The Elephant in the Room

When I was 12, I had to memorize the poem “The Blind Men and the Elephant” for a school competition. I’ve never forgotten it.

Six blind men describe with great certainty the mighty elephant, each touching only one part of it, never the whole animal. The one part they do experience and describe seems very accurate, but their overall conclusions about the whole elephant are wildly and laughably distorted. They assume their experience and viewpoint is the totality of the creature. No doubt, six religions were formed that day.

­­I call that Partial Truth. Truth frees us, but Partial Truth makes us prisoners to lopsided and distorted viewpoints and agendas of men and women, no matter how well intentioned, who believe their Partial Truth is The Whole Truth. Many sincere people believe and act like the one small part they have touched and described of the mystery of our ineffable (indescribable) and cosmic God is The Whole Truth about this God who is in love with all.

Then they try to propagate and package and sell it as His All Encompassing Truth. That’s how we end up with a nicely packaged God who is expected to perform according to our limited knowledge. We forget that, according to the Psalmist, God is in heaven and He does what He wants.

Most systems of the world—especially the religious ones—flourish on Partial Truth. It’s fatal to any system to let followers who have never touched more than the trunk, suddenly discover that there is a tail or an ear or a tusk. Or that there might even be an amazing creature far greater than anyone has ever imagined.

Before you keep exploring a relational, supernatural Kingdom of God that has been freely offered to ALL and a King of a Kingdom who really loves ALL, count the costs. You may find yourself labeled as the enemy, or a heretic. And when your religious system no longer has use for you, you may find yourself shunned and shamed for daring to believe there is more than the tail the denomination or political party or economic system is peddling. This is particularly ugly in our religious systems because here it is done in the name of the One who has come to set all free. (History does not lie.)

The poem ends telling us that the six blind men “fought loud and long, stiff and strong” to advance their particular view of the elephant. Make you think of anything happening in certain circles today? If it does, the poem’s ending should be taken to heart:

“…each was partly in the right,
And all were in the wrong!”

The Agape Agenda

Love has never been a mass movement. Never.

So be wary of those who say they represent the Kingdom of God but do not carry God’s DNA, which is always about love. Always!

No matter what you call yourself — an Ambassador of the Kingdom of God, a Parish Priest, a Kingdom Carrier, or whatever the trendy term is for the year or decade, your credential for that position will always be that you have been impregnated by the Seed of God and carry His DNA.

Don’t get caught up in causes and opinions in the name of Jesus. The base line of a Kingdom of God transformation is “I love you!” with the desire to love your neighbor and do him good with no other agenda. None! That’s Agape.

So get a hunger to hang out with those teaching love. It’s the foundation of the Kingdom of God.

And if the Kingdom of God is anything — and it is everything — it’s relational, supernaturally relational based upon a foundation of love.

Who Is The One Who Loves? or The Story Of A Concert

I couldn’t help but laugh at the un-laughable. “Christians” were picketing a recent concert and the “you are going to hell message” was running rampant. It seems to be a popular message in some Christian circles after a generation of the rule of the Moral Majority in our evangelical church.

While the protestors targeted those going into the packed-out stadium to see and hear a powerful voice and message to a world-wide audience, on the inside was at least one pastor I knew who had decided to go and see who this woman was and what her message was. The one thing he will always remember about that night was the representation of angry Christianity on the outside while inside a woman lies down on the stage in the middle of her concert, looks heavenward and declares:

“Oh, Jesus, up there in heaven;
All those people outside
tell me that you don’t love me. But I know it’s not true;
I know you love me.
And, I know you love all these “Little Monsters.”

Lady Gaga is praying to my God, to my Jesus, to the One who has defined the ultimate love His followers are to demonstrate while “Christians” are ranting outside with hate and anger. For the tens of thousands who attended the concert I don’t have to guess who had the bigger impact. I dare say they wrote off those who, in the name of Jesus and with great condemnation, were declaring, “He hates you, go to hell!”

I do wonder if my Jesus was sitting next to His and my Father saying,

“Dad, doesn’t that look like the Good Samaritan parable all over again?
Do you think that our followers will figure out who is the true ambassador of Good News?
Will they decide it is those who are picketing and hating in our name,
or could they possibly choose the one on the inside who is telling the cast-offs
of their religious society that we are love and we love them?”

As all those kids left the arena that night, what would they remember as they bore the brunt of the message of hate and scorn by the religious societies? Like my pastor friend, I believe they will remember the greater message of Lady Gaga, already shunned and shamed in the name of Jesus. They will remember the one who, despite the protests, will not give up on a God who is love and holds out with a greater faith that He is who He says He is, not who He is represented to be.

Who had the greater impact to change a generation? Who was the more meaningful ambassador of a Kingdom that is relational and supernatural? Who was more the imitator of God? Was it those shouting hate and damnation and killing all with the Law, or the despised woman calling upon the love of Jesus on behalf of all those who could hear?

I will continue to be mystified by those protestors shaming others in the name of Jesus while a singer who had no apparent agenda, no hidden cause to promote, just makes a simple statement of Jesus is love. God is compassionate and gracious and slow to anger, merciful, truth and covenantally faithful, forgiving. He, too, is love.

That night I didn’t have to ponder long who I wanted as my neighbor and who Jesus might use in a contemporary retelling of the Good Samaritan story. Somehow Gaga knows that this God of ours loves most those that are despised by the world systems, especially the religious systems of the 21st Century.

There is no other answer than love because God is and always will be love. And all He asks of us is to love Him with all and love our neighbor as self. It is written.

A Transformation of Love and the Kingdom of God

“If you have not chosen the Kingdom of God first, it will in the end make no difference what you have chosen instead.”    William Law

The Kingdom of God is not another subject to add to our religious studies. It is the paramount centrality of God’s message through Jesus to all mankind. Jesus is far more than savior. He is Emanuel, God with us and within us. He is King of His Father’s Kingdom.

All of life is decided by what you decide about the Kingdom of God. I have learned that if the Kingdom of God is anything—and it is everything—it is relational and supernatural. All of life is decided by whether we believe God is a Father who desires relationship with us and, therefore, desires us to have relationship with our neighbor. All of life is decided by whether we believe that this Kingdom is a place of supernatural lifestyle or just a part of the religious language system of man. All of life is decided by whether we believe in a Kingdom on earth that is from another realm or choose to follow the kingdoms of man, systems created by and for man to rule over man.

Praying a prayer and then joining a church or para-church ministry has become the objective of spiritual life, the focal point of Christianity in our era. It seems like few who claim to follow Jesus know of this mysterious, relational, supernatural Kingdom or that Jesus said His purpose for coming was to proclaim the Kingdom of His Father, the only unshakeable foundation we will ever be offered on earth. And it’s ours for the taking.

We miss the point of the great battle of wills between Jesus and Lucifer as Jesus came out of the desert to begin His walk among men. The Book says Lucifer tried to tempt Him with all the splendor of the kingdoms of the world, including, no doubt, a religious Kingdom alternative. Jesus said no to every last one of them because He was inaugurating the most amazing Kingdom the universe has ever witnessed.

The Kingdom of God implies an awe of a big, big God. The Kingdom is the story of a Father who sent a Son to model the ultimate Father-Son relationship that we are to imitate and enter into a totally supernatural realm that is unexplainable by the rationale of men. It implies that God is love because it’s a totally relational environment.

It’s all about faith, not apologetics. By faith we are impregnated with the Seed of God, and our hearts are changed. We are transformed from the inside out into imitators of a Father and His Son. So simple, but we make it so religious. So God dependent, yet we make it so man dependent.

God will plant the Seed supernaturally and He will mature the Seed supernaturally. Day and night the Seed is growing. Day and night we are maturing on the inside to the place where a transformation becomes obvious. We begin to change. Suddenly we are compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and merciful; we walk in truth and are covenantally faithful and yes, even forgive all wrongs. God is with us in the neighborhood because He is in us and we become the neighbor.

Until the Kingdom is central to our being, there is little for the King to reign over. An agape transformation will never occur until we individually become re-centered on what Jesus was centered on–the Kingdom of God now at hand. “A King with no Kingdom cannot protect his people,” I have heard said. I would agree.

This cosmic Kingdom created and then individually conferred on all of us who desire to change kingdoms and live under the reign of this ineffable God is the hope of our journey into an agape transformation. It only takes the faith of a child and the power of the “I believe, I believe” in a supernatural realm on earth that has come from above. It is so simple and freeing that theologians stumble over it, denominations avoid it, the religious systems cannot afford to proclaim it, except as a watered down, re-defined add-on to the business of institutional church.

For an agape transformation to become a reality, it must be based upon the truth of the Kingdom of God now at hand. It must be an individually received truth that comes from faith, and that by grace, one person at a time.

So come Holy Spirit! Come with a transformation that creates in each of us an ever-growing desire for the demonstration of Jesus’ great prayer, “Your Kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.”

Agape. Transformation.

Could these words be the reason for Isaiah’s dilemma and ultimate transformation when he cried, “Woe to me! I am ruined! For…my eyes have seen the King the LORD Almighty.”

Does he, in fact, have a Moses-like experience of seeing God’s true nature, His DNA, as his eyes behold for the first time the Father who loves (agapes) all? Isaiah knew deeply of God, but then suddenly he realizes he has never met this Father. And when he does, he knows he is ruined to the core. The old ways will not suffice. Seeing the King and that much love ruins a man and transforms his heart.

It was Moses who pleaded with God, “I have to know you. Show me who you are.” And God does because He knows that when His true nature is revealed, His agape is irresistible. He answers Moses, “I will let you see my all-encompassing goodness—compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving–so you will want to imitate me with the same qualities.”

Only God can transform a human to make him human as He intended. Only God can impregnate a man with His seed/DNA and cause him to be ruined forever when he sees the King and, in the process, receive a whole new identity with new values and a new sense of worth.

This transforming Seed is the simplest of all messages. You don’t even have to try to sell or market it. It sells itself because the evidence of the maturing Seed in a life is so astounding and blatantly supernatural that the world takes notice. The world is weary of religion trying to impose change, but never transforming. It has learned how to manipulate the systems of man by feigning change on the outside. But a person that has God’s seed growing from the inside out, and who is suddenly becoming compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, loving, faithful, and forgiving, well, even the world recognizes that as a miracle.

It takes time for this kind of maturity. It takes time because it’s totally supernatural and we are not comfortable being supernatural. It takes time to see the difference between a Kingdom and the masquerading kingdoms of this world. God does it–matures us–and is doing it, night and day, in every circumstance, whenever, however and to whomever He chooses.

This transformation is not so noticeable at first. But that’s how the Seed is. Then one day everything changes. The neighbors can’t help but notice something rather amazing on the block. An unlikely neighbor down the street is acting strangely; he is forgiving and his anger is subsiding. He actually seems compassionate instead of judgmental, and yes, even loving. The Seed in this one transforming person is now taking root and spreading through the neighborhood. What John wrote becomes a reality: God moves into the neighborhood, becoming flesh and blood so that all might know Him and imitate Him with the same encompassing goodness. Soon the community is infected with agape, which vibrates throughout the city. Then a nation begins transforming to imitate the Father.

In the early 60’s, the muse of musician Bob Dylan reflected on the power of that time: “In that era we had something to say, not something to sell.” Religion and the systems of man have a hard sell. The world has heard all it has to say…and has stopped believing it, for the most part. But the story of a supernatural transformation from above is a story worth telling and one the world will believe and repeat. It’s hard not to believe the evidence when the evidence is lives transformed with the DNA of God.

Can you imagine a Christianity with nothing to sell, nothing to prove, no agenda to push, no angry God to perform for. Just being who God created us to be, loving Him and loving our neighbor. No striving because it really is all about a supernatural and eternal Seed filled with all the goodness of a loving Father that keeps growing, growing, growing, and transforming us all in His good time.

Oh, may we be quickly ruined and forever transformed all because we met the Father and found Him to be Love.