REAL LIFE IS HOLISTIC
10/11/24 15:17
In the more bizarre Christian cults people sometimes claim to be God. In the less bizarre but still aberrant communities it can be taught that you get to like God by keeping the law. Those enclosed in this penitentiary and wearing these hand-cuffs hoard their stuff because they are used to it and it is ‘theirs’. Such ‘spirituality’, if it can be called that, is like rotten food on the kitchen bench and a fridge full of mouldy veg. As far as spiritual vision is concerned it is a delusion.
LIVING WAY
But the new and living way to Godliness is Jesus Christ as you. The Lord’s Table indicates that we become one substance with Christ – the incarnation. We participate in Him. This is the meaning of being His Body. Positional definitions of the body of Christ miss the point.
BECOME WHO WE ARE
While we become one substance with Christ, we do not become Christ and nor do we become Gods. We do become sons/daughters of God in spirit and in truth, however. Yet we are distinct as persons, and sons who are one with God. Union with God does not make as gods. It makes us the spirit-ignited persons we are in the new creation – sons of God. This is the difference between a church of dead trees and a Church of burning bushes.
HIDDEN IN CHRIST YOU ARE REVEALED AS THE TRUE YOU
We are separated entities from God but never separate from God because we are sons in spirit and truth. Sons/daughters in a oneness that weaves us into God, yet establishes us as ourselves in spirit and in truth - perichoresis. Our greatest Kingdom fruitfulness is to be the self that Christ intends us to be.
Our sonship with God gives us the ability to live meaning and purpose and discover meaning. More than anything else we gain the ability to love. This is our chief fruit.
Caroline Jones passed away some years ago. She was part of my youth as a Presenter on ‘This Day Tonight’ on the ABC and ran a perceptive show entitled The Search For Meaning. Jesus as the Christ of God is the key to meaning and to life.
LOVE MEANS LIFE
I utilised some of her work for my master’s thesis on holism and fake holistic approaches. Paul Tournier wrote a similarly insightful book entitled, The Meaning of Persons. The assumption of these posts is that our lives have meaning and purpose to the extent that we find our being in the Christ of God. Thus, we are on the alert against false christ’s and false gospels that blur our vision and suffocate our spirit.
PARTICIPANTS
We do become participants in the Divine nature. But not through the extraneous entity of the law. We participate because we have been drawn into all that belongs to Christ – His belonging in the trinity.
THEOSIS
“The goal of theosis is not to become ‘God’ or even, technically speaking, to become ‘gods’. It is not the process of transcending the confines of human nature but the process and means by which the human can achieve true personhood. Theosis does not do away with our creatureliness; it fulfils it.” (1) It’s the Living Way of becoming the True fruitful You.
In every way we become who we are in Christ. This becoming happens through oneness with God – not through an agenda, the law or charity work. It happens because we have been made sons in spirit and in truth. CHRIST OUR LIFE is the ultimate whole person approach. We express His life because we are incarnated with His Person. Don’t expect to impart spirit and life in mission if you are not alive as in incarnated with Christ. We do this by saying ‘yes’ to christ instead of remaining in our opiate of religious legalisms. Obedience is our response to Christ’s invitation to be our life. It’s not defined by an attachment to some commandment or an adherence to church defines behaviours.
ABBERATIONS
God looked at His creation and it was all good. All of our humanity is righteous in its proper place. Our place is union with God, achieved for us by Christ. We grow into a whole and holy humanity with Christ as our life.
WITHERED SOULS
There are varieties of Christianity that would attempt to deny our humanity. These inmates think they are pleasing God by denying some aspect of humanity. Some attempt to put a taint of guilt over anything that is exciting, pleasurable, and sensual. If not taught to deny this part of themselves, many are taught never to mention it. Sex I mean. They may adopt these inhibitions as pieties. But their practice has nothing to do with holiness. See ‘Song’ Chapter 5.
REALITY IS YOU IN CHRIST
A person will not become a real person in religion and the law. This explains why non-religious folks and not religious Christians are often more attractive and personable than those who live from a structure of constraints whose genesis was the serpent in the garden. In the Christ of the cross/tree we become who we are in real life terms – fully human and fully alive as expression of Christ.
GRADUATE TO SPIRIT AND LIFE
The new birth means that we graduate from what we do to what we are. This is the start of our transformation into spirit and life. Richard Rohr argues that we need to start in the law in order to build the self, inside a container. When we get to maturity, we can cast aside concrete thinking and get reborn as a person who is alive as himself/herself with spirit and life from Christ. To retain ourselves in the law is to capture the self in infancy when we have the potential to grow from glory to glory in oneness with Jesus. Sons of God are adults. Not undeveloped persons captured forever in elementary school.
LIVING WAY
But the new and living way to Godliness is Jesus Christ as you. The Lord’s Table indicates that we become one substance with Christ – the incarnation. We participate in Him. This is the meaning of being His Body. Positional definitions of the body of Christ miss the point.
BECOME WHO WE ARE
While we become one substance with Christ, we do not become Christ and nor do we become Gods. We do become sons/daughters of God in spirit and in truth, however. Yet we are distinct as persons, and sons who are one with God. Union with God does not make as gods. It makes us the spirit-ignited persons we are in the new creation – sons of God. This is the difference between a church of dead trees and a Church of burning bushes.
HIDDEN IN CHRIST YOU ARE REVEALED AS THE TRUE YOU
We are separated entities from God but never separate from God because we are sons in spirit and truth. Sons/daughters in a oneness that weaves us into God, yet establishes us as ourselves in spirit and in truth - perichoresis. Our greatest Kingdom fruitfulness is to be the self that Christ intends us to be.
Our sonship with God gives us the ability to live meaning and purpose and discover meaning. More than anything else we gain the ability to love. This is our chief fruit.
Caroline Jones passed away some years ago. She was part of my youth as a Presenter on ‘This Day Tonight’ on the ABC and ran a perceptive show entitled The Search For Meaning. Jesus as the Christ of God is the key to meaning and to life.
LOVE MEANS LIFE
I utilised some of her work for my master’s thesis on holism and fake holistic approaches. Paul Tournier wrote a similarly insightful book entitled, The Meaning of Persons. The assumption of these posts is that our lives have meaning and purpose to the extent that we find our being in the Christ of God. Thus, we are on the alert against false christ’s and false gospels that blur our vision and suffocate our spirit.
PARTICIPANTS
We do become participants in the Divine nature. But not through the extraneous entity of the law. We participate because we have been drawn into all that belongs to Christ – His belonging in the trinity.
THEOSIS
“The goal of theosis is not to become ‘God’ or even, technically speaking, to become ‘gods’. It is not the process of transcending the confines of human nature but the process and means by which the human can achieve true personhood. Theosis does not do away with our creatureliness; it fulfils it.” (1) It’s the Living Way of becoming the True fruitful You.
In every way we become who we are in Christ. This becoming happens through oneness with God – not through an agenda, the law or charity work. It happens because we have been made sons in spirit and in truth. CHRIST OUR LIFE is the ultimate whole person approach. We express His life because we are incarnated with His Person. Don’t expect to impart spirit and life in mission if you are not alive as in incarnated with Christ. We do this by saying ‘yes’ to christ instead of remaining in our opiate of religious legalisms. Obedience is our response to Christ’s invitation to be our life. It’s not defined by an attachment to some commandment or an adherence to church defines behaviours.
ABBERATIONS
God looked at His creation and it was all good. All of our humanity is righteous in its proper place. Our place is union with God, achieved for us by Christ. We grow into a whole and holy humanity with Christ as our life.
WITHERED SOULS
There are varieties of Christianity that would attempt to deny our humanity. These inmates think they are pleasing God by denying some aspect of humanity. Some attempt to put a taint of guilt over anything that is exciting, pleasurable, and sensual. If not taught to deny this part of themselves, many are taught never to mention it. Sex I mean. They may adopt these inhibitions as pieties. But their practice has nothing to do with holiness. See ‘Song’ Chapter 5.
REALITY IS YOU IN CHRIST
A person will not become a real person in religion and the law. This explains why non-religious folks and not religious Christians are often more attractive and personable than those who live from a structure of constraints whose genesis was the serpent in the garden. In the Christ of the cross/tree we become who we are in real life terms – fully human and fully alive as expression of Christ.
GRADUATE TO SPIRIT AND LIFE
The new birth means that we graduate from what we do to what we are. This is the start of our transformation into spirit and life. Richard Rohr argues that we need to start in the law in order to build the self, inside a container. When we get to maturity, we can cast aside concrete thinking and get reborn as a person who is alive as himself/herself with spirit and life from Christ. To retain ourselves in the law is to capture the self in infancy when we have the potential to grow from glory to glory in oneness with Jesus. Sons of God are adults. Not undeveloped persons captured forever in elementary school.
