Writer and Editor of Ammi Ruhama Community Christian Union. Also published on Baseline Christianity.
Daniel L. Bacon
A Brief Devotional on Personal Responsibility
ARC Guide Level 1 Ideal for those getting acquainted with our thought process at Ammi Ruhama Community.
The work of repairing the primary interface has often been referred to as building rapport, which can get a little lost in translation as rapport tends to be the word used for an singular individual and does not carry with it the weight of our more familiar term commonly used for larger groups of people; faith. People usually talk about how their faith in humanity has been lost and restored by either the great moral decay of a school shooting or the kindness of a block of neighbours who support both the victim’s family and the perpetrator’s family. When I talk about repairing the primary interface, this can only be done person to person, and when a great number of people are in concert to repair the primary interface they too must be an integral, in person part of that repair work; not just as a part of the group but also, and most importantly, as an individual. There are many things in this life that we can outsource to other people to accomplish but the work of repairing the primary interface is the one personal and irreplaceable responsibility in our lives that cannot be shirked or outsourced lest we fail to communicate the love and mercy of Christ.
ARC Guide Level 2 Ideal for those already acquainted with our thought process at Ammi Ruhama Community
It can be tempting when not wanting to speak nonsense to our neighbours to swing the other direction and rock away on our front porch and say nothing–to disconnect from the conversation all together. It is true that there are some conversations that are best to hold for another time; perhaps when both participants have matured a bit more. Remember, however, that the point of life is to communicate, so giving the cold shoulder because of a known disagreement, even in the case of what seems to be a vitally important conversation is puerile, in direct conflict with our life’s purpose, and ultimately putting too much down on one horse. Our go to ‘wisdom,’ generally comes from Thumper the Hare’s curiously absent father,
“If you can’t say something nice, don’t say nothing at all.”
Mr. Hare
I would amend his statement to say, “if you can’t say something nice, say something altogether different,” keep the conversation congenial and don’t let your pride get in the way of your mutual life’s purpose of repairing the primary interface enough to communicate the best news ever. If you have to share an uncomfortable truth about what you believe that you’re pretty sure is going to be in diametric opposition to your conversation partner, take a long time to give the truth its proper context laying the foundational work of relationship first. Remember that it isn’t our job to convince anyone of anything, but to communicate plenty. We may not have all of the answers and, indeed, may be wrong on a few of the finer points, as we often are when speaking out of our blessed assurance, but remember that the point isn’t to be right and the absolute authority on all occasions. The point is to communicate the love and mercy of Christ.
These instructions will be nonsense to those united in enmity; who think that all things are fair in love and war and that the only people who are with you are those who have allied against the same enemies. The life purpose of communication does not tolerate enmity as the source of unity. All enmity with the world and with God must be done away with and the source of unity be the love and mercy of Christ.
ARC GUIDE LEVEL 3 Ideal for those well acquainted with our thought process at Ammi Ruhama Community.
We need to make some difficult connections when it comes to what we do and say on a day to day basis according to our new found purpose in life. Our purpose is not a new action, a new career, the care of a specific type of person or a resolution to start or stop anything, but a renewed passion to communicate. To be seen, felt, heard and understood and to see, feel, hear and understand a wide variety of people from a wide variety of backgrounds and to derive value from one another in such a way as to sustain one another by fulfilling our mutual life’s purpose.
If the whole point of life is intersoul communication then the stuff of life takes a back seat to accurately and effectively communicating ourselves and our message to one another. In order for this to happen, the message must be our own and cannot be talking points from some institution or symbiotic organisation to which we belong. Otherwise we put a secondary interface between of our senses and theirs and end up speaking nonsense to our neighbours because they don’t know how to read love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control from the big red sign we are holding that says, “Abortion is Murder,” or, “God Hates Fags,” or “Don’t you see I just finished mopping the floor? Get the f*ck out!”
My question to help us make these connections will always be to ask what the point of life is. If I am thrown into a tale spin because I cannot control a situation or an outcome, or footfall on my newly clean floor, then I, perhaps, have not fully believed that the point of life is to communicate the best news ever. If I did, I would be more diplomatic and put my best foot forward. I would make a concerted effort to be crystal clear in every instance, and act and speak in a way that shows my primary interfacial care and concern for people communicated directly to them person to person. Let me be clear here, the point of life is not to, ‘be the adult,’ or to have clean floors or to be necessarily right, but to communicate. If I am convinced that I alone am right then my goal is not to communicate but to dictate as the god of my area–it is a subtle difference with massive outcomes. I can communicate who I am and what I believe without dictating to others when I fully receive who they are and what they believe and interface with them in a meaningful way moving the conversation forward without the use of what the Apostle Paul calls “well thought out arguments”. The point of life is not to control people but to love them, and serve them by the communication of the best news ever until they believe it not only by our understandable language but by our actions of love towards them because we have brought nothing but Christ and Him crucified. This is not only in terms of witnessing to the lost but to one another. We can deny Christ by denying our purpose to communicate the love and mercy of Christ in our day to day interactions. The goal is then not only that we would love and serve others and offer them the mercy of God which we ourselves received but for them to love and serve us and others around them and offer them the mercy that they received–this can only be done when we are not speaking nonsense to our neighbours.
Defining Human Flourishing as a Product of Intersoul Communication
ARC GUIDE LEVEL 3 Ideal for those well acquainted with our thought process at Ammi Ruhama Community.
The Brief
In episode 517 of The Holy Post Podcast, frequent co-host Kaitlyn Schiess challenged the Christian community to write about human flourishing and how that impacts the way that we live in community. I considered this challenge and have decided to accept and expand the idea of the pursuit of human flourishing beyond what I believe is currently taking place. It is first necessary to recognise a distinction between pursuing abstract flourishing and pursuing human flourishing. Is the abstract flourishing of all created things the sufficient and consistent ideological end of Christianity? I believe it is certainly a part of it; perhaps the by-product of a more deserving end goal. Humans objectively flourish in certain environments of love and community which we know can and have been created on a one to one basis and even in a small community such as a family unit, but how does the abstract pursuit of flourishing scale? In this introduction, we will examine human flourishing as the by-product of the maintenance of intersoul communication.
Intersoul Communication
Human Flourishing is an objective end goal. Everyone wants to flourish in their own way, and ultimately we all agree about what flourishing looks like. When we consider the abstract objective of human flourishing, however, we do not consider that there are ends greater than my individual flourishing even if it also contributes to the so-called flourishing of the wider community. We will see that this kind of flourishing is always at the expense of our own humanity and the humanity of those least valued by the community. With the option of flourishing or communicating I would much rather communicate. Indeed, this is the example we received in Christ.
Jesus: the Great Teacher
We must reclaim Jesus’ example as the greatest communicator who ever lived. Consider that if Jesus was flourishing by anyone’s standards in heaven then, by comparison, he most certainly was not flourishing on earth. He gave up that which caused him to flourish, face to face communion with Himself, not to ensure the flourishing of those around Him; indeed, His closest followers were put to death for His sake just as He prophesied. He gave up that flourishing to re-establish the primary interface between the Father and His children. In the course of re-establishing this connection, Jesus demonstrated how to re-establish the primary interface with one another which resulted in human flourishing. By their faith, they walked and saw and spoke and were healed and ate. Jesus did not set up a secondary organisation to do this for him or shotgun heal or feed a whole crowd–he did it personally, one by one, in order to communicate through and repair the primary interface. When He had repaired his disciples sufficiently, He gave them the Holy Spirit to do the same things and they went and personally did the work that Jesus was also doing. This, I believe, is what Jesus meant when just before He was about to die he prophesied,
12“Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father. 13Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14If you ask mee anything in my name, I will do it.
John 14:12-14 English Standard Version
When Jesus re-established the people of God, it was a community of people who were doing exactly this. They were doing the same work and a greater work, by Jesus’ own estimation, of re-establishing peoples communion with God and with one another than Jesus was able to accomplish in his brief time with us. We began to fail this vision when we institutionalised the people of God and symbiotic organisations grew up and took over in the form of the church. We traded direct intersoul communication resulting in human flourishing for indirect flourishing. We considered that if flourishing is the direct end of all things then people don’t need to be communicated to, they need to see and hear and speak and eat and flourish in every way possible and in as efficient a way as possible. This resulted in a ‘sit down, shut up and listen to your Bible story, and then line up and get your gruel and sit back down’ message being communicated by the secondary interface. By neglecting to continue Jesus’ work of personally repairing the primary interface and establishing reconciliation with God and other people, we also neglect the work of seeking human flourishing.
Conditions for Flourishing
People do not flourish unless they are effectively communicating with God and with one another and this cannot happen unless we shed our secondary interfaces and communicate with people through the primary interface. People are the primary interface for intersoul communication. If I interact with anyone on the basis of my acting on behalf of anyone else or being over them in any capacity, be they my children, my employees or a public servant, and not as an interpersonal interaction, then I act upon them in an impersonal manner. If I am impersonal then I have communicated that it is better to forgo both my humanity and yours in the pursuit of our collective abstract flourishing than to take the time to repair the breach and temporarily sacrifice my own flourishing in pursuit of re-establishing communication with people as part of the primary interface. This will result in far greater and more widespread human flourishing than the impersonal seeking after collective flourishing via a secondary interface.
Communicate and Flourish
It is therefore my conclusion that it is not consistent with the Christian faith that we should seek flourishing through secondary interfacial institutions at the expense of our humanity, but rather that we should seek to re-establish the primary interface of soul to soul care and communication resulting in human flourishing according to Christ our example.
James 1 Lit Test
If our main individual pursuit and purpose in this life is to commune with God and with one another then we cannot effectively run after those pursuits if we continually outsource that responsibility to those we think can do a better, more efficient job. We will fail at both our own flourishing and the flourishing of others if we fail at personal intersoul communication. We will not effectively communicate our love and mercy nor the love and mercy of God if our foundations feed a billion people in the third world next year. This is not because God doesn’t want us to feed a billion people in the third world, but because we were not the ones to do it. We had a plan B. We didn’t give our last mite to do it, and ultimately those people are so far removed from us that we think we achieved our purpose when really we met a dead-end. World hunger would be over tomorrow if those who were hungry helped feed one another. The world is not divided into have and have nots, but into care and care-nots. If I gave up my flourishing in my food supply chain to help those around me who were hungry to eat then I would be doing the work of removing secondary interfaces and repairing the primary interface between myself and those I help feed and between them and God. I would learn their names and professions and call them to walk after me–not for the purpose of collectively filling our bellies and flourishing in that capacity but to learn to repair the communication lines between God and ourselves; that we would live as one with God and with one another as God is one with Himself.
ARC GUIDE LEVEL 3 Ideal for those well acquainted with our thought process at Ammi Ruhama Community.
If the world we live in was created for the purpose of intersoul communion then the whole point of every life is to communicate effectively. Some would argue that it is simply to know, but if the point of life is to know the ultimate knowledge then once I know that knowledge my job is done and I have no incentive to communicate it–my purpose is met with a dead end. If my purpose, however, is to communicate effectively then my job is never done seeking the ultimate knowledge and communicating it to the world. We can know or think we know many things in isolation and fail to communicate that knowledge effectively and therefore fail in our purpose. I can know there is a God and tremble but not commune and be one with Him. The God who created the universe for intersoul communion desires communion with our souls and desires that we would have communion with one another. The content of that communication is where everyone differs. What information could I learn apart from which nothing else makes sense and by extension what message should I devote my life to communicating effectively to as wide and diverse a group as possible? These are worthy questions to pursue. In our infancy we must learn to communicate to survive and now we must become fluent in the best news ever and how that applies to our lives.
ARC GUIDE LEVEL 4 Ideal for those well acquainted with our thought process at Ammi Ruhama Community and with other Christian Communities.
Questioning our Existence
What is the nature of creation, what purpose does it serve, and what is my purpose in it? These and other questions rattle around in our minds as we seek to make sense of our experiences. I offer this gospel narrative from creation to the cross as an answer to these questions and an invitation for intersoul communication.
Intersoul
Creation is an interface for reality. People, places, and things are communicating information like a barometer communicates information about weather to those who know how to read it. We create secondary interfaces like the barometer, within the primary interface to help manage and predict that information but the secondary interface is not the primary interface, and therefore not communicating reality directly to us but through one or more stages of translation. For instance, the barometer is not weather, it only communicates weather, so if it is not accurately calibrated it will give us incorrect information about the weather. Weather itself is part of the primary interface and so it communicates information about whatever weather is an interface to communicate. Such is the sun and the moon and the stars and everything naturally occurring–all are a part of the original interface that communicates something for us to discover.
Shadows & Interfaces
Plato postulated that reality is like shadows on the wall of a cave . The shadows indicate the exact matching thing on the outside of the cave, but this does not, in my estimation, have to be the case. Material things do not have to have a corresponding thing that is the full essence of it. A chair, for instance, is not a chair because it has essential chairness, it is a chair because we assign and rearrange parts of the original interface to assist and make us more comfortable within the system while we receive the information that the interface was designed to communicate. The chair becomes a manifestation that allows, assists and makes us comfortable when we act in ways we want to act within the interface. Sticking with chairs, if I sit in the right chair it communicates information about me to other people. If I sit at the head of a table, depending on my culture, it is an indication of my status in relation to those at the table. If I sit in the only chair in the room the chair communicates my preferred status to everyone else standing in the room. So then, it is necessary to distinguish between the primary interface which communicates primary information and secondary interfaces which communicate secondary information.
Primary Interface
The primary interface communicates information about outside of the interface to us which is vital for our sustained physical presence within the interface. Our bodies, for instance, are primary interfaces for our souls which, ultimately, reside outside of the interface but for sanity’s sake are fully identified to our bodies. If our bodies are damaged, our souls do not receive equal damage. If our bodies die then our souls go on. So, if our bodies are the interface for our soul, what message were our bodies created to communicate? I believe our bodies were created to communicate our souls to one another. We cannot, by means of the rest of the primary interface, communicate with the soul of a loved one who has passed from their physical body–they are disconnected from the interface. It stands to reason then that if the interface was created for the purpose of intersoul communication, then there is someone who wishes to communicate with us. Someone created a whole interface in order to do it and injected us, one by one by one into the system. We learn intersoul communication first via secondary interfaces like language and body movement and culture. As we learn to communicate with more and more people of varying languages and cultures we start to realize that we all act in extraordinarily similar ways and that we are all really one people. We postulate about the one who created the system and perhaps at the right time this person communicates with us. They open our eyes to reality beyond the interface they have created for intersoul communication with us! That person is God.
Secondary Interfaces
Secondary interfaces have the unique quality of having a created purpose beyond the elements of the primary interface that were used to create it. To return to the barometer; it is made of many elements of the primary interface but, when organized in a particular way, it becomes a barometer; a one way interface that communicates weather to the user for their own knowledge.
In the record about Adam and Eve, they were originally ‘naked,’ or exposed; our term for having no secondary interface with God or with one another. When they went against God, they used parts of the primary interface to cover their shame from one another and God. It was a sign that sin had created another interface through which God and humanity had to now communicate with one another. God deemed their covering to be insufficient and sacrificed an animal to cover their nakedness. The record shows that over time more interfaces would be created to facilitate intersoul communication and that, eventually, these interfaces became the focus and supposed purpose of life instead of intersoul communication. We are born into and initiated into innumerable secondary interfaces; governments, religions, cultures, languages, schools of thought, and so on and so forth that we claim make intersoul communication easier and more possible. Consider, however, our most sacred relationship. In the record, it is said of marriage, that the two will become one flesh; that all secondary interfaces will be removed from between these two people and their bare souls would know one another and in their knowing they would create another soul with which to interface.
In the record, Cain and Abel get into their famous altercation about their secondary interface with God. It is possible that this ceremony was a rite in the making; that when Adam and Eve had their boys they told them of how they were able to still commune with God, even after the garden. That they had covered themselves with fig leaves and that God had sacrificed an animal to clothe them and that if they wanted to commune with God they too would have to cover their nakedness before Him. At this point, sacrifices had not been set up as the preferred interface with God. They both decide their course of action in order to cover their nakedness and appear before God. Cain sacrifices his first fruits mimicking his parent’s covering themselves with figleaves and Abel sacrifices a first born lamb from his flock along with its fat portions mimicking God’s sacrifice of the first animal when he clothed Adam and Eve to cover their nakedness. When Abel is successful in interfacing with God by the covering of his nakedness through his sacrifice and Cain is not, the record says that Cain is downcast. Again, there is no indication that Adam, Eve, Cain or Abel have insight into what God wanted the two men to offer. Because of this, God interfaces with Cain to give him hope for the future and a warning.
“If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it.”
Genesis 4:7 English Standard Version
Notice that the opposite of acceptance by God for doing well is not death, but that Cain will be overcome by sin; that he will, like his parents, seek his own way to restore his relationship with God. By way of reminder, Cain’s first fruits have already been sacrificed to God; presumably he has nothing else to offer and instead of going in humility to Abel to ask for a first born lamb, he kills him and presumably gains all of his sheep. When God returns to look for Abel to commune with him He doesn’t find him, but says to Cain, “What have you done? Abel’s blood cries out to me from the ground,” an indication that even in death, the purpose of creation was always unrestricted intersoul communication with God and with one another. Indeed it is a declaration that all of creation shouts continually, that there is an eternally powerful divine one and that He desires to communicate with us.
The Ultimate Secondary Interface
We could continue detailing the many secondary interfaces that people have used to commune with God but I think the point has been made. The ultimate secondary interface with God was established by God himself through the sacrifice of Jesus the Son as the proverbial perfect lamb and by raising Him from the dead He sealed the sacrifice as the final covering for our nakedness before God. Choosing to put on that covering for our nakedness from God is what we now refer to as salvation however most continue in their self gathered fig leaves seeking their own way back to the Father. When their body dies; their primary interface for intersoul communication goes with it and their opportunity to commune with God in the interface He created for that purpose is over.
Encouragement towards the Reorientation of Daily Life towards Personal Obedience to the Spirit of God
ARC GUIDE LEVEL 3 Ideal for those well acquainted with our thought process at Ammi Ruhama Community.
Typically, this kind of article is the one the reader clicks on to read what the author thinks are the definitive Christian disciplines that will establish the believer’s heart in the Word and build an impenetrable fortress of faith in the heart and life of the individual. But, if you read Reoriented in Love (insert link) then you know that it is my intention to place that particular burden squarely on the shoulders of the mature believers among the people of God who have received mercy. So let’s get started.
The Icebreaker
Those who have heard my testimony know that my heart and passion for discipleship have lead me to do some rather interesting things. Chief among those actions was to invite a homeless man I had known for only a month to camp out in my garden for a week while we helped him find accommodation. That act in and of itself may sound like an exotic occurrence that would only happen on the bleeding edge of the mission field, a boasting in my own virtues if you will. But, let me assure you that it started out as a simple act of obedience to make disciples of Jesus. “Have you received the Spirit of God?”, “Has anyone ever showed you in the Word how to truly live?”, “If you would like, I would love to do that for you.” These are the two questions and the offer I gave to a certain man when I met him in a church service in Armagh that led to him camping in my garden a month later. He had received Christ as his Saviour and therefore the Spirit of God, and no, no one had taken him through the Word to show him how to live, and yes, he would be delighted if I would do that for him! We met in my home several times a week for the next month where we started out by exchanging testimonies and then by going through the Word rather immethodically and letting it spark conversation after conversation that enabled me to get to know him better and for him to continually surrender his past and present life to the Spirit of God. It came about that because he had not registered as homeless in our city that he was being kicked out of the homeless shelter and had nowhere to go. We both immediately got to work looking for a short term place for him to stay and when it became apparent that no one else was going to take him in, my wife suggested that he pitch a tent in our garden. So, he spent the last of his money on a tent and supplies and he pitched his tent at the end of our garden. When he was in the garden he sent emails to the leaders of the churches he had been visiting for the past year, I sent emails to the leaders I knew and made phone call after phone call but no one would take him in on a longer term basis. It was a time of immense shock for me to see the body fail so spectacularly at loving this man. Our discipleship relationship has since looked like a lot of things over the years, sometimes meeting every day like in the week that he spent with us, and sometimes being absent for three or more months at a time while the Spirit worked on the both of us. But inevitably the Spirit would put him on my heart or me on his to send a WhatsApp and he and I will catch up and bless one another with what God has been doing in each of our lives. We are also at the point where we can both share our frustrations with the state of the body of Christ and how we could possibly help change what we experience on a daily basis. From the moment I met him, he has been a helpful indicator of the health of the body as he tells me how people have and are currently treating him in each of the bodies he visits on a regular basis. It implanted in me a desire to see a stark change come to the body of Christ. It started to peel back the veil on the Symbiotic Organisations who called themselves churches but were not acting like the people of God who have received mercy.
I tell you this story, because it is at the root of why ARC exists today. I listened for the Spirit of God and did what I thought were small acts of obedience to His voice, but were still too big for most to join in. There was one organisation who ended up taking him in but even then it wasn’t six months until he was back in the homeless shelter; spiritually stronger for our continued discipleship but on the backswing economically. Praise be to God who provided a private place for him to move, a job in Belfast and eventually his own private rental home. What part I and my wife played was a part of following step by step instructions and all glory is to God who made straight his paths. This is all we can expect of ourselves and those we would see raised up to full reproducing maturity in Christ. That we would be able to take those that the world has rejected and raise them up to Christ.
After all of this, I thought that I had to reproduce the circumstances surrounding my friend’s rise out of homelessness. I thought maybe a homeless ministry would be what God would want us to start, but God impressed on my heart that if we start a homeless ministry then it will be one more ministry that believers can outsource their obedience to and not take in the next homeless person He asks them to take in. He then opened my eyes to all of the other ways we make it so that the everyday believer thinks that they do not have to be personally obedient to the Spirit of God. Personal gospel fluency, personally giving to the poor and needy, personally providing a place to stay to those in need, personally loving one another, personally taking care of orphans and widows, personally obeying God in all of life. These are the kinds of things that the body needs to be trained to do and which we must stop doing for them. We do not need another creation seminar or another right to life rally, or another pep talk about purity until we have made significant progress in equipping, edifying, encouraging and reorienting the body towards personal obedience to the Holy Spirit of God in all of life.
A Brief Contemplation of Unity in Love and the Mingling of Magic with the Gospel of Christ.
ARC GUIDE LEVEL 4 Ideal for those well acquainted with our thought process at Ammi Ruhama Community and with other Christian Communities.
If we become what we measure then whatever we measure becomes our basis for unity. We are not, however, called to a baseless unity in whatever we choose to measure. In fact, given the chance, we always unite in the strictest measure we can think of and immediately try to push out those who rate low on that measuring stick.
Blue and Red Shirts
The exclusive nature of unity suggests that some are united while others are not. The blue shirt camp is easily definable from the red shirt camp. Anything else they are one in is coincidental and irrelevant because we don’t measure it due to the fact that they are wearing opposite colours and that someone decided that this matters and that a blue or a red shirt is better than the other and is shorthand for all kinds of qualities that have nothing to do with wearing a specific colour but have become historically synonymous.
Sorting Hat Conundrum
We sort one another into our proverbial houses, but the question is; am I brave, loyal and selfless because I’m a Gryffindor or am I a Gryffindor because I’m brave, loyal and selfless? I’m not a Gryffindor, although I value the qualities of a Gryffindor, that does not mean that I am not occasionally brave, loyal and selfless; it means that I don’t measure those qualities in myself or other people on a regular basis. The point is that we love a good sorting ceremony. Sorting helps us believe that we now finally understand who we are and why we are the way we are. Unfortunately for our pride, measuring “personality,” doesn’t actually make us any better people it just puts a positive spin on the characteristics we already possess, and, because we have measured them, we will only ever produce those characteristics and reinforce our initial sorting, at least until we take another personality or ‘spiritual gift,’ test.
The Prime Unifier
It is therefore essential that what we measure and therefore unite in be something that unites all of the people God has called us to be one with and which ought to characterise all Christians–that quality is love. Pay attention! The assent of themessageof the gospel alone does not suffice. The gospel is the prime example of love; God laying down his life for his enemies, and being raised back to life by an equal measure of that love but we have twisted the message of the gospel into a talisman we believe in and speak with an incantation we imbibe with the power to save. This puts unity on our terms–anyone can assent to the historical gospel and speak the incantation, and therefore we put whatever sorting ceremony we want at the other side of the door. We might admit someone’s salvation, but not their spiritual health if they are not wearing the appropriate shirt.
The fact of the matter is that the act of divine sacrificial love itself opened the door the possibility of salvation. To willingly walk through that door, to know and be known, to imitate that love is to know, love and imitate God. This is what unites us, not mere assent of historical fact, nor indeed the measuring of the things of God that come by no other means. There is no sorting ceremony; no pre-judgement to the Day of the Lord, and so the all inclusive nature of the gospel of Christ via the knowledge, love and self identification with God is what unites us as one body.
A Brief Contemplation on the Knowledge, Love and Imitation of God
ARC GUIDE LEVEL 3 Ideal for those well acquainted with our thought process at Ammi Ruhama Community.
The actual overall health of the body of Christ is nothing that one person or a group of people can ultimately measure. This is because we’re not all using the same measuring stick–and no I don’t mean that some people use the Bible and other people some other metric. I mean that we are actively conforming to an infinite number of metrics some of which we are aware of, and others that are subconscious that come through in our poor opinion of people as quickly decided based on these subconscious measures. For instance, a community of God who places a high value on members who speak in tongues as being ‘full of the Spirit,’ will have a high degree of people who attempt and eventually conform to what they are seeing as speaking in tongues, whether or not the Spirit is actually speaking through them. It is the same for prayerfulness, sexual purity, and any other metric we use to try to gauge the health of a group of people. We want to think that it is something as praiseworthy as our active obedience to the Spirit of God, but, actually, active obedience to the Spirit of God would entail that we continue listening. He may well tell us to focus on something other than what we are being told to focus on. Other people may look at us and ask why we don’t go to church, pay our tithe to a human institution, encourage our children to play with the nice little church kids, and decide that we aren’t really good church folk after all–heck we’re not even ‘good living’! If we want to be like God, we must become as immeasurable in our behaviour as He is. God is immeasurable, but not unpredictable, whatever He does He is entirely consistent with His own character, but He is infinitely wise and therefore, even though His character itself is not a surprise we continue to be surprised by its immeasurable purity of form. This is our base difference, we do not have purity of form in any sense of the imagination, our character is a facsimile of His own, and an imperfect one at that.
When we make a manufactured effort towards purity of form in one area over another we render ourselves measurable to that character point. The only specific character points God calls us to are purity, perfection, and mercy all of which require wisdom; specifically God’s wisdom. If we are pure (displaying the whole character of only God in our lives) and perfect (displaying the ways of God without fault) then there is no need to be pedantic about measuring truthfulness or sexual purity because those characters are covered in our pursuit of knowing and imitating God. The word is clear that the one who knows God, loves God and the one who loves God obeys God. If we are deceitful or sexually deviant then the evidence is clear that we do not know God as much as we say we do, or love Him as much as we say or imitate Him as much as we say. Any condemnation therefore, must be based on whether or not we know, love and obey God. But this is no surprise to those who give 1 John its functional value in their lives. We are also called to show mercy as our Father shows mercy. This requires His humility and identification with us, not as being exactly the same (although God through Christ is the same) but through his non-discriminating character. He is love to sinners and to the righteous, He is also judge to sinners and to the righteous. We are called to the merciful side of that consistent, non-discriminating nature.
If we want to be as immeasurable as God is, then we must be willing to let go of measuring other people lest we (and they) become what we measure.
A Brief Example of Acting on Faith When it Seems it Won’t Work Out in the End.
ARC GUIDE LEVEL 1 Ideal for those getting acquainted with our thought process at Ammi Ruhama Community.
Whether it is 100, 1000 or 10,000 pieces, putting together a puzzle is an act of faith. We see the picture on the tin and try to approximate the position of each of the pieces. We can approach the puzzle with many different strategies including finding all the edge pieces, and then collecting all of the pieces of the same colour or shading but until we start to click pieces together and test them against our eyes and the map in our minds we will not start to make any progress on putting the picture together for ourselves. Our lack of faith can often come out to frighten us away from completing the simplest of puzzles. We will doubt and be afraid that even the freshest box of pieces is incomplete from the start and why keep putting the puzzle together if the picture is incomplete? This is a misunderstanding of the point of putting the puzzle together in the first place. If it is merely for my own enjoyment then being robbed of the satisfaction of placing the final piece would defeat the purpose from the start. But with the added purpose of demonstrating faith; putting the puzzle together transcends my own enjoyment or indeed the presence of all of the pieces. In this way the picture is never incomplete; only, perhaps, my copy of it; and even then it demonstrates what is often the case with our copy of the picture–full of holes that obscure parts of the picture. However, the act of faith of putting each piece in its place even when we may think we do not have all of the pieces is an act that says, “I may not have all of the pieces, but the pieces I do have are in the proper positions to show the copy of the picture on the manufacturer’s tin and perhaps when it comes time to place what final pieces I have, the whole of the picture may emerge.”