{"id":15796,"date":"2017-07-12T09:10:59","date_gmt":"2017-07-12T13:10:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=15796"},"modified":"2017-07-12T09:13:28","modified_gmt":"2017-07-12T13:13:28","slug":"the-spiritually-self-seeking-church-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=15796","title":{"rendered":"The Spiritually Self-Seeking Church"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/iDN3EFjrQac\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong><em>\u2026till we all come\u2026to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ\u2026 \u2014Ephesians 4:13<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Reconciliation means the restoring of the relationship between the entire human race and God, putting it back to what God designed it to be. This is what Jesus Christ did in redemption. The church ceases to be spiritual when it becomes self-seeking, only interested in the development of its own organization. The reconciliation of the human race according to His plan means realizing Him not only in our lives individually, but also in our lives collectively. Jesus Christ sent apostles and teachers for this very purpose\u2014 that the corporate Person of Christ and His church, made up of many members, might be brought into being and made known. We are not here to develop a spiritual life of our own, or to enjoy a quiet spiritual retreat. We are here to have the full realization of Jesus Christ, for the purpose of building His body.<\/p>\n<p>Am I building up the body of Christ, or am I only concerned about my own personal development? The essential thing is my personal relationship with Jesus Christ\u2014 \u201c\u2026that I may know Him\u2026\u201d (Philippians 3:10). To fulfill God\u2019s perfect design for me requires my total surrender\u2014 complete abandonment of myself to Him. Whenever I only want things for myself, the relationship is distorted. And I will suffer great humiliation once I come to acknowledge and understand that I have not really been concerned about realizing Jesus Christ Himself, but only concerned with knowing what He has done for me.<\/p>\n<p>My goal is God Himself, not joy nor peace,<br \/>\nNor even blessing, but Himself, my God.<\/p>\n<p>Am I measuring my life by this standard or by something less?<\/p>\n<p>Now compare Richard Rohr&#8217;s Daily Devotional&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>The Healing Power of Meditation<br \/>\nWednesday, July 12, 2017<\/p>\n<p>When religion is not about healing, it really does not have much to offer people in this life. Many have called such disembodied theology \u201ccarrot on the stick\u201d theology or, as my friend Brian McLaren says, we made the Gospel largely into \u201can evacuation plan for heaven.\u201d [1] If we don\u2019t understand the need and desire for healing now, then salvation (salus = healing) becomes a matter of hoping for some form of delayed gratification. We desperately need healing for groups, institutions, marriage, the wounds of war, abuse, race relations, and the endless social problems in which we are drowning today. But we won\u2019t know how to heal if we never learn the skills at ground zero: the individual human heart.<br \/>\nFor much of its history following 313 AD, the Christian church\u2019s job or concern was not healing, but rather maintaining social and church order: doling out graces and indulgences (as if that were possible); granting dispensations, annulments, absolutions, and penalties; keeping people in first marriages at all costs, instead of seeing marriage as an arena for growth, forgiveness, and transformation. In general, we tried to resolve issues of the soul and the Spirit by juridical and &#8220;transactional&#8221; means, which in my opinion seldom work.<br \/>\nAs priests, we felt our job was to absolve sin rather than actually transform people. \u201cGet rid of the contaminating element,\u201d as it were, rather than \u201cLearn what you can about yourself and God because of this conflict.\u201d Those are two very different paths. In the four Gospels, Jesus did two things over and over again: he preached and he healed. We have done a lot of preaching, but not too much healing. We did not know how.<br \/>\nIf there isn\u2019t much of a relationship between our religion and our politics, I think it\u2019s because we are not involved in healing ourselves. How can we understand the healing of the world? Only whole people can imagine or call forth a more whole world. Healing depends upon relating with love and compassion. Religion usually focuses on imputing and then forgiving guilt. This is much more about \u201csin management\u201d than it is about proclaiming a larger-than-life vision for humanity. Remember that the ego contracts around problems. The soul gathers and is drawn by meaning. We too often settle for problem solving. It really is the best way to keep the laity coming back, strangely enough. Carrot on the stick theology keeps us clergy in business. I wish it did not work so well.<br \/>\nChristianity must first teach people how to really pray so they can relate to God as adults. This creates spiritual inter-dependence instead of infantile codependency which people eventually react against. I say this coming from a church that put most of its resources into training children in rote prayers. We can do so much better.<\/p>\n<p>Gateway to Silence:<br \/>\nBuild on the positive; build on love.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u2026till we all come\u2026to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ\u2026 \u2014Ephesians 4:13 Reconciliation means the restoring of the relationship between the entire human race and God, putting it back to what God designed it to be. This is what Jesus Christ did in redemption. The church ceases to be spiritual when [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15796"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15796"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15796\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15799,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15796\/revisions\/15799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}