Hearing problems

Presbyterian Bloggers

Powered By Ringsurf

 

When tempted, no one should say, “God is tempting me.” For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; but each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death…

 

My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry, because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires.

          James 1

__________________________________

 

There are times

I have trouble hearing.

 

It is not because I need hearing aids (although I do)

It is because my head, my heart, my soul, are crowded

My inner self is noisy and chaotic

 

To the point that there is little room for newness

Little room, honestly

For Jesus

 

I started thinking about this

About what I allow to dwell in my inmost being

 

About how I allow some things to become big, really big

My resentment over this.

My fear about that.

 

I’m like a hoarder

Who has bags of stuff I can’t let go of

Useless, putrid, smelly stuff

 

Piled everywhere

 

My TV is blaring, spewing narratives

Designed to create fear

Intended to offend

 

The influencers on my computer

Feed me half-truths

And outright lies

 

It is stifling

And I can barely breathe.

 

It is my upper room

And if Jesus suddenly appeared

Would he find a place to sit down

 

Would I be able to hear his words of love?

 

Others come with their narratives of fear

With their attempts to make me afraid,

With their desire to shame me

 

They add to the debris

But nothing more

High and deeper

 

They send me running to bar the door, shut the windows and

Pull down the shades.

 

I am left more entrenched than ever.

 

Ah, but the risen Jesus.

That is another story.

 

But I have learned that the Spirit can free me from this prison of my own making.

The Present God can open the windows

And let the wind blow

 

Can open the doors, and let the light in

Can burn away the piles of fear, misinformation and hate

 

Love can set me free

Love alone

 

Why do I think it is different for others?

Why do I think that somehow I, armed with what I believe are “the facts,”

That I, with brilliant arguments

That I, impaired as I am with resentment and anger,

 

Can create understanding,

Dispel untruth

Heal heart and soul?

 

I have been doing it wrong.

I have to lead with love

I have to see myself simply as a conduit through which

Hopefully, prayerfully, God’s love can flow

 

Clearly telling people they are wrong (and I am right)

Doesn’t work

Clearly leading with anger

Doesn’t work

Nor does ridicule

 

I am not going to change any hearts

Only God can do that

And God can only do that

If I am not in the way

 

I am going to have to learn

What it looks like to be a conduit

And not a dam

 

I am going to have to learn what it means

To overcome evil with good

 

And sadly, I am a slow learner.

 

Come, Lord Jesus,

You have a lot of work to do

Starting with me

Choose love

Presbyterian Bloggers

Powered By Ringsurf

Jesus never once quotes from nineteen of the books in his own Hebrew scriptures. In fact, he appears to use a very few favorites: Exodus, Deuteronomy, Isaiah, Hosea, and Psalms.  Jesus appears to ignore most of his own Bible, yet it clearly formed his whole consciousness. That is the paradox. If we look at what he ignores, it includes any passages that appear to legitimate violence, imperialism, exclusion, purity, and dietary laws—of which there are many. Jesus is a biblically formed non-Bible-quoter who gets the deeper stream of God’s unconditional love, the spirit, the trajectory of his Jewish history and never settles for mere surface readings.

When he does once quote Leviticus, he quotes the one positive mandate among long lists of negative ones: “You must love your neighbor as yourself” (see Leviticus 19:18)… Jesus reduces the 613 clear biblical commandments down to two: love of God and love of neighbor (see Matthew 22:34–40).  

He omits troublesome verses with which he does not agree, as when he drops the final half-verse from the Isaiah scroll when he first reads in the Nazareth synagogue (see Luke 4:18–19). As if to make the point, he “rolls up the scroll, hands it back to the attendant and sits down.” We can imagine them glaring at him for adjusting the Scriptures. They know the final line of Isaiah 61:2b is “to proclaim a day of vengeance from our God.” Jesus ends with verse 2a, which “proclaims the Lord’s day of favor,” and better portrays the God he knows.

Generally speaking, Jesus makes use of his own Scriptures to teach a message of radical inclusivity, mercy, and justice, and to negate the predominant religious messages of exclusion, religious righteousness, and oppression of the underdog, the impure, and the sinner.

Richard Rohr

_____________________________

We used to call them “Bible thumpers”

Those people who would zealously pound their Bible

THIS is what God says

This is the WORD OF GOD

I always loved

And love still

Their passion for God

But my problem is that many of these

Intense, well-meaning people

Not only thumped the Bible, but thumped others with the Bible

Weaponizing it

Making it a book of rules and wrath

Making it about obedience and merit

Even grace becomes merit. 

The tension between a religion of obedience and wrath

And a religion of grace and forgiveness

Is inherent in the Bible

Jesus saw it,

And he dealt with it his own way

Defaulting to love

Always

Love 

That is the beginning and the end

The alpha and the omega

The world was birthed in love

And it is not going to “end” 

However we think of “end”

In hate and punishment

In flames

Although there may be hate and flames

Cruelty and violence

Created by humankind

Along the way 

To paradise

When we are asked to choose

Between merit and grace

We must choose grace

I have often thought about 

The time Jesus told the Bible thumpers of his time

You will come to me and point to your zeal for God

And I will say, “I never knew you”

Sounds pretty harsh 

And he tells them away from me!!!

That doesn’t sound like mercy.

But…

I think what Jesus was saying

To these people who were very much alive,

Was this

What have you done with yourself?

I don’t even recognize you.

I can’t see the person of love and mercy you were created to be

You are not reflecting the image of God

Go get yourself together.

Because right now you are hurting a lot of people

Am I playing fast and loose with scripture?

Yeah

Just like Jesus

Just like every Rabbi ever (who is worth his or her salt)

But I think Jesus’ goal was not expulsion

But transformation

From His birth to his death

Jesus was always about radical love

About expansive inclusion

He read the Torah and the law and the prophets through

The lens of radical love

He lived the scriptures through the lens of radical love

He saw the tension

And he resolved it by choosing radical love.

I want to be like that!

the harder we try

Presbyterian Bloggers

Powered By Ringsurf

“Just keep your eyes on Jesus”

They say

“Be BOLD Christians”

They implore

 

God has this

God has your back

God will take care of you

 

Trust and Obey and it will be OK!

 

All those aphorisms that are true

Not True

 

I personally think it makes a difference to believe

That God is

That God is love

That God is woven into the fabric of the universe,

The planet

 

That God is somehow present in me

The secret of joy, hope, peace, and love

 

But what does it mean to live that out?

Cause damn!

 

There are those people who say that Jesus saves

but live as if they have to save Jesus

 

Who insist that if they don’t put God back

In the schools

The government

The bedroom

 

The world will be Godless.

And we’ll all go to hell.

 

(they could write a song about that – when we all get to hell…..)

 

Who insist they must set up a bunch of laws

Elect a bunch of control freaks into office

Grab all the power and wealth,

 

and then control, coerce, and punish people into obedience

so as to create a “Christian Nation”

 

Oddly, the harder they try to create a Christian Nation

the less like the Kingdom of God that nation seems

 

I appreciate the zeal of the overachievers

I just wish they would take a Xanax

 

There are also those who spend all of their time

Trying to connect with the Sacred

They pore over the Bible

And fill their head with words they arrange

 

To fit their preconceived notion of God

 

They pray and worship

And look to the heavens,

Trying to “see” Jesus

 

Maybe I have it wrong.

But I think Jesus told us.

That if we want to see God,

All we have to do is look at flowers

And children

 

All we have to do is look in the face of every person we meet

(Hi Jesus)

In the face of the homeless man,

The immigrant

The person living in poverty

 

All we have to do is look in the mirror.

 

I think Jesus said that being a bold follower

Is not about beating people over the head with our Bibles

Or oppressing and suppressing people in the name of faith

Or conquering and subduing

(or eradicating an entire civilization with our missiles)

 

But about trusting God enough

To share what we have with those around us

To welcome those who are different from us

To listen to those we disagree with

 

To see every person we meet as a child of God

As full of the Sacred as we are

As loved by God as we are

 

Maybe I have it wrong.

I probably do

But I’ll keep on keeping on

Trying not to tire of doing good

 

I’ll keep looking in the mirror

And trying to see Jesus in this face.

 

And I’ll keep working to act justly, to love mercy,

and to walk humbly with my God