Leading with Love for a Healed World

In just a few days, the nation will cast their votes in an election that, as many others before it, has been declared the most significant in history. It will dramatically change our lives either for better or worse, they say. The truth is that it won’t. Everything will pretty much stay the same. The rhetoric filling our media outlets is a sign of a deeply troubled nation in profound conflict with itself.

Clearly, something has gone wrong and everyone is ignoring the obvious solution given to us by Jesus now thousands of years ago. The world in his time was just as divided as it is today. Clearly, the “solution,” physical or verbal violence, has been ineffective. So-called non-violent protests have not fared much better, often only contributing to raising the volume of the verbal abuse.

Jesus’ solution is love. The birth of Jesus was “good news that will cause great joy for all the people”, the beloved Christmas story declares in Luke 2:10. Later, Jesus himself provides the details about how: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments” (Matthew 22:37-40). Clearly love occupies a central place in his teaching. The intentions behind the Law of Moses were nothing but good and valuable, but it fell short in the hands of flawed and selfish people as frequently pointed out by the prophets. Love is what fixes it.

So how exactly are we to do that? Loving one another means to be a blessing to everyone else at all times. Our very purpose for being is to enhance the lives of others. When enough people begin to do that, the suffering in the world will begin to go down. As more and more people experience abundant life replacing suffering the more people will see that love is the Way. Plant a mustard seed (Matthew 13:31).

However, individually we can do very little. Together we can accomplish anything. That is what Matthew 19:26 means: “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” The early church illustrated this perfectly with their example: “All the believers were one in heart and mind” (Acts 4:32). Yes, go ahead. Make that donation to your favorite charity, but realize that what is really needed is a radical transformation in the way we treat and relate to one another.

Christian Economics

 

The study of human nature involves a fascinating journey into several complex scientific disciplines. Curiosity is the driving force behind this desire to understand ourselves and the world around us. Most of us have some of it and a few have it in abundance.

In Acts 2:32-35, Luke describes the economics of the early church. 

The first thing he points out is that the believers “were of one heart and soul.” There was no division among them. They were all pulling in the same direction, loving God and loving one another.

The second thing he points out is that “no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own,” Nothing triggered their survival instinct that there might not be enough for everyone. They trusted the community to provide. They trusted God, we would say. There was no reason for anyone to hoard anything, so “they had everything in common.”

The third thing he points out is that “[T]here was not a needy person among them.” Those who had something trusted that everyone would be taken care of “as any had need.”

Possessions tend to separate us into those who have and those who do not. In Christian economics, no one is left out, no one is in need. How is this possible? Aren’t the leaders going to keep it all for themselves? No, not if we are all of one heart and soul and believe that the Earth has enough resources that everyone can be taken care of as they have need. 

The story about the rich young ruler in Mark 10:17-27 illustrates this perfectly. Possessions are what keeps us out of Heaven. Possessions are what keeps us all from enjoying abundant life. It is not enough to tax the rich. We must all agree to quit hoarding things and trust that there is enough for everyone.

The Future For Us

 

We have spent some time now in this space debunking some of the myths promoted by the church for centuries:

The Bible is not the word of God. It has been written by a number of writers, some of whom are still unknown. None of their original writings exist anymore. All we have are copies of copies of copies with or without accidental and deliberate errors.

God is not a supernatural being outside the universe who created it and everything in it and who controls everything going on even today. God is the product of these ancient writers’ collective imagination. Humans are story-telling people. The Bible is their stories.

Jesus is not God. He was a man, a Jew with a new and revolutionary interpretation of the ancient writings. He did not die for our sins. He did not come back from the dead and he is not going to come back again.  There were no shepherds, angels or wise men. There were poor people, though. His birth was good news for them. People with power and wealth, on the other hand, felt threatened by his many followers and had him killed. 

There was no actual resurrection. People do not come back from the dead. Some do tend to live on in the memories of the people they encountered in life. Sometimes their impact is felt well beyond their physical presence. Jesus was such a man. We’re still talking about him today. Some try their best to follow his teachings, but he is not going to come back. The hope we have is that if enough of us were to follow his teaching a real manifestation of the Kingdom of God, the Garden of Eden, will be restored.

There are no miracles. Mary was not a virgin, but a woman who had a child outside of wedlock just like some women today. Miracles do not make the blind see and the lame walk. Proper healthcare does.

Does that mean we are no longer Christians - unbelievers? Lots of people still cling to these old teachings that are no longer relevant. For them, we are heathens and heretics. We may even deserve nothing but hellfire. There may still even be some learned pastors who believe it, but some don’t. They may have believed it once, but no longer. Yet, they continue to teach it. After all, they need the job. One church found it necessary to write “must believe in God” in its job post for a new pastor. Clearly, personal belief in the old concept of God is no longer a given among pastors. 

We are the true believers. In a sense, we have to go back to his original teachings in order to go forward.

Non-violence

 Try to turn on any news channel any day. You might hear about rain or drought, natural disasters and incredible acts of kindness, but you’re also likely to hear about conflict. Politicians may be squabbling over this issue or that issue; anything between civil debate to hurling insults. Individuals and nations may be at war with one another, each of them doing their very best to inflict maximum injury on the other. 

The ancient writers recognized the dual nature of good and evil in us humans. Modern scientists have identified our most basic response to danger, real or perceived, as “fight-or-flight.” Some people tend to be more on the confrontational side of the spectrum. Most, however, tend to respond with avoidance. These two responses tend to result in either injury or lingering resentment. A third way is the restoration of the relationship to the state it was in before it was broken.

When Jesus says to turn the other cheek in Matthew 5:39, he doesn’t mean to run away. What he demonstrates is an active non-violent response, not just passive non-resistance. The act of turning the other cheek implies an invitation to resolve the conflict; to restore the relationship. 

Responding with violence is almost certain to result in harm to at least one and more likely to both. Remaining on the scene ready to engage in conflict resolution is not without risk either. It takes a lot of courage to not only resist the temptation to retaliate, but also to accept the possibility that the attacker might actually slap you again.

Humans have been blessed with a brain more capable of overriding basic instincts than any other in the animal kingdom. With few exceptions, we have all experienced regrets. We have all done or said things we shouldn’t have and immediately regretted it. We know it is going to happen again. The trick is to learn to recognize the triggers, the situations where this is likely to happen so we can prepare to intervene in our automatic responses.

The trouble is that our culture keeps telling us the opposite. We are constantly encouraged to be the first, strongest, fastest, richest, always in competition with one another even though we know that we can accomplish so much more together than we can individually.

Salvation

The idea that Jesus somehow took all our sins upon himself as a sacrificial lamb so that we can have eternal life in Heaven continues to persist to this day. But was that really the message of Jesus?

What Jesus really did was show us a way to live in peace and harmony with one another, God’s plan for us. The Hebrew word for peace is Shalom. It does mean the absence of conflict in our relationships with each other, but it also means health, justice and contentment or prosperity, abundant life. Prosperity here does not mean the excesses of the rich and powerful glorified so much in contemporary literature, but having enough. If all the riches of the world were distributed equally, everyone would have what they need with some to spare, some to give to those who don’t. That is what abundant life means.

Salvation is the realization that the Way of Jesus is the way to Shalom, the way to wholeness or completeness. Faith alone is not enough. It must be followed by action. You may have heard the expression:

Love is an action verb.

The first step to Shalom is to Believe, believe that Jesus is the Way and then actually go his way.

Repentance

The world is going to smash and the only way to stop it is to do a 180 degree turnaround; to completely change the way we think about the world and our role in it; our relationships with God and other people. Jesus illustrates this by saying that we have to become like little children again. Yes, even be born again so to speak.

Atonement for Sins

 

Unlike some other well-known concepts, the concept of Atonement for sins is in fact found in the Bible. It says things like:

For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.

While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

He died for us so that, whether we are awake or asleep, we may live together with him.

All of these references to dying or sacrifice can be found in letters attributed to Paul. Paul’s letters were written during the first few decades following the crucifixion of Jesus. They are widely considered to be among the first New Testament texts and the concept of Atonement for sins has been part of church doctrine for hundreds of years since then.

Paul’s authority to speak on Jesus’ behalf has been questioned by both modern scholars as well as opponents in his own time. Paul’s connections with the Jewish community and meeting with the apostles in Jerusalem undoubtedly helped boost his standing as did his undeniably successful effort to spread Christianity to the entire region. When Paul spoke, people generally listened. But was he right?

Many decades later, John writes that 

God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son

I don’t see anything about Jesus as a sacrifice for our sins in that statement. What I see is Jesus as a light in a world full of darkness. He is our only hope for a world without suffering.

It is true that Jesus did die a gruesome death, but it did nothing to restore the Garden God had created and we had destroyed. What it did do is shine a spotlight on what had caused this tragedy, namely human hunger for wealth and power. Jesus knew what had to be done to fix it, to love God and to love one another, so for the rich and powerful to maintain power, he had to be eliminated. They chose to do it the worst possible way guaranteeing enmity and suffering to continue to be in our lives.

Jesus did not come to be sacrificed for our sins. He came to save us from ourselves.