Systematic Theology is an oxymoron. God is not a system. God is Spirit!
“God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.” John 4:24 KJV
The citizenship of the Kingdom of God is composed of lovers. The citizenship of earthly kingdoms, and the prostitute with whom they keep company, “Babylon the Great, mother of Harlots,” is made up of merchants of one kind or another, but all with an agenda of getting.
These merchants range from those who sit in the market place crying out “We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not mourn,” Matthew 11:17, NIV
To: “The merchants of the earth will weep and mourn over her because no one buys their cargoes any more—(cargoes including the ) … the bodies and souls of men.” Revelation 18:11a, 13b.
Slave traders buy and sell the bodies of men, but who can buy and sell the souls of men?
Religious merchants. These merchants include the kings of this earth:
“When the kings of the earth who committed adultery with her and shared her luxury see the smoke of her burning, they will weep and mourn over her. Terrified at her torment, they will stand far off and cry:
‘Woe! Woe, O great city, O Babylon, city of power! In one hour your doom has come.” Revelation 18:9,10.
Kings commit the same adultery as the merchants, but their interests are not quite the same, the kings want pure power, and the merchants want purchasing power, the power of money. All the jewelry of Babylon – the gold, silver and precious jewels are displays of this power. In the case of kings, and those in authority, this power may in the first instance be preeminence. “I wrote unto the church: but Diotrephes, who loveth to have the preeminence among them, receiveth us not. Wherefore, if I come, I will remember his deeds which he doeth, prating against us with malicious words: and not content therewith, neither doth he himself receive the brethren, and forbiddeth them that would, and casteth them out of the church.” 3rd John 9, 10, KJV
There is a leadership – a kingship of sorts that is in a position to buy and sell the souls of men. This is religious leadership. Beware!
Love!
P.S. Please don’t speak to me of Catholic indulgences, by now there have been far too many Protestant indulgences to justify such a narrow understanding.
Loving Like God 
What most impressed me about Jay was his ability to see the problem and not shrink from it , not fall back into the deep sleep of traditional religion. This post is the core of Jay’s teaching. He saw so clearly that all human relationships were based on agreements of exchange. Most of them as so subtle we’re hardly aware of what we’re doing. We all negotiate, trade this for that, trying to get what we feel we need, what we sense is missing. It all comes down to authority, claiming one’s own authority, the Christ within. Authority comes from the root “author” or “originator.” It took me a while to realize that the “authority” I was looking could only come from inside me, and only after I was able to break free from some of my mental conditioning, and the expectations of the culture I’d been born into. Jay and I had a different understanding of the “Christ within,” but I deeply respect where he was coming from. He helped me to wake up. It was Jay who rescued me from my illusions of “marriage” and pointed me towards another horizon. Where there’s a contract there’s no love, is what he said. And yet in this reality, “marriage” is the best game there is so long as it’s Christ centered. What he was saying was absolutely accurate so long as “Christ centered” didn’t fall into a doctrine of human belief.
Jay took this idea of prostitution as far as he could. It was a great contribution. I’m still in Genesis trying to understand what really led to the expulsion from the Garden. Clearly, it had to do with a breakdown in the male-female relationship and a deep distrust. The man and the woman left the Garden together and “together” they must return. No one reaches wholeness alone…..and none of us reach wholeness when we are consuming one another….trying to fulfil a “need.”
Thank you Jay for your tenacity….and for not covering the “prostitution” up. The first step is always to come out of denial.