Saturday, March 30, 2013

Virgin Birth?


It’s Easter not Christmas…I know but it’s relevant.

                For the resurrection of Easter to mean anything, Jesus had to actually die. Returning to life is a nonevent if there was no death in the first place. Thus he had to actually die. And not a death that was in thought only, but a death of tissue and blood cells, for that is what was returned to life. And that is what our hope is as well. For Jesus to experience a physical death he had to be human. Yet, what kind of human?
                The curse of death was placed on Adam and Eve and passed onto their children. Our DNA is encoded for death. One way is the mitochondria death trigger. What kind of DNA did Jesus have? He was born of a virgin and did not receive chromosomes from a male father. This leaves two options. One, that Marry was Artificially inseminated by the Holy Spirit, which in my opinion is weird. Option two, is that Jesus was another creation of a human. In other words that he was a new Adam.
                I lean heavily on Jesus being a new human, closer to the original set of DNA, like Adam was before the fall. Thus, death was not his curse to bear. He willing took on the curse of death, even though his body was not going to die. And he cried out when he felt this forsakenness from the Father as he took on death, our curse. So, no we make a trade, his death for our life. We accept his death as our curse and offer our live to be lived by him.

We then have the hope that our view of death is the same as Jesus’ view. Sleep now, to be awakened again. This is the promise of Easter, the resurrection because Jesus was a new man and through him we become new again. 

Sunday, March 17, 2013

The Pitfalls of Worship

Could it be that you look at it all wrong?


Are your defenses up after that question? Consider the Children of Jacob, or Israel as they were called. They built a golden calf by melting down their jewelry and worshiped what they “made with their own hands.” They gave up on Moses coming back and worshiped a god of their own crafting. When Moses came back down the mountain he was furious and he threw the tablets of testimony and burned the golden calf in a fire. After that Moses was setting up a tent outside of their camp where he would go and meet with YHWH (I AM/God).
When Moses met with YHWH in the tent, a pillar of fog would stand at the entrance. All the people would stand outside by the entrance to their own tents and they would bow down in worship. YHWY then gave Moses specifications for the people to follow in order to build a Tent of Meeting or Tabernacle. They took gold and jewels, wood and dyed skins for the finest craftsmen (male and female term here people…) to construct articles of worship. They made the Tabernacle, the arc of the covenant, a table, lampstand and more with their own hands. They then worshiped YHWH as a god of their own crafting via YHWH’s instruction.

So, could it be that great articles of faith that we even have today are simply tokens of our own crafting? Gen 2:8 “When the cool evening breezes were blowing, the man and his wife heard the Lord God walking about in the garden. So they hid from the Lord God among the trees.” They heard (sound vibrations in the air) God walking and recognized the sound (they knew who to hide from). They had been walking with God up till that point. God had a physical presence in the garden. Adam and Eve walked with God in Paradise. Noah also walked with God (Gen 6:9), it is this walking with God that made him the only blameless person at that time.

God of the cosmos and DNA
What has any of this to do with the other? The Creator reveals himself to show us the immensity of his being, and we seek to make him a creation of our own hands. We can reduce God to prayer, reading the Bible, singing in church, listening to a sermon, when he is so much more! And our worship of his should be so much more. Worship and walking with God are inseparable. True worship is done by understanding that we are no longer the death cursed loner we used to be, but that the One True Creator God is living and walking in us. When we remain in that understanding and keep our mindset bonded to it we abide in Christ and he abides in us and we are one with YHWY.

As we go Lord…