Brian McLaren - excellent!

This is an excerpt from an article, a blog entry perhaps, on beliefnet.com by Brian McLaren. It's SO GOOD.

"Our interpretations reveal less about God or the Bible than they do about ourselves. They reveal what we want to defend, what we want to attack, what we want to ignore, what we're unwilling to question.
When Judgment Day comes, God might ask a lot of us how we interpreted the Bible-not to judge if our interpretations are right or wrong but to let our interpretations reveal our hearts. That will be telling enough."

Wow.

Sabbath, signs, Marks, implants

A few minutes ago, i read an article that i appreciated and was glad to find. Besides not being all that sure of how literally one should take certain spiritual things, i'm never quite sure of my conclusions. Sometimes they're not even conclusions, merely considerations, theories, possibilities. When i wrote about the sabbath being the sign, it was simply out of frustration. Things have happened that make me feel a little better about not working yet, things like i needed to keep my grandbabies while their mother had surgery - if i had been working, i couldn't have kept them. Then there's the fact that grandbaby number three is due in less than two weeks! Perhaps with tax return money, i can make the trip out to see him! If I had a job, i couldn't go. Plus I need to go be with my son while he deals with a trauma this sorry world has struck him over the head with. PLUS...well, yes, there are a couple of other things as well.
Anyway, the article pointed out that this "mark of the beast" is supposed to be in the hand OR in the forehead, not both. If it's an idea that one performs, that would be both, the mental keeping would be the forehead, the physical performance would be the hand. Not that i agree totally but at least there may be something to that. Maybe next i'll just join the mild hysteria going around in some groups about using one's thumbprint to buy things, or the ID chip that is supposedly soon to be implanted. Okay, that hysteria i can gladly join in with, i detest the thought of being branded, marked, CHIPPED like an animal to be kept track of by my "owner" - the government?!

Sabbath the Sign?

I'm starting to believe those people who claim the sabbath is the sign of YHWH, and that the people who keep no day or Sunday or maybe Friday have accepted the mark of the beast! Why? Because apparently no one in this country can get a job anymore without working on Saturday. At least, I don't seem to be able to. Even when i go to what i expect are Mon-Fri places, they add at the end of the interview, "And of course, you'll have to work an occasional Saturday, but that's no problem for you, is it?"
Well, YES! That's the whole reason i respond to ads that require availability Monday through Friday!

This certainly IS affecting my ability to "buy and sell", it DOES feel like a persecution, it IS a test of my faith in the Father to provide... I keep worrying that i'm really not supposed to follow what scripture says, that i should do the easy thing and choose my own day for a sabbath or not bother with one at all. Except that i really don't believe it's my right to do such a thing. But neither do I believe living off of someone else is His 'provision'. Something needs to happen.

Study on The Covenants

Lately I've been really, really wondering about the place Torah has in our lives. Jews say follow it, Christians say don't follow it. I'm not Jewish but the mainstream Christian belief that keeping God's law makes you sinful and on your way to "hell" is absurd! I understand where they get the idea, I always considered myself one of them, but it doesn't take much study to see that there's WAY more to the story than "Jesus fulfilled everything so now we do nothing. As a matter of fact, if you do anything, you're evil and sinful."
Anyway, all the study led me to studying covenants, something i don't know much about in my normal American life. I only knew of the two, the Old Testament (Covenant) and the New Testament (Covenant). I didn't even know there was a dispute about "Old" and "New"! I found this site that's helping:

MESSIAH REVEALED - a BraveNet.com hosted site by a guy named Jeremy Springfield

This site has a 4 part study on The 7 Covenants in scripture that's been helpful. It seems to involve a bit of reaching for some of his points and references to Hebrew number values that i'm not real sure of. BUT that's okay, the overall information is easy enough to check out. I tried looking up some words in Strong's Concordance, some things i was able to verify, some I wasn't. But don't take that as him being wrong necessarily, you have to know what you're doing and i often don't!

I printed out the four parts of the study after editing it down to make it more feasible to use that much ink and paper. Sitting at the computer the whole time to read it doesn't work for me, I need to get up and move. I don't think these studies from his site are available in print, i'll have to check. But I'm about halfway through again (I had to sit and read a lot to edit it, but i want to have the pages available to take to the library with me, to reread while i wait places, things like that.) After I've read the study thoroughly, i want to read through the Bible again and see if it all pans out, makes sense of things that haven't before. Every little bit helps.

By the way, this study finally gave me a point of view on the whole idea of circumcision. That always seemed so bizarre, WHO came up with that idea?! I haven't studied the actual history of the practice, so i don't know if it started with Abraham, i need to check. But this guy's study actually showed something that made serious sense!

What Exactly IS He?

I'm not sure I believe God is a person kind of being. Even His name - YHWH - which is supposed to mean I AM. That brings to mind more of a force, the whole underlying existence of everything.

But if He's a force of good, a force of love, how could He have any influence in our lives? For the most part, it seems that God is involved only if we ask Him to be; an impersonal force that we always have available to plug into. If so, there is no overall plan per se. It would be more that we can fit into another dimension of life; if things are different, that's just how it works 'there'. Positive thinking works in this scenario, the Bible 'advises' positive thinking but not based on ourselves or fate; instead based on knowing God has a plan He's working out. That's how our lives and bodies work best - concentrating on what is noble, good, just, and true. This doesn't say or prove anything about God's nature because if it's all physically natural, why is it?

Clean and unclean

Clean and unclean - was being unclean considered a sin? Or merely a temporary state that required rectification? Yahshua (Jesus) did things that rendered himself unclean when it was necessary to help someone or to make a point. Did this just show that being willing to be made unclean was acceptable when the situation demanded it? What was the result? Anyone unclean was not allowed to serve in the temple until they were clean again. From a health standpoint, that makes good sense, i hope people now with contagious diseases or something unhealthy stay away from public meetings.

I've thought that the whole deal with YHWH requiring the Israelites to use running water and standards of cleanliness was a way to protect 'primitive' people with no understanding of germs. But when was it noticed that contagion existed? And the earliest civilizations had indoor plumbing - do we just assume this was merely for convenience? Or did they know more than we think?

Lazy Idolatry!

Okay, this was GREAT! At least, i think so. In a discussion on why we shouldn't put up christmas trees, some people refer to Jeremiah 10:3-5. In a cursory reading, one would think these verses specifically prohibit exactly that; reading just a bit more shows that isn't the subject after all. The prohibition is on making idols. Then someone threw in a comment that was hilarious! He said:

...having a Christmas tree is something akin to "Lazy Idolatry"! It's like, "Let's don't bother with all the intensive labor in making this thing look like a deity, let's just decorate it and get it over with!"