Done With Church?
Are you done with church but not with Jesus?
Has church become less than civilised for your spirit as well as your soul?
Does the shepherd scatter the flock; do the sheep jostle each other?
Do your spiritual horizons still gaze to the everlasting Son, but no longer from a pew?
Too many have been injured by the Christian church and so are lost to it. They are appropriately called the dones - i.e. done with church as mans' structures.
Amidst these religiously disenfranchised continues a worldwide unshackling of God's people. Our Lord maintains His fresh work amongst these ones now lonely and His eyes remain washed in tears for these least and last now hidden/forgotten from critical Christian eyes.
Mans' self-perpetuating, indeed indulgent religious bondage is not a partner to a world created by He whose fabric is love. Nor should it be within the gaze of any Christian who seeks the true spiritual horizons.
The paradoxically liberating (law-freeing) bondage that Jesus offers is in being bound to Him. It is this pleasing service that He draws His own to. Once delightfully enslaved, a soul hog-tied by this maligned and murdered carpenter none will ever wish to flee. This is no mandated slavery to law, no human shackling to religious legalism, but a vital and willing marriage to love.
Go and learn what this means. I desire mercy, not sacrifice. For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners. (Matthew 9:13)
The school of divine bondage is constantly deepening, it is marvellously unrelenting, and it is not taught in man-made classrooms and only lightly from many pulpits.
The joy of being bound to Jesus is discovered upon the worn carpet of solitary kneeling; here the Lord is met, learned and leaned upon. It is where no panacea of man is ever required.
To those who have bent the knee in one of God's favorite and most effective hiding places - humility*, the laws of religion and the duties of ritual will never matter again. These humble knee-benders are at firm worship, knowing true devotion is far more helpful than false performance.
It was LOVE not LAW that was nailed to the cross.
*This quote excerpt in italics was penned by Richard Rohr
Today's Soul Snippet:
Ritual masks as relationship and blesses sinfulness.
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