Transformation?
How does choosing to identify with a word transform us? The word by itself doesn’t. It’s who speaks the word and what we understand the word to say about us that matters. Choosing one word is only a beginner’s step, but yet is oh so crucial because the hardest step is most often the first. One way to start is by identifying with a word that is true about how God sees us. Even though some of us may doubt that all these words can be true about us (at least to begin with), we can start by choosing the one word that resonates the most.
What is spiritual transformation? Many of us who identify as Christians often think of it as a conversion from something old and bad to something new and good. Although there is some truth to that thought, maybe we should think about it differently? What if our spiritual conversion isn’t a conversion? Conversion is defined as: an experience associated with the definite and decisive adoption of a religion. What if this change is better understood as a re-cognizing (re-knowing) that you are not adopting Jesus, but that Jesus has already adopted you?
God reveals our identity in Jesus, and we are transformed by our re-cognition of the ever-present, indwelling God with&in whom Jesus betroths and defines us as being One with God (the Relationship of Father, Son, Holy Spirit). For those of us who do not identify as Christian, think about it more like the part of you that you’ve always known as good to be what defines you, not our baggage.
continued from the HOME page…
Our toxic religion is confronted with change when we understand that God has already provided our unique identity in Jesus. Saul was confronted with change on the road to Damascus. Paul (Saul) had to spend a considerable amount of time in Arabia to rethink scripture and rethink how he understood God before he returned to Jerusalem. Many Christians are like Saul. Many don’t know who God says they are, yet. They are spiritually blinded by what they think scripture says about God. Only Jesus can heal us of this blindness (our distorted versions) of God.
“But when God was pleased, He having separated me from my mother’s belly, and having called me through His grace, Isa. 49:1 to reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him among the nations, immediately I did not confer with flesh and blood, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to the apostles before me, but I went away into Arabia and returned again to Damascus. Then after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to learn from Peter and remained with him fifteen days.” – Gal 1:15-18
What if God always sees the absolute original me because that is who I have always been in God’s eyes? What if who God created me to be has always been present with&in me? Like the butterfly hidden in the worm, or the flower hidden in the dry, dead-looking bulb. My Original Me is the presence of God already with&in me that is waiting for me to embrace the unique expression of God in me. This is the me that God has foreknown from before the foundations of the world. Unlike the butterfly or the flower, our metamorphosis is not a one-time event; it is an ongoing unique expression of the incarnation of the Relationship of God in me. My relative perspectives of this world are confronted by God’s absolute reality of who I am. Ultimately, I can only be One with&in the Relationship of God as I embrace my identity with&in Jesus. For us to embrace and agree with the making us as One with God by Jesus, we must recognize that Jesus is an example of us, more than an example for us. God didn’t create us to be exactly the same as Jesus. God created us to be in union (One) with the Relationship of God as Jesus is One with the Father.
“He caused things to be other than Himself that, being distinct, they may learn to love Him, and achieve union instead of mere sameness.” —C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain
“In that day you shall know that I am in My Father, and you are in Me, and I am in you.” —Jesus, John 14:20, LITV
“that all may be one, as You are in Me, Father, and I in You, that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me.
And I have given them the glory which You have given Me, that they may be One, as We are One: I in them, and You in Me, that they may be perfected in One; and that the world may know that You sent Me and loved them, even as You loved Me.” – John 17:21-23
“I and the Father are One!”- John 10:30
Sin no longer defines us. Being ONE with God does. Contrary to popular belief, our sin is not our problem. Our sin is the fruit of our problem. Our problem is not knowing who God says we are. Our sin does not keep God from us, but our sin keeps us from God. Our sin lies to us about who we are, and we believe it. God has saved us from our sin so we can see (and be) who God says we are as One in Jesus. The Good News of Christ is not a message that says our moral response leads us to forgiveness. It is a message of forgiveness that leads to morality being an organic fruit in our lives.
The Gospel (Good News) is NOT about our sin, it’s about our Jesus. It is about the Light, NOT about the darkness. We have been taught a sin-focused “gospel,” which is not the Gospel. This teaching of our modern Church has cheapened the beauty of the Gospel. It has been reduced to an exchange of a “payment” for sin instead of our hearts returning to our identity with&in Jesus. Jesus’ “payment” was not a “pay off” for our sin. It was the payment of a Bride’s price for His Bride. As brilliant as St. Augustine was, we can blame him for our inherited tradition of this transactional construct of God. (There were actually other contributors also, but for brevity and simplicity’s sake, we can just scapegoat our brother Aurelius.) Many of the Reformers swallowed the same poison. Hence why there are so many of us today still drinking the “Kool-Aid.” (This real-life metaphor of Jone’s Town and the Kool-Aid is tragic and is not meant to be disrespectful. It is used here because its imagery is so appropriate to our toxic problem.)
We, humans, are very resourceful when it comes to fashioning versions of deities to support and validate our constructs for ourselves in this world. Some of our activity is well intended, and I think most often flies below the spiritual radar. Jesus has offered us an upgraded radar, but many of us struggle to see that we need one. Our ability to see and hear God is stuck behind the “veil of Moses,” as Paul talks about in 2 Corinthians 3:12-18.
“Our thoughts are hardened, for until the present day the same veil remains on the reading of the Old Covenant… when Moses (OT thinking) is being read a veil lies on our hearts, but when we turn to God (metanoia) and we find freedom as the veil is removed. With unveiled faces (healed of our blindness) we behold the fullness of God (F,S,S) in Jesus as we are transformed!”
Why am I sharing this? Because our transformation depends on us embracing our identity (the One God has given us), not the one of moral standards of performance that we find in the OT that ultimately serve the false idols and beliefs we have created about ourselves and about the God of Judeo-Christian Scripture. The OT is part of all our stories as it is about man’s confusion about God. It is honored and inspired because it is a reflection of our relative human reality in which God meets us, and in a long-suffering manner abides with us until we are willing to return home to the Relationship of God as we see in the parable of Jesus that we call “the prodigal son.” What we less often discuss in this parable is the older son’s confusion about his Father. The older son represented me and many, many well-meaning people that claim the name of Jesus as our savior.
In this context, I share with you my own transformation from something historically recent and toxic (some of what I had been taught about the Bible and subsequently God’s nature that involves God being conditional) to something ancient and good (seeing our union with&in the Relationship of God (F,S,S) through the eyes of Jesus. My metanoia (turning back) to who God created me to be, back to re-knowing that Jesus has (from before the foundations of this world) included me in the Relationship of God!