Relationship

Posted on February 18, 2012 by LovingLikeGod.com

RelationshipsMy understanding of relationship is first the relationship of male and female. It is couched in what seems to be sexual or gender terms, but those two words go way beyond or much deeper than simply gender connection, they are like the math symbols for the unity of the Godhead which they image. As such, they are rather generic, with broad application where connectedness is concerned.

Not too long after the removal of the female portion or side of the equation, we get the man “woman” connection, and that leads to parent children connection, and that leads to sibling connection, and those are the relational facts of life. Life does not come in the form of or reproduce as undifferentiated brotherhood. That may be relational on some level, but it was never intended to produce or reproduce life. For that you need the family package.

Jesus didn’t promise us “100 times” brotherhood, He promised us a 100 times family – Mark 10:29-30, but He made it conditional on a relational priority change. The Lord didn’t give Abraham a sibling. He gave Him a son – a son containing a SEED. Without relationship with a woman, that has no place to go unless of course you are sexually confused, and then we know it goes to a place that doesn’t produce life, but only old waste.

Why is it so difficult to grasp that this created, and reproducible life in the flesh is a parable of reproducible life in the Spirit?

My impression is that the flesh is so wounded early on due to the parental, or familial dysfunction of the flesh that it can’t manage to get that wounding to the cross where it is redeemed and changed into new life, “Except you come as a little child…  (that for me means you come prior to the knowledge of good and evil which is the result of early woundedness) you shall not enter the kingdom of God.” Relationally wounded people are incapable of healthy relationships. They can only manage wounded codependencies. As long as we continue in not allowing The Lord to have His way with us, we remain in that unspiritual place. It’s not pretty. :-/ More often than not it remains fixated on gender specific body parts, and so can’t make it to Spiritual relationship without the very strong possibility of moral failure. This was a big problem at Corinth.

The oneness that Jesus prayed and died for is just not possible unless and until we allow the lord to put us together in and by the Spirit, In short, we need to get beyond the shadow images of gender specific flesh. Does the Lord put brothers and sisters together gender specific, as well as gender neutral? Of course He does, but it needs to happen in and by the Spirit, and not by the doctrinal bondage of some kind of “new testament law” or relational buzz words, used to bolster the latest cutting edge dog and pony shows. That is an oxymoron! Law is simply the “leaves” we continue to hide behind. It is the foundation stone of the relational bondage of systematic religion.

“For this reason I kneel before the Father, 15 from whom every family[a] (or fatherhood[1]) in heaven and on earth derives its name,” (Ephesians 3:14, 15).

The Father is looking for hoods, and that’s us. The same goes for all the other hoods, but we must never lose sight of the fact that He is the Father under the hood… What’s under your hood? :-)

What’s under the hood includes “El Shaddai – “the Breasted One” is also under the hood, I’m not sure how He/She does that, all I can think of right at the moment is the answer of a Father to his son’s query: “Dad, how come men have nipples?” And the really anointed answer: “Just in case we need them.” Paul did, and so do we on occasion.

Well that took me to another fact of life, the one that makes sense out of “the first commandment with promise.” Parents get to do life a generation ahead of their children, that positions them with life’s truth the children need if they are not going to make the same mistakes their parents made. Seems to me they are still left with plenty of mistakes to make of their own.

The thing that makes this promise keepable are children, who recognize, and honor the wisdom of their parents, and pay attention to it. Siblings give each other a lot of really bad information. It’s perhaps just as bad as what children are getting from the media in our increasingly debauched culture. Sad to say this is true with the undifferentiated brotherhood doctrine that is presently running away with what’s left of “the house church movement.”

Perhaps this is as good a place as any to mention that “every fatherhood in heaven and on earth,” includes grandfatherhood. It is this season of life that the lessons of fatherhood have been tried and tested, qualifying grandfatherhood for the role as elders or overseers. Over seers need to be willing, 1 Peter 5:2. For some years now, my understanding of this willingness is the willingness to stop being over doers. It is very difficult to keep your eye on things if you are still caught up in the overdoing season of life. That’s the fathering season – the hands on season. The age of elders under the shadow Covenant gives us a clue into the the season of life of overseers or elders – 50 plus, (Numbers 4:3-47), those under that age are the doers. Fifty is kind of old for fathering, but just about right for grandfathering – eldering – overseeing. :-)

Love!

[1] The Greek for family (patria) is derived from the Greek for father (pater)

Posted in J.Ferris: Top Posts | 4 Comments

PROGNOSIS – Getting at the TRUTH

Posted on February 15, 2012 by LovingLikeGod.com

The next place I need to go in agenda related problems is the discussion of what I have been discovering from the inside of the conflict between orthodox medicine and alternative medicine.

By way of introduction I need to say that I am very struck by the parallel between the present state of medical practice and the historical time just before the beginning of the Reformation when the Catholic “Church” was reigning.

I’m reminded in the moment of that wonderful line from Monte Python, “No body expects the Spanish Inquisition.”

Since those days something that looks and behaves very much like metastatic cancer, (that’s what they say I have) has been running rampant. Just a few could run for Pope in Catholicism of that day. Sad to say a permanent side effect, (I have those too) of the reformation has been way too many running for pope in Protestantism – even evangelical Protestantism -even cutting edge evangelical Protestantism. As someone who is presently enjoying stage IV, incurable/ terminal metastatic colorectal cancer, it looks to me like this metastatic religious professionalism is also incurable and terminal.

As I may have already mentioned in prior posts, (the one that spoke of “Jesus having the best view on the hill the day He was crucified” comes to mind here) the ability to see things most often depends on where we are standing. I find myself standing in a new place, and seeing things from here that I had not seen before, at least not with this much clarity.

Perhaps enough said by now as introduction. Let’s just wade on in! :-)

I had seen the conflict in agendas between those inside the camp of orthodox religion and those outside the camp. (Aren’t you glad they don’t allow stoning or burning at the stake anymore, at least not in this country.)

What I had not seen with this much clarity before my present involvement is the parallel to this systematic religious problem in the arena of organized medicine.

At my age over the years I have had a lot of exposure to alternative cancer treatments – even helped love ones participate in some of them, and not without some good results. Along with that experience I also got to see the rift between the “alternative” people and the “orthodox” people.

The “orthodox” medical practitioners, and protectors do everything possible to muzzle and or run the “alternative” practitioners out of the country. It’s kind of interesting – in the past few days it has become clear that But for one man, and his alternative treatment here in the United, Germany seems to be the most advanced in cutting edge cancer treatment.

The Man I speak of here could be understood or appreciated as the Martin Luther of a present day medical reformation. His name is Stanislaw R. Burzynski.

I could be wrong, and I intend to find out. One way or another, if you have not heard of him yet, I think you will in the very near future. Looks like his approach to treating cancer may be going “viral” in spite of everything the big pharmaceuticals, orthodox practitioners, including the FDA, (mostly owned and controlled by the big pharmaceuticals) and Government health insurance have thrown at him. He appears to be getting results multiple times more successful than the chemo/“orthodox” practitioners.

In one interview Dr. Burzynski said that since coming to the United States he has experienced more persecution at the hand of the U.S. medical system than he did as an anti-communist in the Communist Poland he had left. So much for “the land of the free, and the home of the brave,” where big medicine is concerned.

Chemo is cancer poison – poison that doesn’t always discriminate very well between the bad guys and the good guys? That also can be seen in what has been calling itself  “church.”

As in the “church” business, so it is with the cancer business, it’s not so easy to tell the good guys from the bad guys, because MONEY – BIG MONEY plays a big role, they all – both orthodox, and alternative, seem to have greater or lesser financial agendas, and short of that the Diotrephes syndrome – the love of pre-eminence – (3rd John 9 Please notice what becomes of the true believers – 3rd John 10 – actually 4th John, Diotrephes commandeered 3rd John) “running for pope.”

Perhaps you are also aware of the ego problems that surface every now and again among medical practitioners, like in the day when they refused to wash their hands between autopsies and surgery and prided themselves on their bloody surgical robes.

I probably shouldn’t share this, but today the picture I got was maggots and lions competing for the same carcass. Big or little, self-interest plays a big part in what they are doing. More often than not the “alternative” medicine people seem to be multi-level marketers, while the orthodox medicine people are big establishments with big buildings. This tends to make the priority of the cancer fighting people the prolongation of life, and not necessarily the cure of cancer. The cure only ends the financial value of the people who have been dehumanized to the place of financial units. This especially applies to the big pharmaceutical corporations.

When I go into the waiting room at the chemo clinic, I can’t help but count the heads to see how much money for “orthodox” medicine is sitting in the room. It is usually in the millions, if my own financial insurance statements are any indication. I should quickly add that there are certainly many doctors and nurses who are genuinely concerned for their patients, but the problem is rather like that of Paul when he wrote of Timothy to the Philippians: “I have no one else like him, who takes a genuine interest in your welfare. For everyone looks out for his own interest, not those of Jesus Christ.”

The problem that I need to get at here, and be honest about here, is the problem of agenda, which makes interest in others not “genuine interest,” “In the mean time, when there were gathered together an innumerable multitude of people, insomuch that they trode one upon another, he, (Jesus) began to say unto his disciples first of all, Beware ye of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. Luke 12:1 (KJV)

Jesus said about the “orthodox” experts of His day “… beware the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy…” Luke 12:1. Sad to say nothing much has changed since then. Some years ago now I came to the rather graphic realization that the leaven is yeast, and sure enough after a month of being on antibiotics for Lyme’s Disease, I got, as it were, a confirming sign of the revelation: my very own yeast infection. One of the things about yeast/leaven/hypocrisy is that it reproduces without dying. Jesus’ kind of love reproduces by dying, John 12:23, 24.

The problem lies with what self-serving agenda does with the truth. Jesus is the TRUTH. He is also the LIFE. “If anyone teaches false doctrines and does not agree to the sound instruction of our Lord Jesus Christ and to godly teaching, he is conceited and understands nothing. He has an unhealthy interest in controversies and quarrels about words that result in envy, strife, malicious talk, evil suspicions and constant friction between men of corrupt mind, who have been robbed of the truth and who think that godliness is a means to financial gain. But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.” 1 Timothy 3-10 NIV

“For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.” In short, financial agenda is a very powerful force for evil, whether in Church or in Medicine, especially as both are currently practiced. Perhaps nowhere is this seen as clearly as it is in the arena of big medicine, there we see how the love of money marries up with the political powers that be, in the same way as the Sanhedrin married up with the political powers that were, in order to crucify Jesus, “Indeed Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed,” Acts 4:27 NIV.

“Prognosis (Greek πρόγνωση – literally fore-knowing, foreseeing) is a medical term for predicting the likely outcome of an illness, often involving a detailed description.

When applied to large statistical populations, prognostic estimates can be very accurate: for example the statement “45% of patients with severe septic shock will die within 28 days” can be made with some confidence, because previous research found that this proportion of patients died. However, it is much harder to translate this into a prognosis for an individual patient: additional information is needed to determine whether a patient belongs to the 45% who will succumb, or to the 55% who survive.[1]

A complete prognosis includes the expected duration, the function, and a description of the course of the disease, such as progressive decline, intermittent crisis, or sudden, unpredictable crisis.”  – Wikipedia

The TRUTH is in the Spirit, John 2:27. The teachings of men tend to confuse or cloud the TRUTH, so much so that we try to move forward or walk things out or make decision based of misleading, inadequate or bad information.

Getting a succinct prognosis in plain language that an ordinary person can understand is all but impossible. Without such clarity the patient/layperson, (the “laity”) is disenfranchised where participating in meaningful decision making is concerned.

More about that in the next post – Lord willing.

Love!

Posted in J.Ferris: Cancer & Medicine | 4 Comments

The Proof – Take 2

Posted on February 13, 2012 by LovingLikeGod.com

My text this evenig is Philippians 2:19-24

For present purposes I am going to use the N.I.V. translation: “I have no one else like him, who takes a genuine interest in your welfare. For everyone looks out for his own interest, not those of Jesus Christ.”

Before I get into this however I need to share what I saw Friday morning. Let’s call it “One eyed Jacks”. Actually it came even clearer in conversation with Thomas yesterday.

By the time I got off the phone I was ready to write something under the subject head of “Streets, ditches, and parking lots.” I don’t know if that is going to get written in the process of writing what I want to say here, but perhaps.

What I saw on Friday is that there are many who read the Bible with only one eye. Often they have already been told what it all means, and sure enough, that’s all they can see there. This is basic to the stability of most denominations, and “church institutions”, even the “non-denominational” ones. Even “house church” isn’t exempt.

Experience tells me that by looking at things with only one eye, we lose “depth perception”. It takes two eyes to see into anything with any depth. Perhaps by now you have already noticed that The Bible is pretty deep, in fact deep beyond any likelihood of human understanding, at least, this side of Jesus second coming.

Reading with two eyes, can mean many things, but for the present I would like to examine one aspect of two eyed reading and understanding. What I want to say here is that we need to read about God with both eyes, one focused on His Word, as revealed in the Bible, and the other, focused on His Word as revealed in the things created, Romans 1:19, 20.

If we go through life with only one eye open, we are clue less about the creation. If we read The Bible with only one eye open, we are bound to be religious. Jesus came that we might have life.

So here’s the deal: Jesus “… said, Every plant, which my heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up. (speaking of the Pharisees, Jesus went on:) Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.” Matthew 15:13,14.

Apparently they are trying to get somewhere. The way we normally get somewhere is a “street”. Even then, right next to the streets were “ditches”. So the problem is that it you are trying to get somewhere with a blind leader, you wind up in the “ditch”. So for now, it is enough to see that a “ditch” is one bad, but close alternative to a “street”. Will take a little better look at a “street” in a moment, but first, I would like to bring this into the  Twenty first Century by saying a word about parking lots. They are also a close alternative to a “street”. Where a blind guide is likely to lead you into a ditch, a “one eyed jack” can see just well enough to get you into a parking lot. In either case “ditch” or “parking lot,” you’re not getting anywhere once you get there. So if you want to get somewhere, it is a street that you are looking for and should be on. It’s best if you have both eyes open when you are on the way. Did I mention that Jesus is “the Way…”?

At first glance it may look like a “one eyed jack” is a better guide than one that is blind. Problem is you can’t really get anywhere with either. Maybe that’s why “church” buildings need to be next to parking lots.

Jesus has opened up to us a new creation, and a new kind of a city, a spiritual city, and the “streets” of this spiritual city are “…pure gold, as it were transparent glass.” Revelation 21:21b

Keep in mind that a street is a way of getting somewhere. Even in a spiritual city, we need to get somewhere. In God’s spiritual city, “The New Jerusalem, the way we get somewhere is love. You can see this better in the Greek, than you can in English, because in The Greek, Christ is “Christos”, and gold is “Chrusos” As I have already mentioned, they both derive their functional definition from the Greek word “Chraomai:…; “furnish what is needed”. In this case, it’s “what is needed” to get somewhere. The bottom line is, without love we are not going anywhere.

“Blind guides”, and “one eyed jacks” are suffering from a love deficit. Even before Jesus went to the cross, there were to many lawyers. He died to put the lawyers out of business. Not only was the law nailed to the tree the day he said He loves us, but He died to make us into lovers, not lawyers. The way “street” is love, “gold”. This is why it is important to be lovers, because the “ditches” and the parking lots are full of lawyers. Don’t go there. Not only did Jesus say: “Woe unto you also, ye lawyers! for ye lade men with burdens grievous to be borne, and ye yourselves touch not the burdens with one of your fingers… Woe unto you, lawyers! for ye have taken away the key of knowledge: ye entered not in yourselves, and them that were entering in ye hindered.” Luke 11:46, 52 But, Paul went on to say: “Now therefore there is utterly a fault among you, because ye go to law one with another. Why do ye not rather take” 1 Corinthians 6:7 (I like the N.I.V on this one.

So you see, no matter how you look at it, we aren’t getting anywhere with lawyers, except, “parking lots” outside their places of religious business or ditches due to taking their advice.

So much for “Streets, ditches, and parking lots”, now let’s see with both eyes open, if we can get somewhere with our text from Philippians.

“I have no one else like him, who takes a genuine interest in your welfare. For everyone looks out for his own interest, not those of Jesus Christ.”

To begin with, I think we should narrow the subject matter to make this a little more hopeful. I wouldn’t want to be accused of making too broad an application here. Lets suppose that Paul only has those that “he has”, “I have”. That way the “everyone” only has in view the “everyone” that Paul “has”. That makes this a little more optimistic than it would be if read him as talking about “everyone” else in the whole world.

So let’s just say that there are those who Paul “has” and they are the ones that Paul is speaking about here. That wouldn’t be too far out, would it?

 

So Let’s say that there is Timothy, and then there is “everyone” else, just so were clear on who Paul might be talking about here. In reading over the “New Testament” we can get an idea of who might be understood to be among those that Paul “has”. For instance, Paul “had” Titus even before he “had” Timothy. Then there were those who Paul didn’t “have”,

John Mark, for instance was a son to Peter.  1 Peter 5:13. Paul never claimed him as also his son. Then there are the Corinthians. Paul said that he had become a kind of father to them, 1 Corinthians 4:14, even called then “his dear children”. Paul said even more emphatic things to the Philippians, Philippians 4:1, and the Thessalonians, 1 Thessalonians 2:19, 20. And of course there were others that Paul speaks of as ministering with him, those he had discipled in apostleship. And even elders, like the ones at Ephesus that had more than likely been set in place under Paul’s apostolic oversight. So we don’t have to go beyond what is written to appreciate that there was a rather substantial “everyone” else in Paul’s life, ministry and experience.

Having established the “who” part, lets now take a look at the “difference” part. On the one hand there was Timothy, apparently standing alone, with his single-hearted interest in the welfare of others, and then there was the rest, the “everyone”, who looks out for their own interest, apart from or over and against the interests of Jesus Christ.

In the King James version, the Word used in place of “looks out for” is “seeks”. Its interesting, because in the original there seems to be a sense of something hidden or a plot, as distinct from simply seeking information, for instance. So I would like to go out on a limb and paraphrase our passage this way: “I have no one else like him, who takes a genuine interest in your welfare. For everyone looks out for what’s in it for them, and not the interests of Jesus Christ.”

So here’s the problem as I see it, If we just take this statement at face value. In our relationships with others, we can be God’s kind of lovers, those are the kind that are armed with a love that is good for enemies. Or, in our relationships we can be in it for what’s in it for us. Those are the kind that, on their best day, are armed with a love that is only good for friends.

A person who relates to you because of what’s in it for them, is a kind of relational merchant. There is a hidden “deal” in it. Like someone said, “Merchants will go only just so far, but lovers will go all the way.” Jesus went all the way. As I understand it, He fixed it so that we could go all the way too.

Let’s give Paul’s “everyone” the benefit of the doubt, and lets say he didn’t really mean “everyone”, perhaps only some of the “everyone.”

Perhaps this was some kind of inspired exaggeration where the “everyone” is concerned. I’m not really sure I believe in “spiritual exaggeration, but there are passages of the Scripture that would be easier for us, if we just cut the Holy Spirit a little slack here. It’s not really a place that I want to go, but just for the sake of argument, let’s say it might be possible. Ok, so we allow for a little exaggeration on the “everyone” side of the ledger, now how about the “no one else like him” side. Let’s call that the “only one” side. Common on Paul, “Only one like Timothy”? Surely you must be exaggerating here. You forgot about Titus, and your other fellow workers who were yours, didn’t you? “Only one”? Wow!!

Exaggerating on the “only one” side, and exaggerating on the “everyone” side, we have to wonder how much if anything we can take seriously here.

Perhaps we could come at this from a different direction. Remember, we are trying to look at this with both eyes open. Suppose we look at is from the vantage point of our experience in our present day. This is trying to understand it by looking at the created things. Right away, it is easier to believe that Paul wasn’t exaggerating on the everyone side. In fact as we look around at what is calling itself “church” we are hard pressed to make out any Timothys. Seems like everyone has got some kind of hidden agenda. Some not so hidden. In any case, It’s amazing how many varieties of merchants there are, and how many of them. I’m already really happy to know that someday they won’t be allowed in God’s house, Zechariah 14:21. In John’s Gospel, Jesus seems to have made it the first order of business to get them out of the house, John 2:13-17.

Actually, armed with present experience, if we take a closer look at what was going on the church even before the canon of Scripture was closed, we can see that the religious multilevel marketers were already poised to start building their own down line as soon as the opportunity presented itself, Acts 20: 29-31. There are a lot of other places we could see the evidence of what was coming if only we looked with both eyes open.

So perhaps Paul wasn’t exaggerating after all. Perhaps there really was only one who loved like Timothy. Matthew 24:12 warns us that the “love of most will grow cold”, so maybe it’s not so hard to believe that there were already quite a few even back then who were trying to get by on the wrong kind of love.

In fact, the more we think about it, the more amazing it becomes that God was able to get the Bible through all those hidden agendas all the way down to us where, if we only read it with both eyes open, we could still see this “love that surpasses knowledge”. One has to wonder how God managed to get it past all the peddlers, 2 Corinthians 2:17, N.I.V. There it is again, So many… peddle the Word of God for profit.”

Looking at this with both eyes open, you really have to ask the question, “How did God do it?” “How did He get the Bible to us?” Seems to me, that things being as they are,..  and were, that’s a fair question. Without in any way trying to be finally definitive, a multiple-choice possibility presents itself. Does a two choice question still qualify as multiple-choice? I’m not sure, but I find myself wondering if the churches managed to save it for us or did Timothy save it for us.

After all, he did receive or carry quite a few of the letters.

 

It wouldn’t really be completely without Biblical precedent for something a precious as the Word of God to be passed down to us through only one man, at least, at certain points in history. It’s all about a single Seed, Galatians 3:16, and all the promises were to and through a single Seed. Once “it” was completely in the person of Abraham, and the “it” was in Isaac. Seems like that was pretty risky. It wouldn’t be the first time that God was willing to stake the sand of the sea, and the stars of the sky on only one man.

It’s something to think about. Suppose Paul wasn’t exaggerating about Timothy after all. Suppose that Paul really did have only one like him, who loved with his whole heart. That is what Jesus prayed and died to make us after all. That was to be the evidence of His reality even in us who say we believe. Is it possible that a lover like Timothy could really be that influential?

Might be worth finding out. Looks to me like the world around us could use some better influence about now.

 

Love!

Posted in J.Ferris: Relationships | 2 Comments