Day 140b: How unlike an Infant … (September 16, 2019)
Jesus himself made it quite clear in the Gospels that only those of us who chose to “become like infant children will ever enter the Kingdom of Heaven”; that only those of us who chose to “become as humble as an infant child” would be known as “the greatest in the Kingdom.” (Matthew 18:3-4) And yet here, once again, I came across yet another Christian church that was tossing aside the far gentler Way of Jesus in favor of the harsher edicts of Paul. Here, once again, I crossed paths with a church that was placing the very same “stumbling blocks” of condemnatory hubris in the path of its members that Jesus himself had so earnestly warned against. Indeed, Jesus himself repeatedly warned against strictly adhering to the words of “the Bible alone”* – admonishing others to humbly follow his far more loving Way instead …
“But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees; you hypocrites! For you lock people out of the Kingdom of Heaven. You refuse to enter yourselves, and when others are trying to enter you stop them.” ~ Jesus Christ (Matthew 23:13)
*All fundamentalist “every word of the Bible is true” Christians would do well indeed to wonder: Would Jesus really affirm the genocides expressed in Genesis 7:23 & Deuteronomy 7:1-2 & Joshua 10:40? NO, of course he wouldn’t! (“Blessed are the peacemakers.” ~ Matthew 5:9). And would Jesus really champion the infanticide we see in Exodus 12:39-40? NO, of course he wouldn’t! (“Let the little children come to me, for it is only to such as these that the Kingdom of Heaven belongs.” ~ Matthew 19:14). And would Jesus really encourage the mass murder of innocent men & women, merely because they happen to worship a different god, a la the edicts offered by Deuteronomy 13:13-16? NO, he most certainly wouldn’t! (“Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; and to him ALL of them are alive.” ~ Luke 20:38). And how about the ethnic cleansing mentioned in Jeremiah 50:21-22, or the sex trafficking noted in Deuteronomy 21:10-14 & Judges 1:12-13, or the extortion lauded in Revelation 20:15, or the human slavery accepted in Exodus 2:7 & Ephesians 6:5-9? Would any enlightened being (much less the one & only Son of the one & only God) ever condone such vile wickedness? Of course he wouldn’t! And how about the Old Testament’s repeated encouragement of the heinous treatment of God’s most innocent creatures, the animals (see Genesis 9:2 & Leviticus 11:1-47 et al) or its denigrating treatment of women as third-class citizens (see 1 Timothy 2:12 & 1 Corinthians 14:34-35) or its acceptance of rape as a valid response to certain situations (see Deuteronomy 22:28-29 & Judges 21:10-24) or its justification of the mass murder of innocent children (see Exodus 12:29-30 & Numbers 31:17-18)? Can any Christian in their right moral mind ever say that Jesus would ever be in favor of even the slightest vestige of the same? NO, of course he wouldn’t … And yet you still stand there and proudly claim the follow & adhere to “every word of the Bible”?!? Seriously?
“When Christians concentrate their time and energy on their own separate spheres and their own institutions – whether all-absorbing megachurches, Christian yellow-page businesses, or womb-to-tomb Christian cultural ghettos – they lose the outward thrusting, transforming power that is at the very heart of the Jesus’ Gospel. Instead of being cleansing ‘salt’ or warming ‘light’ – images of a selflessness that is permeating and penetrating action – Christians and Christian institutions instead become soft and vulnerable to corruption from within. This is what allows Christians to in effect abandon their own Lord & Savior; this is what makes the Christian church a haven for modern-day Pharisees.” ~ inspired by Os Guinness
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