in some strained variation of selfhood trying to live holy by denying their humanity.
There is a useful book entitled ‘For God’s Sake be Human’ which exposes false holiness influenced by Platonism and the mind/body dualism of the Greeks, the fundamentalists and the generally confused.
SONS OF GOD
One can live passionately without being a sinner, especially since we are no longer defined as sinners but as sons and daughters of God. Sons because we have been joined to God in real life and in real time by Jesus Christ.
MORBID MESSAGE
I sat under a lecturer in English literature at a tertiary college in my youth. This poor man was steeped in an anti-pleasure mentality and a puritanical horror of sensuality. (Who gave us senses anyway?) Sensuousness was ok in his opinion, but not sensuality. Never mind that both the latter and the former came from God – but maybe not the kind of effete god he worshiped. He was splitting hairs I thought. Either God made the senses and sexuality or He didn’t. Of course He did, which is why we need to reject body-horror, puritanical stances towards food/sex/pleasure and the austere notion that pop music is of the devil.
MAKES YOU REAL
Thomas Torrance wrote, “God does not override man but recreates, reaffirms him and stands him up before himself as his dear child, and man does not seek to use or manipulate knowledge of God for the fulfilment of his own ends in self-will and self-understanding, but loves him objectively for his own sake and is so liberated from himself that he can love his neighbour objectively also. (1)
WHAT IS YOUR DOOR?
I have worked with colleagues who exclaim that pleasures like dancing may be ‘the thin edge of the wedge’ that leads to depravity. Sadly, some versions of Christianity are the wide way that leads to twaddle. I wonder how much religion and particularly fundamentalism and whacky gospels have led to ruined lives? Bad religion can leave you just as depraved and demonically pestered as any socially defined sinning.
This is why Christ our life is the key to life without limit and genuine holiness. We are constrained in the person of Christ and liberated into His creation and ours by His person expressed as us.
(1) Torrance, Theology in Reconstruction, p. 237.
