2021-08-24
a ppalling life: families and callings .. ("Come home. Dinner time!")
a ppalling life: families and callings .. ("Come home. Dinner time!"): Both apostolic & prophetic kinds of callings still require full living from a grateful cle/ar spirit - one which finds itself enamoured ...
2021-08-13
The Way one lives as an heir in God's world...
The Way One reigns/ rules/ leads/ exercises authority...
The big picture of REAL authority on God's Earth..
..Is that of loving adult parents raising a child from the one-cell stage (where nothing at all is yet known by the individual human cell, nothing of all human endeavours, knowledge, language, loves, pleasures, & appreciations), till the child is a healthy individual adult woman or man, who might be termed a "friend".
There are no guarantees. Only the possibilities of creative love, which might in fact be boundless. "Guarantees" may be the only things which hold them back.
Perceptions:
God's kind-a authority comes from the creative love, and the loving creativity that is expressed in God's authorship, as the creator of all that exists coming ultimately from no "thing" but (in Einstein's words) ultimately coming from "the mind of God". Not only responsible for authoring the existence of the material Universe, this God is also the author of life.
When I willingly come under God's kind-a authority, I can come to know it, in my bones ...( and then, as Abraham and Sarah found...
I am given (not in a contract, removed from me through the use of a distancing "third-object" like money, but, in a covenantal agreement, calling for "truth", " honour" & "reality", that is close up and personal, as with marriage) God's kind-a authority to lead/ rule/ reign, and bless others God connects me with, or "sends" me to… (all the rest of the world of humans)
Some Corollaries:
Proposition One: Authentic author-ity comes from authentic author-ship.
Proposition Two: Authentic (good quality, work that has integrity and consistency, & has not been plaguarized) authorship (& there is bad … authorship), is motivated by creative love, or loving creativity.
Proposition Three: Authorship & authority can be authentically delegated or shared.
Proposition Four: Authentically delegated or shared authority will involve authentic authorship that is respectful and honouring of its delegated or shared status.
Journeyman's notes:
The way previous generations in Christendom used the term "the kingdom of God", has often led people to a static, concrete, place centred view of the text within the greek writings of the early followers of Yeshua Bar Joseph, who record this term (or its equivalent, with it's Aramaic and Hebrew roots) as extensively used in the mouth of Jesus: "βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ" transliterated as 'basileia tou theou'.
⸂Καὶ μετὰ⸃ τὸ παραδοθῆναι τὸν Ἰωάννην ἦλθεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς εἰς τὴν Γαλιλαίαν κηρύσσων τὸ ⸀εὐαγγέλιον τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ λέγων ὅτι Πεπλήρωται ὁ καιρὸς καὶ ἤγγικεν ἡ βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ· μετανοεῖτε καὶ πιστεύετε ἐν τῷ εὐαγγελίῳ. ΚΑΤΑ ΜΑΡΚΟΝ 1:14-15 SBLG … The Common English Bible translates this as: "After John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee announcing God’s good news, saying, “Now is the time! Here comes God’s kingdom! Change your hearts and lives, and trust this good news!”" Mark 1:14-15 CEB
From the Encyclopaedia Britannica:“Though the phrase itself rarely occurs in pre-Christian Jewish literature, the idea of God as king was fundamental to Judaism, and Jewish ideas on the subject undoubtedly underlie, and to some extent determine, the New Testament usage. Behind the Greek word for kingdom (basileia) lies the Aramaic term malkut, which Jesus may have used. Malkut refers primarily not to a geographical area or realm nor to the people inhabiting the realm but, rather, to the activity of the king himself, his exercise of sovereign power. The idea might better be conveyed in English by an expression such as kingship, rule, or sovereignty.” https://www.britannica.com/topic/Kingdom-of-God (accessed 13.08.2021@6pmAEST)
Notes from N.T. Wright on the Kingdom of God.
Jesus’ world was filled with horrible Kings & their rules. https://youtu.be/rLiy-WlS9mA?t=2938
He is reclaiming the biblical notion of Kingdom from the psalms…
Often Truth is grasped more by the imagination (love, healings) than by arguments.
If God’s kingdom has been inaugurated, why are things not getting better? https://youtu.be/rLiy-WlS9mA?t=3124
There wasn’t any sort of public health care, or public education in the ancient world…
it was their lives that won over people to be Jesus’ followers.
Jesus often offers an interpretive phrase with his parables: "The 'basileia tou theou' is like…". This can now be understood, not as describing the realm of heaven, or even any specific "realm", so much as the type, or kind of "rule, or reign, or leadership of God", the "way that God rules or exercises his authority. ie. "God's authority over humans is like this…." a pearl merchant, a crop of wheat, a mustard seed, a lump of dough etc… This is an act of interpreting the announcement of the gospel that Mark gives us so pithily twice in chapter one.
Jesus (as recorded by Mark in ch10) makes a big deal about the way authority is used within his group, as distinct from the way it is used, or the kind of authority wielded by "the kings of this Earth")...
This, after two scuffles for prominence and leadership from his disciples.
This has the same function as the parables… their life together IS an enacted drama/parable.
In the NT writings, people are expected to have delved and seen this distinction for themselves. They are expected to have understood "another kingdom", another way of wielding and using authority, the way of Jesus, and the writers are often speaking, not of the powerful miracles and acts of Jesus, not even memorizing & quoting his wise words all the time, but noting the actual coming of, and now this new and living Way of being God's regent or the ambassador or model of this new and living way of wielding humanity's rightful authority on Earth. So we get exhortations like this:
"I, Paul, make a personal request to you with the gentleness and kindness of Christ… 2 Corinthians 10:1 CEB (the gentleness & kindness of Christ, is something they pulled out of the story that enfleshes what we call the gospel)
Paul speaking of "the most excellent Way" that makes all human power, knowledge, and insight, useless without it. (See 1 Cor 12:31 -14:26, 1 Cor 12:31-14:26;16:13-16)
When groups of Jesus followers around the Roman Empire started (like Jesus' early disciples before them, the apostles) vying for prominence, power and influence, putting others down, or puffing themselves up, the apostle Paul does not command with any force of compulsion, just the power of a life of love known for what it is.
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