His message is clear in so many ways. He may not coerce, but the question remains, do we ever use force to bring about justice for those being oppressed? What are the means we can use to create the Kingdom of God here on earth? What should one stand by and watch? There are political questions that are not clear. And Jesus had other ways that are not available to us, according to the records, using miracles to bring about what we cannot.
Hi Melinda, I really appreciate your comment. Your comment got me to thinking so instead of replying to you I wrote in my own comment. I always love hearing the questions & seeming contradictions it spurs me to think more deeply about where I actually stand. I also love the dialogue on this substack, it’s so thoughtful & inspiring.
I think that because Jesus’s message & example were so clear & yet left a lot of mystery is the charm of it all. To love as He loved, sacrificial love, means so many different things to different people. The point is that we be connected to the Father as He is connected to Him & then proceed to sacrificially love from that point of orientation. God’s Spirit doesn’t tell every follower to give money to the beggar on the street nor does His Spirit compel every follower to take the homeless person in to their home yet we know followers who have done both.
He desires our hearts & needs each of us to hear all He has to say parsed out to each of us for us to be a cohesive body.
As we’ve seen there’s no consistent set of beliefs socially within the church. One camp believes in women’s rights over their bodies takes precedence over a child’s life & the other the opposite. Who’s right? Jesus! He must always be our guide post, our Light. When we loose site of Him is when we’ve veered off the path of His Kingdom on this earth. Should we fight for & defend women’s equality & rights…absolutely, should we fight for & defend human life…absolutely. No one argues with either of those points & neither did Jesus.
The ambiguity of His message gave us freedom & liberty so that all the issues that are important to Him could be fought for, defended & preserved. We get into dangerous territory when we only stand for & value one aspect of who He was for.
That quote from Luke 12 is so hard hitting. Greed comes from attachment and clinging, and the complaint here is also coming from a place of attachment and clinging. I think of this a lot. When I'm thinking to myself "where's my share?" until it hits me . . . "what share?" . . . and . . . "share of what?"
It's similar to my take on non-spiritually rooted ideas of "self-defense." My reaction a threat to my wife and/or daughter is very different from how I'd react (or at least hope to react) to a threat towards me.
I think the Torah of Moses is aligned with the Torah of the Gospels/Yeshua, the Living Word in that he is correctly interpreting Moses, the Written Word.
His message is clear in so many ways. He may not coerce, but the question remains, do we ever use force to bring about justice for those being oppressed? What are the means we can use to create the Kingdom of God here on earth? What should one stand by and watch? There are political questions that are not clear. And Jesus had other ways that are not available to us, according to the records, using miracles to bring about what we cannot.
Hi Melinda, I really appreciate your comment. Your comment got me to thinking so instead of replying to you I wrote in my own comment. I always love hearing the questions & seeming contradictions it spurs me to think more deeply about where I actually stand. I also love the dialogue on this substack, it’s so thoughtful & inspiring.
I think that because Jesus’s message & example were so clear & yet left a lot of mystery is the charm of it all. To love as He loved, sacrificial love, means so many different things to different people. The point is that we be connected to the Father as He is connected to Him & then proceed to sacrificially love from that point of orientation. God’s Spirit doesn’t tell every follower to give money to the beggar on the street nor does His Spirit compel every follower to take the homeless person in to their home yet we know followers who have done both.
He desires our hearts & needs each of us to hear all He has to say parsed out to each of us for us to be a cohesive body.
As we’ve seen there’s no consistent set of beliefs socially within the church. One camp believes in women’s rights over their bodies takes precedence over a child’s life & the other the opposite. Who’s right? Jesus! He must always be our guide post, our Light. When we loose site of Him is when we’ve veered off the path of His Kingdom on this earth. Should we fight for & defend women’s equality & rights…absolutely, should we fight for & defend human life…absolutely. No one argues with either of those points & neither did Jesus.
The ambiguity of His message gave us freedom & liberty so that all the issues that are important to Him could be fought for, defended & preserved. We get into dangerous territory when we only stand for & value one aspect of who He was for.
That quote from Luke 12 is so hard hitting. Greed comes from attachment and clinging, and the complaint here is also coming from a place of attachment and clinging. I think of this a lot. When I'm thinking to myself "where's my share?" until it hits me . . . "what share?" . . . and . . . "share of what?"
It's similar to my take on non-spiritually rooted ideas of "self-defense." My reaction a threat to my wife and/or daughter is very different from how I'd react (or at least hope to react) to a threat towards me.
I think the Torah of Moses is aligned with the Torah of the Gospels/Yeshua, the Living Word in that he is correctly interpreting Moses, the Written Word.