Spiritual Ponderings

Today we face a crisis in regards to freedom. Our country is betraying itself and is stripping away one freedom after another in the name of supposed securit can be extremely quick to be very defensive when it comes to my own rights and freedoms and can even become angry or aggressive about protecting them. What I am referring to is how ready I am to come to the defense of other people's freedoms particularly when they come under threat from me. Like most people, I want others to love me and I want to form close, healthy bonds with people. Yet in my desires to make attachments to others I far too often slip into habits of subtle coercion or may be tempted to lay guilt trips on people who don't conform to what I want in our relationship. There are so many little ways that we use to try to get our way with people that are out of harmony with God's ways of relating, yet we are so used to using these methods that we seldom realize how much they violate other people's...

I am thinking about the contrast between the Old Testament model of coming to God and its style of accountability to God and the church, compared to the New Testament method of creating unity in the body of Christ and coming to God. The Law of Moses is like a shadow of the good things to come. This shadow isn't the good things themselves, because it cannot free people from sin by the sacrifices that are offered year after year. (Heb 10:1 CEV) The Law here is reference to the whole system of religion as prescribed by Moses in the Old Testament model. It is an external oriented system based largely on hierarchy, control, obligations and a centralized form and place of worship. It contained within it the shadow of the real spiritual reconciliation that God planned to reveal more clearly later, but that old system in itself could not accomplish full reconciliation because it was only a likeness or shadow of future realities, not the real thing. I am starting to see that ...