Distribution of Resources

 I had some stale bread, so of course I wanted to give it to the chickens. Bread is one of their favorite snacks.

But it's not unusual for the chickens to fight over their snacks. I guess that some of that is part of the natural order of things, establishing their pecking order and all that, but it still makes me uncomfortable. So I cut the bread into long thin strips.

I got maybe a dozen strips out of each slice of bread. "There. Now they won't have to fight over it. There's enough here for everyone!" Boy was I mistaken.

I walked up to their gate and they all gathered around, as usual. And I tossed the plate of bread strips into their midst, expecting them to share the wealth. Boy was I mistaken.

One of them grabbed a piece of bread and ran off to a far corner of the chicken yard with it. I expected that the others would just grab their own piece of bread, maybe run off with it. But no. When one had a bit of bread and ran off, the others ran after it, trying to snatch a bite of her bread for themselves. They left the pile of bread sitting unattended.

I muttered and grumbled and took their names in vain.

And I heard Father chuckle. Aha! A clue! That usually means there's a lesson for me there.

As I reflected on the gallinaceous lesson before me, one chicken came back and grabbed one piece of bread and ran off with it, with the rest of the girls chasing after her for a share of the wealth.

I could hear Father's smile, as he watched me working my way through the drama, learning to see it as he saw it.

In times past, I've learned lessons about how we humans interact from watching the chickens in their interactions, and it happened again. I recognized that we do what the chickens were doing.

When someone among us gets a bit of a revelation about something, the rest of us often enough go running after them in order to get a bite of what they've found. When God began speaking to his kids about prophetic gifts being for the Church today, we quickly had dozens, maybe hundreds of conferences about prophecy and how to prophesy. Books were written, podcasts jumped oneo that gravy train.

But there weren't a lot of us (and I'm as guilty as anyone) who came back to the Giver and asked for our own bit of revelation.

The same thing happened when God began talking about healing. We followed the few folks in social media who were actually doing the stuff, but not a lot of folks headed out to the streets to do the stuff; a whole lot more went to the conferences, the healing meetings, the YouTube channels, like chickens trying to steal a bite from the one with the bit of bread.

I see that in the world, too. When it was announced that the companies that Elon Musk had poured his money and his energy into had increased in value, making him a "trillionaire" on paper briefly, people ran after him, some declaring how unfair it was that he had so much money when people were starving, others telling their followers how we can learn from his success.

But not too many people have been pouring their money and their energy into something (a business? a job? a ministry?) that could produce a worthwhile return for their efforts. ("Your mina has made five minas more, Lord.") 

It is *absolutely* not a universal thing. There are some folks coming back to the bread pile for their own piece of bread (and some of them are having others running after them, criticizing them, trying to get their own bite of it).

But in general, it seems more normal for people to run after someone who's found some success than to come back to the Source for their own success.

People are smarter than chickens. Sometimes.

The Christian Religion

I was talking with someone recently who doesn't call himself a Christian any more. And I realized that I avoid that term "Christian" pretty intentionally myself.  Interesting. I didn't plan that.

The term is a Biblical term [Acts 26:28 & 1 Peter 4:16]. That's not the nature of my hesitation. 

I found myself saying that I avoid the term because I don't like the associations so much. There's a lot of heinous things that have been done in the name of the Christian religion. The crusades are a good example. 

But then I corrected myself. Yes, that's true, but the bigger issue for me might be that I don't like what has happened to the Christian Religion so much. Well, really, not at all. 

Yeah, the term is Biblical. That does not mean that what we've done with it is Biblical. It's not. We can point to the Romanization of Christianity first by Constantine's legalization and patronage of it starting in 313 AD, then the adoption of Christianity by Theodosius I in 380 AD. 

Those effects, both the patronage of government (think "501c3") and the cultural dominance of the religion are perversion (in my view) that have continued on even today. Christianity does not thrive when paired with government. 

We see another religion trying its hand at government: Islam is working pretty diligently to take over the world. Literally. If you look around, you can see a lot of growing dominance in a number of countries (Great Britain being one example), and there are communities around America that are considering adopting Sharia law (the religious law of Islam). 

Islam (Muslims) kind of hate Christianity. And they kind of have reason. I refer you back to the crusades, when Christian knights and armies slaughtered Muslims and took their lands. We did it badly then. They're doing it badly now, and reminding us of why religion and government don't mix. 

I've been living in the Gospels in the Bible for a few months. Some Christians today kind of hold up ancient Israel as an example of religion and government working together. But if you read the Old Testament (Kings & Chronicles in particular) and the Gospels with open eyes, you'll see that it never worked for them either. Jesus went waaay out of his way to castigate the religious ruling party (Pharisees, teachers of the Law) for how badly they got it wrong. 

The way I read it, Christianity was never meant to be a culturally dominant religion. Aw heck, Christianity was never meant to be a religion at all. It has always been meant to be a family. When family and government converge, you get dynasties and corruption, and we have seen too many examples of that in our lifetime. 

Let me add, however, while the Christian religion does not belong in government, Christian people ABSOLUTELY do. William Wilberforce and Charlie Kirk have been really excellent examples, though they've both were persecuted and paid a price for bringing their faith into their political work. Let's be honest: our faith belongs in our work, regardless what our work is. If we can't be a believer in our work - and I am not saying to be an evangelist or a preacher in our work - then our faith might be pretty superficial. 

So yes, I am proudly a part of Jesus' family. I am his son, his child, and I live my life in and under and for his kingship. (Note that God's Kingdom is NOT a political kingdom!) I have been redeemed by Father's massive love, and by Jesus' massive sacrifice, and Jesus lives in me, along with Father and Holy Spirit. I am born again. And I am what Luke (in Acts) and Peter called "Christian," but I respectfully decline to fit into the cultural and political boxes of what is called "Christian" in the 21st century. 

I know some folks who call themselves "Christ followers," and the term "born again" has some value again these days. I'm afraid that I expect that whatever "believers" (another option) call themselves will be corrupted quickly enough and filled with all sorts of cultural and historical baggage, particularly by people who want to put "those Jesus Freaks" (yet another option) into some sort of box so they can stop listening to them. 

So yeah, I kind of hate what has been done by the Christian religion over the centuries, but I think I resent what has happened TO the Christian religion even more. 

Maybe I'll find a label (ick) that will work, but maybe I'll just avoid labels as much as I'm able for the time being.  
 

Don't Quit Too Early

There is a classic and well-known story of R.U. Darby and his uncle during the Colorado gold rush era (late 1800s/early 1900s). Here’s the factual account as recounted by Darby himself.

Darby’s uncle caught “gold fever” and staked a claim in Colorado. He and the young R.U. Darby began digging with pick and shovel. They struck a vein of gold ore, which was promising enough that they covered the mine, returned east to raise capital, bought machinery, and resumed operations. The first loads of ore sent to the smelter confirmed it was rich—experts said it looked like one of the richest veins in the region. They recouped their investment quickly.

Then the vein suddenly disappeared. They drilled desperately in every direction but couldn’t find it again. After months of frustration and mounting costs (with no more gold showing up), they decided it wasn’t worth continuing. They quit, sold the mine and all the equipment to a local junk man for a few hundred dollars, and went home.

The junk man wasn’t an expert miner, but he had a hunch they had stopped too soon. He hired a mining engineer to survey the site. The engineer’s advice was simple: dig in a different spot, just three feet from where the Darbys had quit. They did—and struck one of the richest gold veins ever found in that part of Colorado. The new owner went on to make a fortune from the very same claim.

That is a moving story, and it has loads of places that it applies. But I think it applies in theology and in Bible study as well, and that's what's capturing my attention today. 

I was discussing some basic Christian doctrines with Father recently, and I felt like he smiled and nodded to me and said, "Yes, but you may have quit digging in this one too soon." 

He and I have had this conversation before, but this time was a little different. It's not uncommon that he & I discover (well, I discover, while I'm with him) new treasures about his character and his ways, particularly when I'm considering new things that I haven't considered before. 

But this time, I was considering well-established truths, doctrine of the Church (and if I'm honest, dogma for the Evangelical community). We were talking about hell. 

I've been taught about hell, though pretty often, it's been in the context of "Turn or burn." For years, I've been growing less comfortable with "Turn or burn!" applying to my Creator who gave up his place in Heaven to become a slimy, squalling human baby, then grew up to teach us about the nature and Kingdom of God, and then submit willingly (what?!?) to a brutal murder so that you and I could be set free from sin and death. "Turn or burn!" doesn't fit that kind of self-giving, self-sacrificing love. 

Recently I've been reading George MacDonald. You know, the guy that influenced CS Lewis to the point that he called him his "master" as he came to faith. That guy. 

"MacDonald preached the unthinkable: that God's love is for everyone, not just the "elect." Now that sure sounds a whole lot more like Jesus (and a whole lot less like Zeus) than the "Turn or burn!" that I was raised under. 

That sounds a whole lot more like Philippians 2: "Instead he [Jesus] emptied himself by assuming the form of a servant, taking on the likeness of humanity. And when he had come as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death — even to death on a cross."

So my left-brained, analytical, western mind shouted at me, "Well if this is true, then hell can't be true!" or at least the kind of sadistic "burning forever in a lake of fire" type hell that the evangelists shouted about at the end of his fire-and-brimstone message. 

I was in a quandry. The Bible talks about hell (though we conflate a number of diverse ideas in our translations). So I maybe shouldn't just disbelieve what the Bible (actually) says about it. 

But the idea that God loves everybody is in the Bible, too. 1 Timothy 4:10 talks about "We have put our hope in the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe." All is a pretty big word. Maybe I shouldn't just disbelieve what the Bible (actually) says about this, either. 

What a quandry. 

Into this context, he reminded me: "Which pedal do you push on a bicycle in order to go forward?" Well the answer to that one is that I push whichever one is up, one after the other. It's not either-or. It's both-and. 

I had to admit, I've been prone to "binary thinking," where if I accept one thing as true, then I feel obligated to reject any other idea on that subject. (Examples of binary thinking include, "I didn't get that promotion, so my work here is meaningless and I'll never succeed." or the hallmark example of our day, "Donald Trump is the worst president we've ever had!" vs "Donald Trump is the best president we've ever had. The reality is that there's good and bad in most people; deal with it.)

I've run into a number of people who have discovered that God really IS good, so they have concluded that hell must be a lie or a misunderstanding. And I know a number of good folks who understand that hell is real and it's horrible, some of whom have actually visited it, so the idea of God welcoming everyone is anathema to them. 

So today, I was thinking about these, and the conundrum it was for my literal, logical mind. And it was into the middle of that, that Father whispered, "Yes, but you may have quit digging in this one too soon."

I'm beginning to think that maybe he's not as fond of black-and-white answers as I have always been.