For more than two thousand years, the Church has explored the mystery, majesty and magnificence of God. Its experience has given it great confidence - and should inspire confidence in us as well - that it knows a thing or two about God. The Church has knowledge to share with us. However, some in the Church view its knowledge as doctrine to ram down our throats. Beware. Ramming doctrine down our throats against our wills by fiat triggers our gag reflex. We regurgitate such doctrine. We are ready to be persuaded by reason. We are wary of being overcome by force. We expect that the legs of the doctrine that the Church is presenting to us are more than mere authority. Authority is the weakest of bases. We tend to reject a conclusion that has no legs. We expect a solid basis to support the conclusions that the Church wants us to reach. This is just the way rational people are. Early on in the history of mankind, we learned that our faculty of obedience is broken. The debacle of Adam and Eve showed us that it is defective. However, our faculty of rationality works. That is why God built his plan to rescue us from godlessness around our faculty of rationality and not around our faculty of obedience. God is not stupid. He does not risk our salvation on our broken faculty of obedience. He is smarter than that. Our faculty of rationality tells us to flee the sourness of godlessness and seek the sweetness of paradise. God's rescue plan is simple carrot and stick psychology. There is a current of salvation. It is generated by two engines. The sourness of godlessness pushes us to its exit. The sweetness of paradise pulls us to its entrance. There is a potential difference between the sourness of godlessness and the sweetness of paradise. All that was needed to get the current to flow was the placement of a conductor between them. Jesus is the conductor. He is the bridge between the sourness of godlessness and the sweetness of paradise. He is the way, etc. Through His bloody wounds, the new exodus is making its escape led / served by the new Moses, the Church, through the hostile desert of godlessness from slavery under the yoke of Pharaoh to freedom with God and their holy family in the promised land.
Reality is reliable. We can depend on the reality of his love for us. His love for us is the rock on which the wise build their lives. Whom shall we fear? Of whom shall we be afraid? Will our almighty lover ever let us down? Will he ever disappoint?
To neutralize the the serpent’s anti-God propaganda, Jesus commandeered a cross - the instrument of our woe - and repurposed it to offer us a contradiction.
Armageddon is here and now. We are not fighting for something in the hereafter. The battle is now. Now is the time to join Jesus in the scrum at the line of scrimmage in the Valley of Tears facing off against Evil toe to toe, cheek to jowl. Christianity is not a sport for spectators. Christians partake in the fray.
