The Golden Ass

I posted the following on Facebook back on Sept. 1, 2019:

As I work through the Gravity Leadership material, they keep asking me what or which imagine of God influences me in this way or that.

Well, it's becoming abundantly clear to me that I'm a functioning polytheist.

Not including ones I haven't figured out yet, I serve gods fashioned in the images of Judge Judy, Rage Against the Machine, the hot golem Woman (think Jewish mysticism rather than Lord of the Rings lol) in "Weird Science" (1985 film, Google it if you want lol), and Regis Philbin dotingly hosting "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire."

And, half the time, multiple of these are at work at the same time.

I am a confusing mess! LOL

Thank you Jesus and Gravity Leadership for helping me sort through this mess who is me! Haha

One week later, as a follow up to that ongoing story of my discipleship, I posted the following. As God teaches me about Himself, I see him in the scriptural narrative in ways to which I was previously blind!:

Lessons learned in prayer as Jason becomes more attuned to the actual Jesus rather than the wrathful and violent one he previously imagined as a projection of his own ego and how he/it has been shaped and formed...

Or, Jesus Is Not Judge Judy, Continued:

This week's Lectionary passage of Luke 17: 5-10 is preceded contextually by this:

17 Jesus said to his disciples, “Occasions for stumbling are bound to come, but woe to anyone by whom they come! 2 It would be better for you if a millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea than for you to cause one of these little ones to stumble. 3 Be on your guard! If another disciple sins, you must rebuke the offender, and if there is repentance, you must forgive. 4 And if the same person sins against you seven times a day, and turns back to you seven times and says, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive.”

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Me in the past: Ouch. That sounds harsh, Jesus!

Me now after having learned something about my false image of God fashioned in the image of the harsh and self-asserting "Judge Judy":
Oh, Jesus is talking about healing restoration of right relationships in love! And oh! - what I read in the past as "harsh" is Jesus' rhetorical indication of how connected his love is to life itself! In other words, he's simply saying that disconnection and disunity are death. I guess this should have struck me as obvious (though it didn't), because death is exactly what alienation feels like.

Moving into the actual Lectionary passage...

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5 The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” 6 The Lord replied, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.

Me in the past: So, was this a whole different conversation? What's going on here? How is this connected to what just happened in the conversation? Lol

Me now: Implicitly reading between the lines - us disciples tend to find this loving, restorative union in love thing difficult! And, this is not an abstracted fragmentation from the previous paragraph. When the disciples ask for more "faith," they're asking for help TRUSTING the WORDS just spoken by their master and teacher! The very fact that they felt comfortable asking him for help is telling about the falsity of my previous harsh reading of verses 1-5.

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7 “Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, ‘Come here at once and take your place at the table’? 8 Would you not rather say to him, ‘Prepare supper for me, put on your apron and serve me while I eat and drink; later you may eat and drink’? 9 Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded? 10 So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, ‘We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!’”

Me in the past: Soooo, this is a whole OTHER conversation, AGAIN? What's going on here? And, this doesn't sound very edifying?

Me now: Oh! Duh. The DIFFICULTY we have with Jesus' talk about restoration to unity and it's importance / cost is because of our pride! Jesus is addressing our blind self-assertion that gets in the way of healing and reconciling love.

Also, hmm, I now wonder if the previous talk of the uprooting of "this mulberry tree" with "trust the size of a mustard seed" is a reference to my deeply rooted pain and bitterness that I mask with my pride?

So, his analogies about service and unworthiness are not the harsh words of a task master. They are healing balm for the wary. "Just trust me" makes sense if He is good, and if he is Love. So, in reality, what Jesus says here is quite edifying. To suggest that faith is tied to obedient trust in the Words of Jesus is precisely to lighten our load and ease our yolk, to trust in the streams of life that flow from the belly when we listen obediently, even if a big part of us doesn't want to and finds it difficult.

Jesus isn't telling us we're a bunch of losers and to get our shit together. He's saying to trust him in his love (precisely because he's not Judge Judy :P )

So, may this blog post serve as a record or compilation of a big part of what God's been up to recently. I suspect I will continue to learn that and how Jesus is not Judge Judy :P