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Placed in the Genesis
post creation account, this cosmic sabbath stands as an indispensable
reminder throughout eternity that the relationship between our
Creator/Father and his children is not based on knowledge and it's
performance, but “Rest”. Rest
is that secure place where God loves and accepts us as his
morally/ethically imperfect children. Perceiving Rest or it’s opposite
(knowledge and performance) as the basis for relationship with
our Parent, makes the essential difference in how we think and behave.
What a person perceives becomes his or her reality.
And what humanity has collectively perceived has created it’s
own reality.
The Church has been
teaching Jesus Christ as our Savior for almost 2,000 years now—and
that’s great! But
we believe most of the Body has been laboring under a false premise
concerning what God originally intended for men and women when he first
created us. This premise
has laid the foundation for most Christian teaching and doctrine for at
least 1500 years now, and we feel strongly that it has impeded growth
and healing in the personal lives of believers, while at the same time
given God a bad reputation among non-believers.
It has been taught
almost exclusively that in the beginning God had established a covenant
with mankind (Adam and Eve), promising eternal life in exchange for
perfect obedience. Man was
supposedly created capable of perfect moral/ethical decisions, and
through the exercise of freedom of choice, was expected to perform
according to that perfection. However, as the story continues to be explained, our first
parents disobeyed a direct command from God and subsequently fell from
that state of perfection. They
then ran and hid because of the shame of their guilt.
Nevertheless, God’s perfect justice demanded that this
disobedience be paid for by death, which the Son of God paid for us
vicariously—sort of a legal transaction.
Now, out of gratitude for what Jesus has done for us in that
regard, we strive to live morally upright lives.
This we can do because the Holy Spirit now provides us again with
that capability to move toward the originally intended moral perfection.
This is a huge subject.
But let’s just cut to the bottom line of our point here.
God did not create us perfect, except in the sense of
being like little children who are open, honest, and sincere with their
Parent(s). We were naked,
but not ashamed. Again, like children.
Our divine Creator/Parent accepted us in his unmeritable love,
and we were at first secure with that.
He had no problem with our nakedness—our imperfection. After
all, what newborn child can possibly be perfect by fiat?
Within that secure environment of rest, of our Parent’s way of
grace, we could and would come to know he who IS the Good.
We could learn the lessons of life and grow in that grace.
No, it was not the
Father who intended, expected, or demanded our moral perfection as
children. Rather, it was the arch deceiver who led the first
human children to base a relationship with their Parent on knowledge of
right and wrong and the proper implementation of that knowledge.
That’s right, eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and
evil wasn’t a choice to do wrong or rebel against the Creator as has
been taught for hundreds of years.
Rather, it was a choice (based on deception) to perceive the
relationship with our Creator in an unhealthy way—as if it were based
on external performance of acquired information about right and wrong.
And as a result of perceiving our worth, value, and loveability
based on how well we could perform the right, rather than on our
Parent’s unmeritable love, we began to experience shame for who and
what we were essentially. It is a toxic shame that drives people to
demand a love from others they cannot give to themselves; expressed in
sinful thoughts and behaviors such as envy, jealousy, covetousness,
wrath, addictions of various kinds, and even wars! It is a reality of
shame that has been perpetuated in family relationships from one
generation to another since that first incident in the garden when
God’s first children became wrongly ashamed of their nakedness.
But it is not our
Creator’s will for us to remain in this shame.
It has always been his will that our relationship with him be
based solely on his unmeritable love and acceptance.
It is the only proper starting point for a healthy family
relationship. It is through the Good News of the Kingdom that Jesus the
Messiah beckons us back
to the Father’s timeless reality of rest and grace for his created
children. Jesus paid the
penalty required for sins committed under this performance reality
(which remember, wasn’t God’s—just ours), and by doing so,
presented a new reality of grace for us to perceive and accept.
Of course, this grace was not really new—it didn’t start at
the cross. It has been
God’s intent from the very beginning. In that sense, the New
Covenant is older than we think.
But Jesus made its reality undeniable.
We understand that
viewing the foundation of this present world in the manner we have
described here is a significant departure from classical, western
orthodox Christian teaching. But we believe strongly that it is an enlightenment whose
time has been coming for awhile now, and can have a profound impact on
the healing of future generations of families; as parents and children
use the same principles of grace established by our own divine Parent.
And we believe it is the Gospel more rightly understood.
Beliefs and church doctrines that lead to motives of
perfectionism are destructive and have no place in Christian teachings.
So, the tension between
God and man is not sin or rebellion, it's a knowledge/performance based
perception of our relationship with Him.
Sin and rebellion, and even pride, have been the result. Fear and shame have held us all captive, one generation after
another. The story of your
life is the story of the long and brutal assault on your heart by the
one who knows what you could be and fears it. But Jesus came to
break that cycle. His
Gospel promises to begin healing the broken hearted and setting the captives (you and
I) free. The Kingdom of God, which will be ushered in at Jesus'
return to earth, will be full of healed people living full and rich
lives within the reality of God's Rest.
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