April 7, 2013 Adultery

Matt 5  Next rule:
Adultery.  Obviously unrighteous, no argument there.  Check.

No adultery seems like an easy rule to obey, for at least 50% of the population according to Yahoo! news reports.  But in the kingdom of heaven, there is no difference between the action of sleeping with another man’s wife, and the secret fantasy of holding her hand while the other man uses the restroom at the movie theater.  The things which separate the desire and the action here are time and opportunity.  But in heaven, there is no time, and everything is opportunity, so there is literally no difference  between the thought and the action. 

Adultery is the most obvious conclusion to the willingness to stare with greedy eyes.  The mind which combines the pleasure of ownership with the image of a person is especially unfit for the kingdom of heaven.  Even the most subtle willingness or desire to use and manipulate a person in order to satisfy your own appetite, means the kingdom is not right for you.  

That is cannibalism, and it is not permitted as even a stray thought in the kingdom of heaven.  It’s what makes the kingdom so great, everyone is of unique value, and every one totally free, so wannabe slave traders simply cannot exist.  

I’m not so sure we will be kicked out so much as we’ll never seek to really enter such a kingdom in the first.  It would be like a die-hard carnivore choosing to eat the rest of his life at a Vegan Café.  But supposing such a turn should occur, that we should desire to submit our lust and need to God in order to find true life and be permitted in his kingdom, well, let's just say some habits die very hard.

Is there some random gate into your brain where the stray thoughts of manipulation, ownership, and control of another seem to always fly in?  Some window left open where these random strays seem to blow in during the evening breezes? 

“I wasn’t thinking about her until she came out onto the rooftop and started bathing.  I couldn’t close the window so I couldn’t stop my stare.  And after staring for a while, I just had to have her as my own.”  

Jesus supposes that it would be better for a man to have boarded up the window once she put her bathtub on the roof instead of what was obviously coming next.   Actually, he didn’t so much suppose as much as suggest the most grotesque counter measure I can imagine.  

His suggestion echoes the fierceness of the violation by explaining that it would be better to gouge out your own eye instead of allowing it to be the window of opportunity for thoughts which makes mankind so unprepared and unable to accept the gift of his kingdom, the truth of love.

March 24, 2013 Anger

Matt 5  Unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.  Dang.  That’s pretty righteous.  But let me give it a try. . . 

No Murder.  I'm good with that!  Check. 

But in the kingdom of heaven, where everyone has eternal life, murder is not even a real threat.  Jesus teaches that death has no power in his kingdom, but anger, now that is a serious issue.  Murder is just a symptom of the disease which leads to death, anger.  Anger starts by torturing you, slowly,  and then makes you want to kill others as it progresses.  Anger is a god who rules in the kingdom of earth, it is a kingdom of earth emotion that results in kingdom of earth problems, namely death.   Anger is a violation of the principles which govern heaven, love and life.  Anger violates both.  Anger is opposed to both.  

The experience of anger is similar to fear or anxiety.  It has a powerful, seemingly unstoppable control over the physical body.  It causes the release of poisonous chemicals into your bloodstream which cause your body to tense up, constrict, divert blood flow, cause erratic heart palpitations, corrupts digestive processes, wear thin the lining of certain organs, and cloud mental processes.  It disrupts sleep, can cause headaches, blurry vision, and back problems.  It affects appetites, attitudes, expectations, and memory.  And it is not permitted past the gate into the kingdom of heaven.

Jesus explains that anger exposes a man to the fire of hell.  It’s as if the Devil wants to make us into the perfect s'more.  Like a marshmallow on a stick placed high above the fire, exposed through anger.  Anger places that marshmallow perfectly over the flame.  The exposure and heat take a little time, but left there, and turned ever so cautiously, things begin to happen.  It takes patience to do it right, to destroy someone with anger.  You don’t want to burn them up right away, but slowly, watch them suffer and throw their life away.  The exposure first leads to inflammation, and a crispy shell.  The insides then melt and boil until the marshmallow loses its own form.  Its' shell eventually gives way and the whole thing falls into the fire to be consumed.

Since allowing anger into Heaven would so violate the reality of that kingdom, any person who has visions of sneaking it in should give up that fantasy right now.  God would rather you got out of line and leave the altar, walk away from church, don’t put a penny in the offering plate, don’t dare try to take communion if you are doing so harboring anger as a stowaway in your mind.  

While the forgiveness of God extends to the ends of the earth, a person unwilling to yield his own anger before judgment will, according to Jesus, spend the rest of his life in the debtor's prison, where he is judged as he has judged, unable to go free until he pay his own debt, and justify himself without any means.

March 17, 2013 Salt

Matt 5  You are the salt of the earth.  The light of the world.  

Salt is salt, and rocks are rocks.  Rocks are not salt, even though they may look the same.  Salt is not always white like we have come to expect.  

It looks a lot like a translucent rock if it is mined from the massive Bolivian salt mine I once toured.  So if you were to take a bag of rocks and throw in some salt, it is reasonable to expect that some of that salt would rub off onto some of the rocks.  And since they all look alike, one of those rocks may even be tempted to say, “Hey, I look like a piece of salt, and I’m pretty salty, I must be salt!”

Rocks don’t rub off on salt, only the reverse is true, because salt is softer than rock, it gives way to the hardness of the rock and breaks down first.  And only salt is useful for preserving things.  Only salt can purify the oceans, or treat a wound.  If you want to preserve a pig, you’d need a bag of salt, not rocks.  If you tossed a rock of salt in your mouth and it tasted salty you’d be tempted to think, yep, salt, time to preserve the pig.   

But then, what if the saltiness wears off, and you discover it is not salt at all, just a bag of rocks that tastes like salt?  No good for preserving pigs, better used as road base.  So you’d be better off tossing the salty rocks into the road, to be trampled on by Prius's, and men. 

Jesus says, you are the salt of the earth.  But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again?  It is no longer good for anything but to be thrown out and trampled by men.  Can this be true? 

Jesus says that in his kingdom that salt is used , and rocks are thrown out.  The salt is of the earth and for the earth, and the rocks are just good for helping make roads.  Salt is made useful by being absorbed into something other than itself.  A rock is made useful by being walked on.   

Salt is the most useful not when it is purified by being in a bag with all of the other salt, but when it is stuffed into the body and flesh of the dead pig, dissolved, and separated from itself and smelling more of pig, than of salt.  It is there that its work of preserving begins.   

Jesus says you are like salt in my kingdom.  As long as you are dis-solvable, and ready to smell like pig, you are of use.  As soon as you resist being dissolved, and become adamant that you keep yourself together, rock solid, well then you are not really salt at all, you are more useful as road base.   

But he assures you are salt.  You most certainly are salt.  You must just be dissolved into the appropriate pig.  If you don't dissolve, then you are road base.

March 10, 2013 Blessed are. . .

Matt 5  Blessed are the poor.  Blessed are those who mourn.  Blessed are the meek.  Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.   

This class is called Kingdom of Heaven 101.  Jesus, the teacher says that in the new kingdom, those who have nothing are the truly happy ones.  Those that have just lost something, and are still mourning that loss, are really truly happy.  And those with no appearance of power or control, are really truly super happy.  He says that the poor, still mourning what has been taken away, who are powerless and who are hungry, and thirsty to know what is right, are really truly super duper happy.

Yeah right!  Teacher, I’m pretty sure you left something out of that lecture.  I’d like a little more background and support for your thesis.    Like, maybe it’s ok to be poor because then you can really appreciate a good meal, and maybe mourning is good, because your loved one is now playing golf in heaven and that is even better than being here playing Cornhole in the front yard with me.  Meekness is good because it allows you to be flexible and not get injured by what you can’t control.  And hungering to be right is good because then it will make you feast on the good things, like paying taxes, and avoid the bad things, like alcohol or pornography. . .    

And so goes the need to contradict the Teacher and make sure everyone else can understand what He failed to explain, his being such a bad teacher of the good news and all. . .

This rationale, this need to explain otherwise non-sense is the basis of religion.  It is the thing which Jesus would spend a great deal of energy to go out of his way to offend.  And it is one of the lenses through which we seem to want to view everything he did, and everything he said.  What say we smash the lens, and allow his “non-sense” to just set a while on the screen before our eyes, blurry, dark, and mis-figured until something miraculous should happen.  Like being given new eyes to see with, new ears to hear, and a new mind to understand and believe what he has said.

Hungering and thirsting for righteousness means that we long for what is right, while not experiencing it.  Being poor means, simply, feeling as though we do not have enough to take care of ourselves and are dependent on others.  

Mourning means feeling the pain associated with loss.  Just the pain.  And meekness, I no longer explain as "controlled power" like a super hero biding his time to wipe out Dr. Evil, I think it means being powerless and enduring injury without resentment, like the dictionary says.  All of these are what make people of the kingdom happy.  That’s what Jesus said, do you believe it?

March 3, 2013 Kingdom is Near

Matt 4  Jesus starts teaching that the kingdom of heaven is near.  Matthew equates the good news with information about the kingdom of heaven.  So Jesus was teaching the good news.  The word "gospel" means good news, so to preach the gospel, means to preach about the kingdom of heaven, specifically, that it is "near".   

Jesus also starts healing all the sick people.  The kingdom of heaven being "near" seems to mean that sick people are made well.  The "good news" and sick people being made well go hand in hand, like a shadow on a sunny day.  

What Jesus explains, in teaching people about the kingdom is really good, but it may not make any sense, it may seem unreasonable, unable to be proven, or even explained, much the way people were being healed.  The kingdom is NEAR!   

Where is it?  When is it?  What does it look like?  

So far in reading of Matthew it looks like a ruler killing thousands of helpless baby boys for fear that one of them might bring this kingdom to earth.  It looks like being baptized in fire.  It looks like being led by God to starve in the desert.  It involves resisting the temptation to satisfy yourself with food of your own, thrill seek at God’s expense, or accept a handout by an accuser.

It is something that angels, those mighty beings who can wipe out hundreds of thousands of humans without breaking a sweat, are super excited about, and have been secretly anticipating for hundreds and thousands of years.  It is something that pisses off politicians, and makes leaders want to kill people who talk about it.  It is definitely a big deal, and worth looking into.

How "near" was the kingdom of heaven as Jesus was teaching and healing those people?  John announced it was almost, just about here.  And when Jesus was baptized, heaven opened up into the earth.  Presumably the kingdom of heaven had revealed itself as Jesus submitted to his father during his baptism.  

So as Jesus was teaching, was the kingdom actually here already, or was it still just close by, or near?  Or was it here for some and not here for others?  Was it here for Jesus?  Was it here for John?  Was it here for the people being healed?  Was it here for the politicians who were afraid and had started to try to imprison and kill John, and eventually Jesus?

Jesus proclaims the kingdom of heaven is among you, it is at hand. How near is at hand?  It is very near.  Very, very near.  In fact, it is right here.  If it is right here, then when is it?  Well, it must be right now.  And if it is right here, and right now, what does it look like?   

Well, Jesus is here to teach us what it looks like, and He promises it is good news.  Even though it doesn't seem to look like good news to us, from inside the borders of the kingdom of the earth.  Since Jesus showed up, babies were murdered, families destroyed.  His cousin and favorite person JTB is jailed and killed for making people ready for it, and Jesus does absolutely nothing to rescue him.  If we are to understand the good part of the news, it is clear that we will need a new way of thinking.  Because according to the old way of thinking, the kingdom is bad news.

How can we understand it, or recognize it?   

Jesus came to teach about the new kingdom, now at hand.  Do you think it would be better to try to understand, maybe argue a little to make sure he got it right, or would it be better just take notes and hope to slowly grasp the concepts which at first seem “out of this world”?

February 10, 2013 Temptation

Matt 4  (All quotes paraphrased) Jesus is led by the Spirit into the desert to fast and be tempted.  Jesus has just been baptized which prompted his Father to violate all the protocols of being God and yell into the universe, “That is my boy!”.  As a reward, the Father sends Jesus into the desert to literally starve his flesh and then, at his weakest moment, to subject him to all the temptations which come with being a man, hand delivered by the most talented seducer and accuser of them all, who tries to destroy him and turn him away from obedience.  

The Devil first tempts Jesus to change stone into bread in order to take away the hunger pain.  Seems harmless, just a little God-magic trick to make things a little more pleasant while essentially obeying the Father.  Jesus however refuses, by proclaiming what the Devil already knows: Man's sustenance is dependent on God as much, or more than bread.  And to change something that God his father had clearly made a stone, into bread for his own gratification would violate true submission to his father's will (both for the stone and for him).  And the food of Jesus, as he declares at the well in John 5, is to do the will of his father.

The Devil then tempts him to seek a little thrill on his daddy's dime.  In a time without bungee jumping or motorcycle racing, thrills were harder to come by.  "Come on, you'll be juiced up with adrenaline, and you know God won't let you die!"  But again, Jesus refuses the temptation.  I was told to take this body from here to there, not to start drag racing olong the way. 

Lastly, the Devil makes a direct job offer, no more temptation, it's down to straight negotiation. "Your Father clearly doesn't have your best interest in mind here.  I'm willing to give you a bigger salary, and a title.  You want your name on the door?  You got it. . . "  

To this, Jesus says "That's enough.  I serve God, alone."

The scene closes when the angels come.  They must have been watching from behind the fence and cheering him on, imagine the excitement.  Jesus is their Champion, and they finally broke through to rush in and take care of Him after he survived the test.