Oppression Comes in Many Forms. Jesus Defeated Them All!

Oppression comes in many forms but all can be divided into three main categories:

👉 Direct
👉 Indirect
👉 Self-Imposed

Direct is that textbook servitude wherein another person strips you of your basic human right to agency and self-directed choice.  Think slavery, wrongful imprisonment, and rape.

Indirect is more subtle, but no less an assault on agency, in that it gives the appearance of freedom but in actuality produces subjugation.  The chains are not literal, but institutional, metaphoric, or nuanced.  Think Jim Crow, manipulation, and psychological abuse.  

And then there is the oft-forgotten self-imposed variety.  This is the oppression which, ultimately, you impose on yourself.  Self-doubt, inferiority complex, limiting thinking; all are its diseased fruit.  

So why do I bring this up?  Because most of what the church has taught is exclusively centered on confronting direct slavery with only a cursory acknowledgement of the indirect.  The self-imposed is ignored entirely.  Worse yet, much of what the church does actually fosters its growth!  Emphasis on your inherent unworthiness, incompetence, disunion, separation, sinfulness, etc. all add proverbial fuel to the fire of this bondage inferno.  Living in a state of constant ‘do-to-earn’, the wondrous, vibrant experience of ‘faith’ is deconstructed to a performance-based, tormenting act of abuse.  Is it any wonder then that the victims of such systems invariably go on to become abusers themselves, and the cycle perpetuates.  

Enter the Trinitarian message of union and full reconciliation!  By accomplishing your redemption as a past tense event, the burden is no longer pursuing salvation, but awareness of what He already finished.  You are not in need of salvation from some future-tense demonic torture chamber, but deliverance from a mindset that says you are distant, disconnected, or anything less than a beloved child of Father.  It’s not about your performance, how fervently you pray, or how many church gatherings you attend.  This is works and has no place amongst a new covenant people.  The goal is to live life out of the rest that is already yours.  So long as we feed on works, we will experience frustration as so much of the promise seems just beyond our grasp - in some ways moving further away the harder we try to grasp it.  

The foundation of truth is knowing who God is and, just as important from a practical standpoint, knowing who you are as a result.  So before you DO anything, allow the Spirit to reveal who you ARE.  I pray that the answer is as astounding and joy-inducing for you as it has been for me! 

https://linktr.ee/drpandel 

#EveryChainBroken
#Grace
#Christology
#theology
#Trinitarian
#finishedwork



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