End times, consciousness, communal faith, marriage, freedom, death, and Jesus' ways :

Replies to readers

ver.: 21 February 2008

Take a look at these letters from people who are asking spiritual questions :

• freedom that comes from the good news
• did Jesus die a real death?
• are the end times coming now?
• near-death experiences
• what is consciousness?
• our first forebears and marriage
• Jesus : a disarming man
• for one or for all?
• There's more to check out, on letters pages one, two, three, five, eight, ten, or eleven.
• Or go back to the letters index.

>You wrote that "Experiences that are not found in Scripture can be Christian,
>so long as they adhere to the gospel as
>found in Scripture, and to Paul's concerns for order, and can be tested
>by all the means of discernment at our disposal." Where does Scripture say this?

Some people say, "if it's not in Scripture, it's not Christian". That would be to miss the whole point of Scripture. Scripture was not meant to be the bare limit of what we can do in the faith. If it were, we couldn't worship the way we do, we couldn't be organized in congregations (as we know them) or denominations, we'd have to dump most hymns, and we certainly couldn't use the Internet. Our work, play, art, political systems, music recordings, and "nuclear family" (a modern construct) wouldn't be able to be put to use for God. The truth is, Scripture simply doesn't cover such things, and isn't meant to. Scripture is there to teach you about Christ and what it means to follow him. Scripture shows you the way God works so you know it when you see it, or when you live in it.

Paul speaks of Christian freedom, that we are not saved by following Law (Romans 8). All is permitted in Christ, but not all is good or right (1 Cor 6). Scripture teaches you what good and right are, what evil and wrong are, what the fruit are, what the commands are. New things are happening all the time. God gave us ways to help sort out these new things --- ways to discern how and where the Spirit is leading us. We have to test our experiences (as 1 Thess 5:19-22 calls us to do with all matters) : how does it reflect the gospel or the love of Christ, how does it help us become Christlike, how is God's will for the human race, or for you, furthered by this? If your experiences, or anything else, fall in line with the Gospel, and has the character of what Scripture teaches as the Spirit's fruit, God is at work in it.
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Found in a church bulletin:

Weight Watchers will meet at 7 PM at the First Presbyterian Church. Please use the large double door at the side entrance.

Spiritually Dead ?

> Does the Bible teach that Jesus died spiritually as well as physically?<

Since I don't know what you meant here by 'spiritually', I can't say.

The Scriptural witness is that he died. This means nothing that is essentially different from what it means for the rest of us. That was the point of his dying. If it were essentially different, it wouldn't have accomplished its task. Scripture makes this point clear in the episode with Thomas after the resurrection. Scripture doesn't stick an adjective in front of Jesus' death : it's just death. Whatever that is, his was.

It gets worse : we have to take seriously that God was being ripped apart when that happened, that Jesus was doing a lot more than reciting a psalm when he said, "My God, my God, why have You forsaken me??" Jesus was actually living (or dying) it : abandonment from the Father.

I myself suspect that the person of God which we call 'the Holy Spirit' may have made the resurrection possible -- for the Holy Spirit, no severed connection cannot be reconnected, not even that of death. But that's only a wild guess at the inner workings of God, and is nothing more. What we are told by Scripture is that Jesus didn't stay dead, and neither will those who believe in Him. That is no guess; that is what counts.
more on death
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Near-Death

[[After some extensive, somewhat personal stuff on near-death experiences and doubts about how real they are......]]
<<Why would God trick people like this? Any thoughts?>>

No tricking is involved. The near-death experince is not something that the mind deals well with. It has no frame of reference for it. It will try to interpret what is happening by way of images, ideas, and things that it is familiar with (even images and ideas they don't themselves believe at that point -- again, your intelligence is grasping for anything it can draw on). If someone describes light or a tunnel or a voice or a hand, they are interpreting the uninterpretable by way of the known. We do the same thing when we speak of God's hands or face. (Also, this means that all that publicity about near-death has had an effect on the imagery. It has made us all familiar with what it's 'supposed to' be like, and thus those images are at hand when we grasp for an image.)
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Transcendence

<< How might you define the following words, and could they be of usefulness in helping us to understand the three Persons of the Trinity: (a) transcendence; (b) immanence ...... >>

Transcendence is the quality of being beyond; immanence is the quality of being within. God is outside us, beyond us, with us, and within us.

<< Besides the five physical senses, would you consider being aware of our thoughts another sense; and would you consider being aware of our feelings yet another sense? If not, what would you call these awarenesses? >>

This awareness is usually called 'consciousness'. Our awareness of our thoughts and feelings, and our ability to act on the basis of this awareness, are among the things that most separates us from other creatures, and is a mark of the image of God in us.
more on the inner voice
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Gender

<< In answer to a question, Jesus said in the New Testament that in Heaven, men and women are not given to each other in marriage. Given that, then to what extent is gender a part of our personality, persona, or mask?>>

Our bodies are not a mask; they are a full-fledged part of our being. Gender is a full-fledged part of the body. It's just that marriage, gender, the body, and sex (and the Eucharist, and baptism, and spiritual gifts, and everything else in our lives) are provisional. They exist for the sake of living a Godly life in this world. When this world passes, they're no longer needed as we know them today, they entirely pass away, or are transformed into something else that is the full form of what we in this world have only in part. (I suspect that sex, music, and Holy Communion are examples of the latter.)

<< Was Eve present within Adam without his awareness? Is this why Adam was lonely?>>

Loneliness comes from emptiness caused by an absence. Emptiness implies that something can fill it. This inner emptiness is like death, so God made someone to fill it : Life (Heb. chavvah, transliterated as 'Eve').

<< Could Adam and Eve have avoided original sin by asking God for a taste of the fruit, instead of eating it without permission first? Was the sin in the eating, or in the taking without permission? If God had still said no, would it have been proper for Adam and Eve to ask God when they might do so in the future?>>

Coulda woulda shoulda. Humans aren't the kind to ask 'May I?'
more on single life
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Jesus : A Disarming Man

> Colossians 2:15 :
> "And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public
> spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross. "

> what I dont get is how do you fight against a disarmed person. If
> someone has no weapon and I have a sword i'm gonna kill them very easily.

Jesus 'disarmed' those in power by making it clear that they couldn't stop Him. They did the worst they could do, they did kill Him rather easily, but He used that to do what He needed to do. So none of their weapons had any power -- effectively, it was as if they had no weapons. Jesus isn't out to kill the powers He disarmed, nor the people who wielded those powers. He's out to redeem and rescue them. That, too, is the approach Christians are given to use.
more on Christians and the society we live in
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