Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Rejoicing over ruling: the better way

So, after edging the Billy clock one or two ticks closer to the left (I'm mixing metaphors like a grand ol' mint julep) yesterday, (if you haven't please read my thoughts on "the kiss" this past weekend in yesterday's blog) let's return to our task.

I again began to search religion news for a topic, but after reading several selections, I was compelled to get rid of the old tough news angle and let's try some joy.

For my final Bible study in these three wonderful churches, I've been doing my favorite book in the New Testament. It's just a little ditty, just a few thousand words tops. But I love it because it shows a man, my man Paul, in the arms of a jailer all the while writing wonderfully descriptive words about joy.

I'm writing this while still on the mend, and I understand it will be a while before I'm something that passes for 100 percent (which I last achieved in 1984 I think it was, or maybe even 1974, well there was that, uh, I've never been 100 percent but you get the idea). But I never had the whackings and such that my man, Paul, had.

Yet he writes this: "So, then, my brothers and sisters, rejoice in the Lord." (3-1, CEB).

First, he in this translation uses so. I love so. I'm a so-so kinda guy. I digress.

So, the first thing out of the shoot in this chapter of this marvelous book is where to find joy. He doesn't tell us to rejoice in wonderful dinners together, or rejoice in fantastic automobile choices, or even rejoice in the blessings of family. Our joy, our rejoicing comes from one source, the Lord. That's Paul saying that in the windiest of wind storms, when the deck of the ship is twisted 45 degrees and things are without hope, there is something to and someone to rejoice in.

Matthew West, singer-songwriter, describes it this way in this tune, "Day Before You":
"I had all but given up on finding the one that I could fall into
On the day before you I was ready to settle for less than love and not much more
There was no such thing as a dream come true
But that on the day before you
Now you're here and every things changing
Suddenly life means so much
I can't wait to wake up tomorrow and find out this promise is true
I will never had to go back to the day before you"

Seems to me that we've made much of this Christianity thing into a he said, he said, she said, the Bible said, she said about what he said, and we've drained it through a wax cloth so much that it has begun to resemble a bunch of rules you hand out at the beginning of a youth baseball season. You can do this, that and the other and you can't do this, that and the other. Granted obedience was God's preference, but I submit that love is more important that rules.

Honestly, I can't say that is what I see in Paul and the young Christians. Sure, they had to pay for things. They established order. They talked rules and such.

But for Paul and many of his letter (blog?) readers, it was about loving this man Jesus and rejoicing in Him.

Mark Driscoll, of the Mars Hills churches in Seattle, (and many others) writes this: "People have used Jesus to justify adding so many "requirements to being a Christian.

Here are but a few of countless examples:
Not drinking alcohol;
not listening to certain types of music;
insisting that church meet on certain days;
you can't be saved unless you are circumcised;
reciting ritualistic prayers or the right prayer or praying in the right way;
saying you aren't saved unless you get baptized;
requiring you to perform rituals, in the "right" way;
Saying that you must tithe or perform deeds in a certain way to earn your salvation."

Paul wrote to the church in Rome and blew their collective Roman cerebral cortex's. "For the commandments say, 'You must not commit adultery. You must not murder. You must not steal. You must not covet. These -- and other commandments -- are summed up in this one commandment: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' Love does no wrong to others, so love fulfills the requirements of God's Law." Romans 13:9-10

Love. It's what's we rejoice.

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