Easter time - get lost you New Years resolutions
April 5th 2010 21:53
Too often the Easter message is made rubbish by preaching to people to try harder. Let's see what the Easter message is really.
On the cause of all the appalling things that we seem helpless to prevent in this world, Jesus pin-pointed self-dependence - the "fallen" human condition where people insist on letting their minds and emotions rule their lives instead of testing all knowledge via the Spirit.
In their fallen lives, people try to get their desires met by themselves interpreting all knowledge, instead of putting it to test via the Spirit. Every time happiness again eludes them, they try even harder.
Knowing that Jesus was coming to raise people from their fallen lives, John the Baptist told them to get ready by repenting - meaning be ready to re-think this wrong belief that they held to so religiously.
That belief is the original lie that success in life comes by self-improvement through knowledge independent of the Spirit.
Instead of getting happy lives by work and self-effort, people find themselves needing more and more money to try to succeed in living independently.
This doesn't just concern money. The more we have of all manner of things the less happiness we get - a fact that business people in this marketing age exploit to the full.
More and more alcohol, drugs and all kinds of things make people addicted to trying even harder to get free from unhappiness and depression. Always trying the same old way expecting a different result is insanity! There IS NO dependable source of happiness for people who insist on independent use of their minds and emotions.
Enlivened human condition
According to the New Testament, every person has a human spirit in addition to a human soul (with mind, will and emotions). Slumbering through dis-use, this spirit can be enlivened when a person believes into who Jesus of Nazareth was and what he did as commemorated by Easter.
Simply put, Jesus is scary-God made attractive. God put all of Himself in Christ to be available as the change-agent to raise all of us.
Jesus was resurrected and ascended by the same Spirit that now raises mankind so that in our enlivened human spirits we can communicate with His Spirit in all of us, both one-to-One and one-to-many.
The real church is this one-to-many communication. It’s a spiritual body not a religious tent, church hall, Christian community center, mega-church or cathedral.
Christ isn't about helping us to do better in ourselves. That's the old situation before Christ came called the Old Covenant. Too often the Easter message is made rubbish by calling on people to try harder.
The New Covenant is God's promise through Christ to set us free from religious self-dependence and all the appalling things it attracts in our world.
These things go beyond even what the Old Covenant Ten Commandments first implied. As Jesus pointed out, anger that kills relationships is also murder. Sexual adultery includes the mere looking lustfully at another person's partner. The list goes even further, considering that sin is defined as anything apart from what God desires.
With such a heap of possibilities it's impossible to avoid doing some of them. And they come like a flood when by our self we can no longer hold them back by being resolute.
Forget about New Years resolutions and trying even harder at Easter. Change from religious self-determination to spirit-tested reality.
The same Spirit who raised Christ from the dead promises to raise every one of us too.
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