From: b645zaw@utarlg.uta.edu (General Inspiracy)
Subject: Re: A nation chosen by GOD -- New-Israel
Summary: If you wanna play God... 
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    
Keywords: ...God'll likely let you -- for as long as you can.
Organization: The University of Texas at Arlington
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1993 01:43:00 GMT

In article <1993Jan5.113253.13480dave@tygra.Michigan.COM>, 
dave@tygra.Michigan.COM (David Conrad) writes...

>In article <2JAN199301540090@utarlg.uta.edu> 
>b645zaw@utarlg.uta.edu (General Dentistry) writes:
>
>>In article <C03D79.682@ecf.toronto.edu>, 
>>vanweer@ecf.toronto.edu (VANWEERDENBURG NICHOLAS JOHN) writes...
>>
>>And my opinion is that GOD doesn't care about non-entities, such as 
>>governments, education, churches, fads, and the like... only individual
>>people, each directly and individually. 
>>
>>>Lets see.  The United States and God.  Did your god support slavery and then
>>>change his mind ( and very slowly, from the Civil War up to Martin Luther 
>>>King and Malcom X, over almost 100 years! )?
>>
>>Slavery is another non-entity. Why would GOD care?
>>
>>>Does your god support Vietnam, Cambodia, El Salvador?
>>
>>more n-e's
>>
> 
>Hmm.  A god who doesn't care about "moral" infractions.  Or perhaps your
>god thinks enslaving people and killing people is an okay thing to do for
>these individuals He/She/It is concerned with?


David, my belief is GOD cares for us as =individuals= directly and
lovingly, with patience and without imposition. (No matter what 
government, ideology, or group each of us subjects ourself.) 

A nation (or a church) is only a human institution -- an abstract, (or 
as Eller writes an "arky," see below). Or as I wrote before, simply a
"non-entity." 

July 4th, 1776:

	We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all 
	men are created equal, that they are endowed by 
	their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,
	that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit
	of Happiness. -- That to secure these rights,
	Governments are instituted among Men, deriving
	their just powers from the consent of the governed...

Before GOD all are equal. Worldly governments are *not* instituted
by GOD. Such are my beliefs, and this... that no sin is any worse
than any other -- thus all of us, (the users and the used), are 
equally lacking before GOD. 

Vernard Eller on Jacques Ellul "Ellul and Kierkegaard: Closer than
Brothers" p.62+ :

	A theme upon which Kierkegaard and Ellul are fully in
	accord...is "nonconformity to the world," the polemical
	stance of the gospel toward the standards and valuations
	of society...

	  [JE:] But it seems to us this "religious" something
	  which inspires morality, which builds it or conceals
	  itself within it, is in no way an expression of the
	  will of God. It is indeed a "religious" something
	  in the human sense of the word; that is to say, it
	  is part of man's overall attempt to scale the heights
	  of heaven, to lay hold upon God and to bring him 
	  into submission, or again, to acquire divinity for
	  himself -- in any case, to substitute something 
	  else for the will of God.

How can any of us escape the chains which bind each -- especially
the shortness of one's own life, or the meager size of one's own
brain? As human beings each has a limited consciousness -- even by
drawing on 6000 years of written history, or all the logic of
science and philosophy -- we still look through the lens of our own
individual brief awareness: the weakest link. Yet some choose to 
think that they have it all figured out, seeing no need to try just
simply loving GOD.

So what slavery or oppression is there, which is more binding than
pride? By assuming "you" know all the answers, you lock the collar on
your own throat, weld the ball to your own ankles, and hang your own
head gazing ever downward. Even then, GOD, moved by love, still calls
out, and shakes us -- a reminder that all is not as we see. 

Martin Buber "Fragments of Revelation"
(_A Believing Humanism_) p. 115:

	Every religion has its origin in revelation. No
	religion is absolute truth, none is a piece of
	heaven that has come down to earth. Each religion
	is human truth.... Each religion is a house of the
	human soul longing for God.... But the religions 
	that know they are bound together in common expec-
	tation; they can call to one another greetings...
	from house to house through open windows....

	The historical religions have a tendency to become
	ends in themselves and, as it were, to put them-
	selves in God's place, and, in fact, there is 
	nothing so apt to obscure the face of God as a
	religion. Thus religions must become submissive
	to God and his will... 

Sounds like slavery to GOD? True -- for "religions." 

For each of us there is a direct relationship..., as Buber said,
an "I-Thou" relationship with GOD. My belief is that is through 
the Messiah. 

There's a one or two page book in the NT bible about a slave named
Onesimus, who belonged to Philemon(also the name of the book).
Paul sent a letter to Philemon, which was carried by Onesimus, 
asking that he take back Onesimus, who Paul had met in prison:

	...I am sending him back to you now, and with him 
	goes my heart. I would like to keep him here with
	me, while I am in prison for the gospel's sake, so
	that he could help me in your place. However, I do
	not want to force you to help me; rather, I would
	like for you to do it of your own free will. So I
	will do nothing unless you agree.

	It may be that Onesimus was away from you for a 
	short time so that you might have him back for all
	time. For now he is not just a slave, but much more
	that a slave; he is a dear brother in Christ. How
	much he means to me! Andd how much more he will mean
	to you, both as a slave and a brother in the Lord!
	
Vernard Eller _Christian Anarchy_ p. 246+ :

	[T]he example of Onesimus marks the truer freeing of
	more slaves than all the emancipation proclamations
	ever proclaimed and all the class warfare ever warred.
	In this case God sounds the death knell of slavery
	(all sorts of slavery) for the whole of creation for
	all time.... The secular way of "revolutionary arky
	contest" [power is one of the synonyms for `arky']
	may be quicker and more spectacular, but it is also 
	far less dependable, carrying all sorts of negative
	side effects. Emancipation proclamations and civil
	wars may create a degree of justice and eliminate
	some aspects fo slavery. But they also create all
	sorts of animosities and hatreds, leave battlefields
	strewn with corpses, and take us out of slavery only
	to put us into Jim Crow.

	The Onesimus approach is much more powerful. It may
	take a while, but no slaveholder can forever hold
	out against the loving persuasions of a Paul, the 
	loving self-sacrifice of an Onesimus, or the loving
	Spirit of an Almighty God. That owner actually has a 
	much better chance of resisting political pressure
	and the violence of class warfare. Moreover, the 
	Onesimian way, rather that demanding the denuncia-
	tion and destruction of the moral dignity of the
	slaveholder, offers him a gracious way out. One-
	simus was liberated without Philemon's having to
	be demeaned in the process. Best of all, of course,
	to go Onesimian leaves everyone involved -- slave,
	owner, and apostle -- as brothers in Christ. The
	side effects are all positive, without a trace of 
	contention's negativity. 

	Yet the most essential distinction, I suggest, is 
	this: The political struggle for liberation is 
	posited wholly on human wisdom, idealism, and 
	moral ability. It thinks there is only one way....
	It operates in a closed system that neither seeks
	nor expects anything more that its human methodo-
	logy can be calculated to achieve -- though seldom
	do the final results come to even that much. Human
	beings (and especially well-intentioned doers of
	good) are noted for overestimating the power of 
	their own piety.

	With Onesimus, things are quite otherwise. Because
	his was a theological action taken at the behest 
	of God, in the service of God, through the Spirit
	of God, with the enablement of God, and to the glory
	of God -- this action invited God in and urged of
	him to make of it what he could. The results? Com-
	pletely incalculable -- even to the preserving of
	the Pauline gospel for the ages. There is absolutly
	no telling how much good, how much social change, 
	how much freeing of slaves, how much gospel, how 
	much kingdom, might follow from a Onesimian laying 
	down of one's life for God. 

	Finally, then, consider how totally Onesimus's was
	"another way" -- an anarchical way bearing no like-
	ness at all to the accepted arky method of "skinning
	cats." Not one of the characteristics of arky faith
	is to be found. [ie faith in government]

	To be sure, slaves are freed and the classless society
	is formed. Yet, throughout, each of the principals
	(slave, owner, and attendant theologian of liberation)
	acts and is acted toward simply as the human individual
	he is -- brothers three, only that and nothing more.

	No one (least of all the theologian directing the action)
	tries to use Onesimus as symbol of the "oppressed but
	righteous poor" whose consciousness of injustice must
	be raised to the point that he will join in class strug-
	gle. Paul, rather, convinces him to quit "fighting it"
	and go back -- even into slavery. No one... tries, 
	conversely, to use Philemon as a symbol of "the evil, 
	oppressing, slaveholding class," exposing his injustice 
	as a means of recruiting class warriors to fight against 
	him. No one... has any interest in anybody's fighting 
	anybody, in even seeing the matter as adversary alignment.

	The problem of human slavery is, of course, a political
	one. But our "theologian of liberation," being truly a
	theologian says, "There's just got to be more than one 
	political way of skinning this cat (i.e., the way that 
	is limited to human probablities and possibilities). Let 
	us act theologically (i.e., the	way that obeys God and, 
	at the same time, invites him into action). Let's try it 
	that way -- and see where God chooses to take it."

   |	 
-- J --
   |
   |  Stephen    

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