{"id":22099,"date":"2023-02-01T10:10:39","date_gmt":"2023-02-01T15:10:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=22099"},"modified":"2023-02-01T10:15:17","modified_gmt":"2023-02-01T15:15:17","slug":"22099","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=22099","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-embed-handler wp-block-embed-embed-handler wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"GRAVES INTO GARDENS - ELEVATION WORSHIP LYRIC VIDEO\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/YihKbG8-X3U?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The First Season of Faith\u00a0<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><em>CAC teacher and author Brian McLaren writes about the passionate innocence that characterized his \u201cfirst half of life\u201d as a young Christian:<\/em><strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Many of us have memories of when our spiritual lives first came alive\u2014the season of our \u201cfirst love.\u201d For example, in those initial months after my [powerful spiritual] experience \u2026 I felt the Bible speak to me as never before. The simplest word or phrase would stir my soul\u2026. I started wearing a big wooden cross around my neck, and I carried a big, green Living Bible on top of my high-school books\u2014in hopes that someone would ask me about either of them, so I could \u201cbear witness\u201d to my exuberant, contagious faith. I loved to insert \u201cPraise the Lord!\u201d into my speech as often as possible\u2014which elicited \u201cAmen!\u201d from my Christian friends and surprise or annoyance from my other friends. Speaking of my Christian friends, we could often be found huddling in a stairwell \u2026 praying for a miraculous intervention of some sort. And our prayers, it seemed to us, were answered way beyond the statistical norm. We seemed to \u201clive and move and have our being\u201d [Acts 17:28] in the holy glow of God\u2019s presence.<strong> It was spiritual springtime, and we assumed it would never end.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>McLaren charts growth in the spiritual life as coming to greater fullness when we move beyond the simplicity of that first season:&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Just as all higher mathematics depends on learning basic arithmetic, and just as all more sophisticated music depends on mastering the basics of tempo, melody, and harmony, the spiritual life depends on learning well the <strong>essential lessons of this first season, Simplicity. If these lessons aren\u2019t learned well, practitioners will struggle in later seasons. <\/strong>But if in due time this season doesn\u2019t give way to the next, the spiritual life can grow stagnant and even toxic. Nearly all of us in this dynamic season of Simplicity <strong>tend to share a number of characteristics. We see the world in simple dualist terms:&nbsp;<em>we&nbsp;<\/em>are the good guys who follow the good authority figures and we have the right answers;&nbsp;<em>they&nbsp;<\/em>are the bad guys who consciously or unconsciously fight on the wrong side of the cosmic struggle between good and evil. We feel a deep sense of identity and belonging in our in-group\u2026.<\/strong> This simple, dualist faith gives us great confidence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This confidence, of course, has a danger, as the old Bob Dylan classic \u201cWith God on Our Side\u201d makes clear: \u201cYou don\u2019t count the dead when God\u2019s on your side.\u201d [1] The same sense of identification with an in-group that generates a warm glow of belonging and motivates sacrificial action for&nbsp;<em>us&nbsp;<\/em>can sour into intolerance, hatred, and even violence toward&nbsp;<em>them.&nbsp;<\/em>And the<strong> same easy, black-and-white answers that comfort and reassure us now may later seem arrogant, naive, ignorant, and harmful, if we don\u2019t move beyond Simplicity in the fullness of time<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large is-resized\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/image-500x336.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-22101\" width=\"742\" height=\"498\" srcset=\"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/image-500x336.png 500w, http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/image-300x202.png 300w, http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/image-768x517.png 768w, http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/image-1536x1033.png 1536w, http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/image.png 1802w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 742px) 100vw, 742px\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The First Season of Faith\u00a0 CAC teacher and author Brian McLaren writes about the passionate innocence that characterized his \u201cfirst half of life\u201d as a young Christian: Many of us have memories of when our spiritual lives first came alive\u2014the season of our \u201cfirst love.\u201d For example, in those initial months after my [powerful spiritual] [&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\/22099"}],"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=22099"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22099\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22105,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22099\/revisions\/22105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}