In Response to a Friend's Newsletter ...

Just some questions that occurred to me, after reading a friend's newsletter ... as I read it, I realized how very many Christian concepts are utterly moot to me. Of course, this wasn't a new revelation ... the transformation from "Christianity-adherent", to "post-Christian-Jesus-follower" (or just "human") has been an incremental one. Still, my own developing understanding struck me as being in stark contrast to the very things I used to swallow-whole, unquestioningly. Here was my response to my friend:


- Why do we think we're in (or coming toward) the "end times" when the Bible doesn't speak of end times, but only speaks of the "time of the end"...? And the end of what? The world? How does "aion" mean world, when it means "age"? What age? What age was coming to an end during the first century? And, how do we not notice that they (every single author of the NT) believed that they were IN the last days of the age ... and that they were even down to the last hour (due to the antichrist(s) John mentions)...?

- Why do we equate the secular state of Israel with the spiritual nature of Israel in scripture? Why do we blindly support a nation that has overlorded others (including followers of Christ)?

- Why do we differentiate between the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Heaven? Scripture seems to equate them as one and the same. What would that mean if we missed the point? Why do we focus on "life after death" when scripture speaks of life here and now? What if the transition it speaks of has nothing to do with biological death (and what happens then), but spiritual death, and was referring to the covenantal-shift (the end of the former age, and the emergence of the new age/covenant to come)...?

- What if the church (an institutional world used to denote the ekklesia) was about those who were called out of the old covenant, into the new? What if church was only a first century phenomenon (a transition team if you will), and has nothing to do with this new covenant, wherein no one needs to be taught about God, wherein God is all in all, wherein there is no more iniquity, wherein all has been fulfilled, completed, and God merely wants us to wake up to what He's done (even what had always been done), and join Him in awakening others...?

- What if Christianity has been a grand adventure in majorly missing the point...? What if Christianity has been more in line with the Pharisees than with Jesus...? What if the very exclusion that Christianity is built upon was what so incensed Jesus against the Pharisees?

- What if it was never Jesus' idea to have a religion called Christianity at all? What if it's been entirely man's notion, arisen out of ego and control? What if we did what Peter suggested, and merely erected "booths" (which morphed into a system) to make a monument out of a transcendent moment, rather than seeing the big picture of what God did, what it means, and who we really are, in Christ? What if the Christian Life (never mentioned in scripture) has usurped and counterfeited the Abundant Life (which Jesus wants to show and give us)...?

- What if no one is excluded, what if even the story of separation-from-God (& the notion that man fell, and is now evil) arose out of the perspective of man, and what if Christianity has done more to cause harm, than any other entity on the planet..?

Just my thoughts, where I am these days ... shaken and thrilled to be shaken...!

Shalom, Dena