.

.

continued …

“That is just not me at all … “

Say that thing you were thinking on the dog-walk yesterday, Paul …

.

.

Thank you.  This whole imaginary setting … the cross up there … you nailed to it … you hopping off it to join me here … the words, the questions, the certainties, the imagery … all of that … all of this … you talking to me … me talking to you … ALL of it … It’s me not you.

All of this is in my head.

You mean you are The Creator?  🙂

Now that thought wasn’t in my head!  🙂

But my point is this … I write these conversations as hearing you, but I am really hearing me.  I hear your words, but they are my words.  I talk to you – but I hear me.  I am talking … to myself.

How do you know?

I don’t – and not knowing is linked … 

To that thought you had …

Like this …

.

.

With uncertainty we stay IN the bible.  And staying IN the bible is “playing it safe”.

Yet IN the same bible I see you challenge the scribes and law-keepers: if you always do what you’ve always done, how do you grow … if you prefer safety to love, how do you find relationship … ?  I see this “play it safe” in their bible … I see it in the teaching I had from childhood … I see it in the trainee-preacher training I had as an adult …

We all play it safe and stay between the lines (which we call scriptural and biblical correctness).  But staying safe NEEDS laws and commandments and covenants and promises … NEEDS conformity and contracts … NEEDS living by certainty rather than faith … And the consequence is that we BELIEVE we NEED to love conditionally.  And we BLAME that on you for making us sinners and BLAME ourselves for being sinners.  Which means we CHOOSE not to love as you do because that comes with uncertainty. 

So we stay IN the bible … we stay IN sin … we stay IN fear … and we use the bible to say that is how YOU want it … and WE call that being “a good and faithful servant” … just as the law-makers and gate-keepers did. 

Except all of this is in the same bible.  The “Greatest of All” was in their bible as it is in ours.  And we still reject you (as they did).  And we still call it being biblically correct (as they did). 

And it’s still all bullshit!  

Maybe that is why this cartoon appeals to you … 

.

.

So where do you want to go with all of this?

Right now I am wondering this … 

Why has nothing much changed and why do we think it has?  Why do we jeer at the biblical Pharisees yet not see ourselves in them still?  Why are we – like them – still playing it safe?  Why are we – like them – reliant on laws and commands rather than  love?  Why do we – as they did – build-in sin to fuel fear to keep control?  Why have we learned so little … ?  

And the alternative?

Same bible – same teaching – different outcome (as we discussed) …   

Lose the sin.  Lose the fear.  Lose playing it safe.  Lose the transaction of “my eternal salvation” (in return for “my rigid biblical correctness”).  Look for love.  Live by love.  Know myself not as “chosen” but as the same as everyone.  Drop the whole “being correct” bullshit … stop playing it safe to protect my “investment” …

Boy … am I getting some “parables” pinging away in my head right now!

Because THAT is the way I come close to loving ALL unconditionally – and THAT is staring ALL of us in the face right now – and we ALL call it … “The Bible”.

Something from the same bible is “pinging in my head” right now, Paul … 

.

.

You are not far from the kingdom of God.

.