The Not So Good News

Here’s a great piece by my friend Dave Griffiths:


The Evangelical ‘gospel’ so many of us believed and served for years is not much good news.

The lesson I was taught, which is being reinforced around the world all the time, is that we are essentially bad, and if we ask Jesus to be our saviour, he will save us from a bad place we will go to when we die. God is Holy and so cannot have dirty sinners in his heaven. Someone had to be punished very badly for us to be forgiven. That someone was Jesus – hence he is the saviour.

I’d almost go so far as to say that this is an ‘anti-christ’ message.

Christ means ‘anointed one’. What was the ‘anointed one’ sent to show us? How to bind broken hearts, open blind eyes, and share good news with the poor. This is good news for everyone. This is what Jesus proclaimed in the synagogue at the start of his ministry (Lk 4:18), quoting from Isaiah (Is 61:1).

So, being a CHRISTian is actually about becoming like Christ. Doing all that good stuff. We get to unmask and dethrone the powers of the world that are built on evil ways. We get to see the divine economy (Kingdom of God) shared among us.

We get to be possessed by the Holy Spirit and made more and more compassionate, forgiving, empathetic, nonviolent and non-judgemental.

Paul grasped this. John grasped it too. Peter to an extent. I reckon the Marys were probably way ahead of them.

I’m so sick of the message from the mainline church that basically destroys your sense of Christ within you and makes you a grovelling wretch that pleads with an angry god to forgive you because you’re covered in Christ’s blood. All you are is sorry, and then you try all your life to please god by behaving better. Well, that isn’t good news.

We don’t get to live for God. We get to live as God, and in God.

Friends. Reject all the negative, false gospel that tell you and everyone else that they are not worthy. You are and always have been. Made in God’s own image. You are invited to more and more love and goodness by simply discovering what you already have.

– rant over.

Shalom.


 

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