“FilidAsbuig” = Gillespie

The Gillespie name is ancient, its origins dating probably from 5th century Ireland.  It is widely thought to be made up of two Gaelic words, “Filid,” a druidic bard, and “Asbuig,” a bishop.

Quote

The matter of life come forth directly from the womb of God’s being.  The glory of the sun rising in the east is the glory of God shining on us now and now and now.  The whiteness of the moon, the wildness of the wind, the moisture of the fecund earth is the glow and wildness and moistness of God now.  It is the very stuff of God’s being of which we and creation are composed.

Christ of the Celts, J Philip Newell, pg 36.

Q & A — Part 2

This is Part 2 to some questions a dear friend of mine sent me.  Part 1 is here.

Do you believe that God sent [Jesus] for [the] purpose [of dying for our sins], so you might believe and join Him in heaven one day?

Again, yes and no (I know.  It’s the Irish in me.).  I know that Jesus came from God, that God sent him, that the will of God is to believe in Jesus, but I’m not sure that God sent Jesus to die for our sins.  Again, I think that is one way of looking at it.  But I’m convinced it’s not the only way.  It’s the language of a people immersed in a sacrificial system.  That’s how they would understand the imagery.  It would be like Joseph going to Egypt.  His brothers sold him into slavery but Joseph understood it as God sending him there.  I completely believe that Jesus knew that he would die for what he was doing and saying.  But I think it’s more than just ‘dying for our sins’.  I think it was to completely destroy evil.  Paul wrote that through the cross and resurrection Jesus defeated evil.  That is another way of looking at God’s purpose in sending Jesus.  Evil emptied itself upon Jesus and Jesus rose victorious on the third day, thereby defeating evil at it’s core.

Another purpose of God sending Jesus is that of restoring all of creation to the way it was ‘in the beginning’.  This leads me to the next point.

Concerning ‘joining Him in heaven one day’: This I do not believe.  It is a falseness that has been proposed upon the church but is lacking biblical support.  The ‘goal’ is not ‘going to heaven when you die’.  The goal is being resurrected in God’s New Creation.  According to Scripture (Isaiah 40-55, 64,65; Revelation 21-22; etc.) the goal of all creation is a time when heaven and earth are joined together.  Notice, for example, in Revelation 21, when the ‘New Jerusalem’ (i.e., which would point to the realm of God) comes down to earth.  The imagery is that of ‘heaven’ (meaning God’s realm of existence) and ‘earth’ (our realm of existence) becoming one.  All of history is moving to that goal.  Our vocation as people of faith is to try and find ways of implementing that ultimate future now.  For me, that was why I became a vegetarian.  In the beginning, all created things ate only vegetables (Genesis 1.29-30).  The symbols that we have in Isaiah, for example, point to a restoration of that very thing.

A follow up question, to the concept of ‘believing’ in Jesus, would be: ‘What about Gandhi’?  Do we honestly believe that the God who is love, would look at Gandhi with a list of his accomplishments, and say, ‘Well, let’s see.  Helping the outcast, good.  Helping the oppressed, good.  Living a peaceful life, good.  Oops.  I don’t see where you believe that Jesus died for your sins.  Sorry Gandhi.  You can’t come in.  You have a one way ticket to hell.’  That man has done more for the Kingdom of Peace than most people I know.  He saw that the here and now is just as sacred as the ‘there and then’.  The justice he proposed was exactly the same that Christ proposed.  In fact, Gandhi said, ‘I like your Christ.  I don’t like your Christians.  They are so unlike your Christ.’  This quote should shake us to our knees.  It reiterates all of the teaching of Jesus and the rest of the New Testament.  That is, that the whole life will be examined in the end and we will be held accountable for our actions.  Look at every judgment scene in Scripture (Matthew 25, for example, or Romans 2).  Every one of them is about what we have done, NOT about what we believe.  The two should go hand in hand.  Our belief should empower us to work (see James 2).  If not, we should question our belief for belief alone will not save us (again, James 2).

So the question then is what is meant by ‘believing’?  I think the biblical support is that belief means something like trustful action.  That is, trusting in the promises and then doing what those promises tell us to do.  But the promises are not just for the souls of people.  The promises of God are for all creation.  This, again, is alluded to in the prophets I mentioned above and throughout the New Testament.

I hope that these answers will speak to you deeply and help you see things a little differently.  To be specific, I trust in Christ as my Lord and my God.  He truly is Lord of all creation.

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In the Grace of the Three in One,

OD

Q & A

A dear friend of mine sent me some questions and I followed up with some answers.  I thought I would post the coversation here for the benefit of others with similar questions (you know who you are).

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Do you believe that Jesus Christ died on the cross for our sins, rose from the grave and is now at the right hand of God?

Yes and no.  I believe that ‘Christ died for our sins, just as the Scriptures said.  He was buried, and he was raised from the dead on the third day, just as the Scriptures said’ (1Cor 15.3-4).  But what I am exploring is what we mean by ‘for our sins’.  What was the meaning behind his death?  Was it a ‘ransom’?  If so, to whom was the ransom paid?  If we say ‘God’, then my next question is, ‘Does the love and forgiveness and mercy of God have to be bought?’  That is, we would NEVER have our children buy our love and forgiveness and yet, we think that God ‘demands’ such a thing.  To take Jesus out of context, ‘[If we] sinful people know how to give good gifts to [our] children, how much more will [our] heavenly Father give good gifts to those who ask him’ (Matt 7.11).  The point is, we would never demand such a thing from our children, why do we think God would demand such a thing from us, his children?

The follow up question would be, then, is there another way of seeing the death of Jesus, that is true to the biblical story but is relevant for today?  In other words, are the images and symbols of the ‘lamb of God’ for that culture who lived in a sacrificial world?  Look at what Paul preached in Athens (Acts 17).  He never once mentions that Jesus died as a payment to God for our sins.  He states that he died, yes, but his emphasis was on Christ’s resurrection.  That is to say, when faced with people from a different cultural understanding, Paul didn’t use the Jewish understanding of the sacrificial system.

Am I saying that the death of Jesus didn’t mean something?  God forbid.  I’m saying that we should not limit our understanding of his death to a first century Jewish understanding.  I believe that the death of Jesus goes deeper than that.  What I think we need to do, as the Christian household, is see how the story of the death of Jesus could be retold for our culture.  I think this is what every generation of the Christian family should do.  Martin Luther said (and I’m paraphrasing), ‘If the gospel is not relevant to our culture, then we have not done justice with the gospel’.

Now, does any of this mean that I don’t believe in the sinfulness of people?  Or, more to the point, do I not believe in my own sinfulness?  Again, God forbid!  I know that the falseness within me runs deep.  But, I believe that deeper than my sinfulness is the Light of God, the Goodness of God.  To mimic Paul, the sin I commit is not who I am at the deepest level.  At the deepest level, I am a child of God, a mirror of God reflecting God’s image in creation.  But, like an addict, I am addicted to sin.  I am enslaved to it.  Or, I was.  Again, Paul wrote that if a person has been baptised then she is no longer enslaved to sin, therefore she should not act like it.

In the Celtic tradition, Jesus is referred to as ‘our remembrance’.  That is, when we look at Jesus, we see what true humanity really looks like–what we really are at our deepest level.  But, because of sin, because of our addiction and enslavement to sin, we have forgotten who we are.  The further and further we move away from the garden, the more we forget.  Jesus comes and calls us back to who we really are.  But, we can’t get there on our own.  Through the power of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit that brought forth all creation, breaks the chains of our bondage and addiction and releases us to be the people we were intended to be.

Part 2 will be coming soon.

In the Grace of the Three in One,

OD