Yam Stew and the Kingdom of God

Faith as a grain of mustard seed is not grainy faith or flaky beliefs.

During my middle years as a teacher I taught at a government school blessed with a kindly deputy head master who had one theme. He enunciated it with decorum but without effect every assembly day: The need to tidy the grotty campus. It was this dutiful deputy principal who told the boys that it is better to have any faith than no faith at all.

Any faith? I have thought about this over the years. I’m not sure that I agree. Maybe ‘a faith’ does structure life somewhat while relieving us of the anxiety of living in a void. Perhaps one could overcome ‘voidism’ and the null feelings it invokes as a surfer and make a simple belief system from waves and weather. A more simple faith like that of an animal might be food good and hungry bad, or as a famous work put it,  ‘Four legs good, two legs bad.’ But if communism was a paradise it was a paradise that needed walls to keep people in paradise. Some faiths are lame. Others are toxic.

Cannibalism might be thought of as a faith. It was underpinned by the notion of victory over an enemy and ingesting his essence. These ideas may structure tribal life but the man sitting in the pot might well wish the cannibal had no faith at all. ‘Abandon faith all ye who chant about my ear!’ he shouteth as he blendeth with the yam stew.

Nazism of the World War Two years was a cruel and arrogant faith based on the survival of the fittest and racism. Was this better than no faith? The belief that might makes right is not far removed from the belief that greed is good; that wealth is a sign of merit and that lack of wealth is the badge of the undeserving. Pity that Jesus said the wealthy would struggle to enter the Kingdom of God. But then again the Kingdom of God consists of those who live in God and not in configurations of good and evil

It is, perhaps, impossible to have ‘no faith,’ since all of us are socialized into some kind of matrix that forms a structure to our lives. ‘Faiths’ have an effect. An identity based on the certainty that we are sons, born of God is quite a different identity that based on the assumption that we started in a primordial soup that was struck by lightning. Again the destiny of one who knows they are sons of the free woman is different to one who is a child of the slave woman. The former develops in an atmosphere of infinite largesse. The latter attempts to live in the taunt, ‘If you are a son of God.’

Some faiths are toxic. Other faiths are a lie. We are what we think. If what we think is a lie our group life will be a lie. Christian fundamentalist sects can be a sad example of a crippling faith – a tissue of lies producing crippled people. Cages of faith are made from lies and false ‘certainty’ constructed from the planks of bad doctrine. Carefully assembled from the tree of knowledge these penitentiaries provide false security and real bondage. Then people bow down to their bondage and say, ‘Behold our god.’ But Jesus says, ‘Live in Me and experience your freedom!’

‘It is man’s fuel for burning; some of it he takes and warms himself, he kindles a fire and bakes bread. But he also fashions a god and worships it; he makes an idol and bows down to it’ Isa 44.15 NIV.

Toxic ‘faith’ makes people smaller than they would have been if they had no religion at all. This is why the agnostic or the atheist is sometimes of larger spirit than the scribe and teacher of the law. Why? He has not adopted limitation in the name of God. His soul and spirit are not constricted by a mean deity that is a projection of the religious self. Have you noticed that many idols are ugly? That’s because the self projected as ‘god’ is an unsightly and monstrous being.

On the other hand the righteousness sent from God is Jesus who gives the Spirit without limit to produce the sons of God. Largeness of spirit is the result of Christ in you!

Law bound versions of Christianity are not only contradictions in terms. Formed in the letter they kill. The letter kills human stature, nobility, Sonship and authority. The letter kills the image of Sonship in sons. The letter has us imagining we are glorious when we are actually nude. The letter stultifies and limits. The letter fades and jades  because the letter is the chief fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. But Jesus’ the living Word makes us sons. Christ for us and Christ in us is our right to the tree of life and entrance into the city of God.

‘But what does the Scripture say? “Get rid of the slave woman and her son, for the slave woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with the free woman’s son’ Gal 4.30 NIV.

No Christian group planted in the letter can flourish, even if it is Spirit-filled. As Galatians asserts the Spirit is extinguished by the law. It is seed cast on rocky soil. It will wilt like wheat planted on cotton wool in a saucer.  It will produce communities who live under a glass ceiling. The people under this old covenant covering will grope about in the twilight of a glass darkly. But in Jesus we see light. In Jesus we are the children of the free woman with an infinite inheritance as the sons and daughters of God.

‘But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away’ 2 Cor 3.16 NIV.

‘For the one whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for God gives the Spirit without limit’ John 3.34 NIV.

God is a Spirit. Jesus is a Spirit. ‘In Him all things hold together and find their purpose.’ Every physical and sentient thing finds its real nature in Jesus who created and redeemed the earth. Your order, righteousness and purpose is realized as your being is found in Jesus. All things are being brought together to function according to their proper nature in Jesus. Jesus, the Person is the law of the Spirit of life. Live, move and have your being in Jesus.

‘For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen’ Romans 11.36 NIV.

Keith Allen, May 15. 2011