Emphasizing Identity Over Behavior - The Ekklesia is Changing 05-28-2023

 There’s no way around it: what you do matters immensely to how people perceive (and receive) you.  As St. Paul said, "You are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read by all men" (2 Cor 3:2).  Those not yet awakened to their fully reconciled standing with Love Himself will read our lives, which are living epistles, long before they pay any heed to the scriptures we quote or even the God we adore.  Indeed, our lives often scream what the still small voice of Father only whispers.  For these reasons, how we treat people, and ourselves, is if significant importance.  So all that to say this: as you read what follows, may no one lay upon me a false charge of having no concern for behavior.  That is categorically untrue.  


But in our desire to see behaviors change we have turned the life-giving message of accomplished, reconciled grace perfectly depicted in the person of Jesus Christ as somehow secondary to human conduct; as a mere means to an end.  Oh yes, lip service is paid to redemption, reconciliation, the Spirit’s indwelling, and related concerns of our union with the Trinity.  Yet these are all taught as but servants of our true god, behavior modification.  In some ways we have made the ekklesia a glorified self-help program; ‘12 Steps to a Better You’.  Pastors no more shepherds of the flock but gurus of co-dependent seekers.  


When we emphasize behavior over identity, we are engaging in a form of narcissistic witchcraft that elevates the will and conduct of mankind over the word (graphe) and Word (logos) of God.  By harping on what people should or shouldn’t do, rather than boldly declaring who and Whose they are, the faithful live in a vicious cycle of approved one minute and disapproved the next.  The ultimate effect of this is isolation as the result of a false perception of separation from Father.   Unworthy, corrupt, useless, inconsistent, ever-failing are all attitudes of self-perception that flow out of this heresy.  


Behavior modification is the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  Eat of that diseased sustenance long enough and you will, slowly but surely, poison yourself!  


But praise the Lord, the Ekklesia is changing!  A covenant people are awakening to a fuller measure of Trinitarian union and inclusion that cares far more about Whose they are than what they do.  Sermons are beginning to harp on your inherent worth and value as the beloved of the Creator, not rightness or wrongness of your actions.  By emphasizing nature over behavior, an empowered people are starting to perceive themselves through the glory-colored glasses of Oneness and belonging.  And this truth transforms them!  It heals to the core what the religious system was content to just haphazardly bandage up  week after week.  The triage model of ministry is being replaced by the superior approach of preventative care.  For you see, a healthy, whole person has far less need of the services of an emergency room than someone routinely consuming the wrong food (message).  


Lasting change comes from an increased awareness of Jesus, not magnifying our human failings.  


If we’re going to emphasize behavior, let’s keep it centered on Christ’s behavior…not our own.   


#grace

#ministry

#finishedwork

#Godislove

#AllMeansAll

#keepitsimplesaints

#lovewins

#ugma

#faithhopeandlove

#reconciliation 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sometimes Certainty is the Greatest Sin of All

Image
One of the more offensive beliefs espoused by western evangelicalism (and there are many) is the notion that all expressions of the Christian faith preceding it - Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Reformed, et al - were in such gross and debauched error as to render them outside the familial participation of Jesus Christ and indeed worshippers of ‘another Jesus’ altogether.  They espouse this without really considering the ramifications of what they are saying.  If these traditional veins are indeed disconnected from the one true Vine of the church, that would mean that the assembled family of God was absent from the earth for over a thousand years.  Taking it a step further in logical progression, it would be asserting that all of the voices informing our current understanding of the nature of God and His Church are irrelevant as why would we rely on those worshipping ‘another Jesus’ for guidance of any kind?!  So that would mean… The doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement which evangelica
Read more

Deconstructing Too Far

“Deconstruction”, when done correctly, is a refiner’s fire burning away that which is faulty or harmful, a gardener’s pruning cutting off those elements contributing to pain and death.  It should never consume the whole nor should it attempt to disconnect the branches from the vine.   While much needs removed, much warrants preservation.  Indeed, like pulling weeds from among the flowers, the purpose of subtracting the faulty is to enable the healthy multiplication of the pure.   A deconstruction process that burns the whole edifice to the ground isn’t healthy and it isn’t helpful.  It’s a form of mass suicide that, by inflicting the same fate on the wheat and the chaff alike, results in the same end as would have been obtained had we never deconstructed at all: misery and death.  (Note: I’m aware there are other, far better terms for the healthy form of ‘deconstruction’.  But I am equally aware that this is the word most commonly used and have adopted it above for the sake of clarity.
Read more

The God of the Illuminated Journey

Image
The God of the Illuminated Journey The faith we experience is not our own or somehow under our manipulative control, to expand or shrink based on our effort or will, but originates from the Source: Father, Son, and Spirit.  As that faith grows, changes, and matures, it remains HIS faith at work in-and-through us.  We cannot multiply it or enlarge its borders.  We cannot order its comings and goings as if it were our subject, obliged to obey our command.  We simply discover it a little bit more each day.   We have, through the fear and intimidation of fundamentalist evangelicalism, substituted the journey with a destination.  By centering the argument on the false dichotomies (or, stated more accurately, false dichotomies as evangelicalism understands and articulates them) of heaven vs hell, saved vs unsaved, right vs wrong, the sunrise has been forfeited for a light switch.  Rather than experience Father, Son, and Spirit through a gradual unveiling of wonder wherein His luminance grows
Read more