The Road Back
“Why is this place [where I am safe] so hard to describe? Because human beings are hardwired for connection, and we are hardwired from infancy to find safety in relationships . . . Trauma breaks this connection. Trauma interferes with the feelings of safety associated with connection. Reconstruction of trust is the first task of treatment . . . For people hurt badly as children, trusting a caring relationship designed to help them actually feels unsafe . . . working on safety and feeling safe may not go together. Learning to trust again, or for the first time, is part of the work—it is both a requirement and an outcome of treatment.”[1]
I’m afraid of you. Did you know that? I’m afraid that you won’t like something I write, that you’ll not only disagree, you’ll disappear. You’ll remove yourself from my circle of readers (and friends). I’m afraid of being rejected.
Sometimes I get overwhelmed by my emotional emptiness. Like when I saw the movie Leave No Trace. I wasn’t prepared. I mean I didn’t steel myself against the nuclear emotional devastation scenes in the movie. I got pummeled. I couldn’t hide. And I couldn’t stop the tears, even now, days later as I write this. Why? Because Gretchen Schmelzer is right: “trusting a caring relationship designed to help them actually feels unsafe.”
Academic investigation is safe for me. It’s sterile. Just logic, arguments, evidence. Oh, don’t get me wrong. It’s not boring. The excitement of rethinking, of discovering what really happened, is a powerful drug. Not a bad one. It is the essence of learning. But it’s safe. It’s detached. We can debate the intricacies of some theological or historical position without ever coming close to change.
But it’s not enough, is it?
“Even when you want to change or see how important the change is to your life, your relationships, your work—even when you can see how much you need to change—you can find it difficult to change your behavior. This is where you can understand your defenses as resistance. Resistance has been defined as ‘the motivational forces operating against growth or change, and in the direction of maintenance of the status quo.’ . . . So in some ways if you aren’t’ feeling at least a little bit uncomfortable, anxious, or awkward, you know you probably aren’t doing anything different—you probably aren’t stretching away from our old defenses.”[2]
You see, there is a side of me that embraces stretching—as long as it’s safe. But relationships aren’t safe ground for me. Perhaps some day I’ll understand why that’s the case. I know it has a lot to do with “all that childhood shit,” as Brené Brown said. I know it is about the distance in my family of origin, about the distance I still tangibly feel even though my parents are dead and my siblings are far removed. And I know it is damaging, lethal, poisonous—but, . . . there isn’t any really safe place for me yet.
Just writing this is enormously threatening. Maybe you’ll walk away now. You’ll say, “This guy is really losing it. First he doubts fundamentals like the Trinity and now he’s turning grace into psychobabble. Time to leave.” Maybe, if that’s how you really feel, it is time to leave. My path seems to be going somewhere I never anticipated. I think the men and women of the Bible are much more broken than we have been taught—or allowed. I think the Bible is a book about recovery from trauma, from disconnection—and that’s the real essence of sin, and of us. We are disconnected. That was the nuclear message of Leave No Trace. That’s what stabbed me in the heart. I saw my daughter suffering from my disconnection. I saw me trying desperately to hang on to what is good and life-giving, and at the same time, afraid of what I have become, of where I am. Ashamed to be so vulnerable in a world where I am supposed to be self-sufficient, reliable, tough!
Jacob was the product of Isaac’s trauma, the product of Abraham’s destructive obedience. Jacob paid the price for Abraham to obey God. It was never one-to-one. Everyone was involved, even if they didn’t know it. Isn’t that what the Bible is trying to tell us. Our disconnection destroys those we love, even if they don’t know it and neither do we.
So, here I am. Writing about being inadequate. Incapable. Injured before I knew what the world was all about. It’s taken a long time to get here. I can only say I’m sorry if you thought I needed to be somewhere else. The theological investigation will continue, but for me theology seems to have come to an end. You’ll still get the academic, but now you might be participants in therapy too.
Try listening to Ana Popovic, “Business As Usual.” She is a survivor of Serbia and an awesome Blues guitarist. Maybe the lyrics are about you too.
I don’t have many words Skip, but thank you for sharing; thank you for being, and thank you for the encouragement to go on believing that there is a safe place. Your message is very precious to me today, and your honesty in the battle is what I’m sure so many of us need. Stick with us, please…
We’re on the road with you Skip, sometimes on a gravel path on one side or other from you, but going in the same general direction…
Which one of us is not fearful of rejection? who among us is not in desperate need of unconditional and intimate love and connection? We all have different mechanisms for dealing with our inner torment. There are few who recognize it for what it is and chose to grow and be stretched. Most stuff, ignore, medicate and deny it. Choosing to face our pain takes courage and the forgiveness we must afford ourselves to heal is a process. It is difficult to let go of the mechanisms we have all used, regardless of how destructive they my be, because they serve us. We will walk this journey with you, those of us who acknowledge our need to grow and stretch, because it is our journey too. Our hope is the same as yours Skip, we don’t want you to leave us either. We want to have this community because it lets us all connect on some level that we can not connect in other areas of our lives.
Thank you being on our journey with us as well. We love you Skip.
This community, though it is related to one another somewhat indirectly through words and media, has helped me to face fears of rejection, distancing, and choices I’ve made over my lifetime. No, it doesn’t feel good…it hurts deeply, and it it’s always challenging to choose not to disconnect and instead push forward in trust, both of the Creator and of one another. Truth (what I call “reality as it really is”) really does set me free…free to realize that there is much more at stake than my personal rejection, trauma and fears–more than even my life. Yet I also agonize, frequently, wrestling with the One I feel is trying to hold me and prevent me from breaking free. I know He is my Creator, but most often he has the face of man…and it is most often my own face that see.
Skip, your willingness to share and from a deep place of personal experience and struggle has helped me more than you know. I am at long last beginning to realize the extent of my freedom found in Christ Jesus…and I am losing my bondage to my tendency to fear. Thank you.
I resonate. The trauma is often too much! Thanks for being real; this world needs more of this.
Good morning Skip and community,
Yes, a safe place is much needed to overcome and heal the trauma in the individual.
With the Holy Spirit it can occur very quickly. Acts 10:38 in some translations says that the Yeshua came filled with the spirit, to heal the brokenhearted. Trauma is having a broken or disconnected heart.
There’s so much in life that induces pain.
When we reconnect with that part of us in memory that was injured in the past, bring healing and intergrate, we become whole again, and walk in freedom.
Skip, what you disclose about yourself and your journey is more precious than gold. At 76 and having been with many people as a psychotherapist on their journey, I have reached the same conclusion. Fear is the root cause of dysfunction in ALL my relationships, beginning with Abba. As I am learning more of His true character, knowing Him in Spirit and Truth, His love for me frees me from the power of fear. Where His love abides, fear can not reside. BUT, oh how many fears there are to face from our very beginnings that have set in place deceptions about Him, ourselves and others. There is no deception like self deception. Thank you for calling out/ exposing the enemy. Thank you for being the man seeking Truth and walking in ever increasing faith in the ONE who sets captives free. May LOVE abound in all our lives.
Well said Lynnet! Until my last breath, I am a work in progress. 4 Ezra 7:57, “This is the condition of the battle which man that is born upon the earth shall fight”… Shalom.
Yes, thank you for your honesty Skip! Most of what you talk about I’m going through myself. So good to know we are not alone. We are not fighting battles all by ourselves.
Everything you wrote above I feel as an author and as a person! The rawness and vulnerability of your message is refreshing!
My husband and I have been through so much trauma this year. We both feel beautifully broken.
Keep writing and sharing the heart of the Father for you are a bright blessing!
Bonnie Manning
You are part of all of us – fractured people in a fractured society. Yes, people of God, but still far removed from who He asks is to become. Becommers, failures, lost people in a fractured world. Our only hope is relationship with a whole Being. All earthly relationships fail over and over when we set the person on a pedestal like an idol. They want the same thing until they find out you are like the others – fractured. Our empty cup can only be full of Him. The rest is our life’s work. You, dear Skip, are part of us and we love that you dare to be honest about you. It helps us to do the same. Emotions fail, people fail, we fail each other. Keep at it. Maybe we will get it right. Perhaps we will just be real. Anyway we love you for eternity, no matter what. You are part of us, same as us. No pedestal. Just sharing our journey.
Hi Skip, I want to reassure you. I haven’t commented in awhile as I’ve been going through multiple trials at once. It’s been my life of following the Lord, living in the inner-city, dealing with everyone’s trauma and my own. The Lord is definitely using this. Our whole ministry is about building shalom and safe relationships. As I just shared in church last week, we can have all the knowledge, all the right religious beliefs, we can even want to reach out, but if we are unapproachable, what we know doesn’t matter; especially to a traumatized group of people. And, there are so many traumatized people.
This is exactly where God is leading. He has been reassuring me through you and your messages. I have talked with our church about this…the un-psychological ways of God. I have seen Him take me to the very place that I have been stuck emotionally from early childhood trauma and then allow circumstances to happen that trigger those emotions. He’s removing my idols – as I read in your piece on Zephaniah 2, He’s “starving the gods” I used to cling to, to cope. It is recovery – learning to depend on the Lord. It’s hard. We’re like fish out of water.
As far as theology goes, doctrine has never mattered in the city. Getting people to trust God when many can’t trust their own parents. How do you trust God when you’re parents steal your identity and put you in debt before your 18? So, there’s no knowledge that “fits the bill.” The only thing I find that works is long-suffering relationships with others and the Hebrew idea of empowerment of letting God take me down in His un-psychological ways, so that I understand their pain, and can help push them up.
He’s also been teaching me not to control others. Church looks a whole lot different when people have the freedom to come and go. That we don’t try to control how church looks or its outcomes. I have had those that thought we’re not a real church, we don’t know what we’re doing, we don’t look like the typical church service and the 1 hour outlined and not messed with worship service. God has been breaking me of all these ways of pleasing man and it has been very stressful when you don’t have answers. And since we have services on Saturday’s, we’re already considered out of the loop.
Keep going Skip. We’re here. Sometimes we’re silently walking along processing. At least I am. And I am grateful for your work and have been sending others to read you, so keep on keeping on brother.
Every day I look forward to sharing the path that is illuminated ‘here.’ This place helps me to sense the AWE that I need to be able to share the knowledge of our loving Father with those who are willing to hear. In my community, my path is unique, but I look at my ten grandchildren and I know that I cannot just give them the denominational doctrines and expect they will somehow have a hunger for the Creator. To offer them a relationship that is two miles wide and two inches deep will not sustain them. They must learn to dive deep into dangerous, uncommon waters! I am ever grateful for the ones I encounter here, and especially for you, Skip. Vulnerability is a thing of beauty.
Oh dear Skip………as I read YOUR words – MY WORDS – my heart grieved and broke, once again. You are not alone … and surely you must be able to reach in and hear my own brokenness. With all that I have gone through these last 30 years – in and out of the ‘movement’ … in and out of ‘life’ …. I am also coming to the end of ‘something’ … and believing in something ‘beginning’. What is that? I don’t know. I just know that theology has failed me in so many ways…..when I read about the people in the bible … in history … what captures me is their weaknesses, their failures, their little and very big mistakes…. and we connect. Not on a theological level, no…..on a very human and emotional level….heart to heart. So, fear not my friend, you may feel like you are ‘floundering’ … but at least you have company! Let’s just keep going forward and see where it leads us. After all – I believe HE is leading us – we just have to figure out in what direction He wants us to go.
Many blessings and abundant joy be yours this erev Shabbat. ~ Pam
Hi Skip, Thank you for being vulnerable, open and honest with us. We are all so “dysfunctional” in so many different levels. Peeling off the layers is not easy or quick. Sometimes I get so wrapped in the pathos of my life that I forget about my Rock and my Refuge. I am human, imperfect But I am God’s child and He loves me, this I know for. sure. I pray you find peace and love.
Skip Somewhere in the New Testament Yeshua was confronted by a young man who said he had lost himself. I cannot find this scripture at short notice maybe someone reading the blog can help… Maybe the documented response may be of some value.
Feeling your type of vulnerability I have learnt to appreciate as spiritual ripeness (not fullness) as we then know how we actually need and rely on each other to become fully ourselves, the being God is preparing for rebirth. This the prophets proclaimed he will do before His day…
Also as the svriptures reveal this may be God busy closing your past and binding it away so that no one can reopen. The reason for this may be to set you free to be a vessel of truth for others.
What you have said and done was needed to strengthen and equip you. It is not there to condemn you as many will do. Do not worry what man thinks please and find God’s favour.
You need not be a knowledgeable vessel or easy library but only one revealing the will of God as Job did when he started praying for his friends. Do like wise for that is all we can do to help those close to us.
You have many followers. Many people who have travelled with you shared your learning path and yes gained from your knowledge.
This is not why Yeshua invites us to come to him for peace. He invites us to carry a lighter burden. One of patience and love. One with all the elements of redemption in. Peace,Joy and Righteousness in the Holy Spirit.
Not a vessel of gain nor of knowledge nor of acceptance but rather of rejection and loss. For know that the world first done all this to him so that we can find strength in his cross as the prophecy of Christ is our redemption.
The only way to find strength here is to be open as you have been doing and whatever the responses you get they never define you. They just reveal how others feel connected or isolated from your reality.
May your journey with God be so fulfilling that this changed life you will be revealing and living out, be a treasure for all those that cross your path. Accept that now is the only time and do as the Spirit dictates not as the mind calls into remembrance.
There will never be an end in books and views, nor doctrines nor teachings. These are all manmade and shortlived.
So will there never be an end in Peace, Joy and Righteousness in the path as guided by the Holy Spirit. This reality is never ending a promise from God.
As Yeshau said at the well of Jacob… this husband (life) you have been married to (lived to date) is not really yours. Take and drink of the water the Spirit offers and you will never thirst again…
Tell next time Shalom and rejoice for salvation is your midst.
Skip I for one will not abandon you even though there’s a great distance of intimacy or lack of between us your words resonate in my inner man you stir up the ones in the pain in the suffering and the memories and the joy and the shalom over and over I for one won’t leave you or forget about you and Lord willing someday we can embrace one another I too am from Seattle to realize how vulnerable I am I’m thankful for you I’ve said it before you bring out the truth which lies dormant in many of us thank you for doing what you do I for one want nothing to do with the self-sufficient man centered humanity of this world system YHWH face is all we need to see and when you and I are there together that’s community so I’ll meet you between the rock in the cleft I for one think you’re right where you’re supposed to be I love you !!!
My friend was dying. I knew she was dying. At the age of 52 she was diagnosed with a brain tumor. From the time I heard of her diagnosis two years earlier I knew this moment was coming. During her illness I utilized my training, contacts and context to help my friend and her family as much as I could from 90 miles away. My mantra through the two years was “Be the nurse.” As long as I approached the situation with clinical assessment I could function without feeling the inevitable devastation coming for her family. We had multiple opportunities to spend time together during the two years of her battle. I arrived to her bedside the day before she died and was able to remain there through the night. During her last days she was unresponsive and surrounded by loved ones. On her last day I made the decision to return to my home. I left her bedside just hours before her last breath. Needless to say I wish I had stayed to the end. Not just for her but for her husband, two twenty something year old sons and other close caregivers. But I didn’t. In the 34 years I have been a nurse I have been at the bedside of many dying patients young and old. Why couldn’t I stay with her? Why didn’t I stay with her? I wish I had stayed with her. Maybe the pain today wouldn’t be as great, Reading your post brought all this to mind. The tears still come. I still feel like a failure. But how much have I learned? To embrace grief along the journey instead of being afraid to admit my fears; fear of loss, pain and other’s pain. So i have shared all of this to say thank you for sharing your vulnerability and in turn giving me an opportunity to express my grief and sadness over what I feel was a bad decision. It helps. So if therapy is on the agenda bring it on. There aren’t ANY people I know who wouldn’t benefit from a steady dose of it! Know you are loved and supported!
Skip, please don’t leave us. There is still so much more to learn. I haven’t been an active member of the community. I always doubt that I have anything worth saying, and I know that is false. I know God created us and as long as we have breath, He will be glorified through our life. I pray the Spirit’s peace will quiet the chaos. I pray for joy.
Skip, I am glad to be joined at the hip with you and the few wounded stragglers you have attracted. Together, with Yacob and Yeshua, we will all limp toward the Promised Land (stopping in Bethel, Peniel, Jabbok, Egypt and places unknown, unnamed and untamed) recovering both ourselves and His Kingdom. Hobble on… but not too fast or furious.
1 Samuel 22:1-2 “David therefore departed from there and escaped to the cave of Adullam. And when his brothers and all his father’s house heard, they went down there to him. And everyone who was ‘in distress’, everyone who was ‘in debt’, and everyone who was ‘bitter of soul’ gathered to him. So he became captain over them. And there were about four hundred men with him” (and think how many poor women and children). The beginning of the formation of the mighty men (and women?) of David.
Wow! Thank you for sharing that and for opening your heart to us. I haven’t been with you very long but I know in that time I have learned to express myself and have chosen to be willing to push “post comment“ and watch it disappear wondering how my words are going to be accepted or rejected. Naturally a certain amount of fear/anxiety. The willingness to risk sounding stupid or ignorant or uneducated has been worth the risk. Thank you. I have to say that every morning when I check my emails I leave TWOT for the last thing I read because I like the anticipation of something good and stimulating coming my way. It’s so rare and refreshing. I don’t always agree but that’s a good thing ! You are helping stretch me in my thinking, in my theology, in my feelings etc. Talk about Trauma, I spent the first 18 years of my life in the home field with every type of trauma you could imagine . So I’m glad to know that you’re human and so much more like me, it causes a sense of community and “family” with you and all those who are following along. Thank you Skip and thank you everyone else. Shalom to us all
Skip thank you for your heart. We are all there with you one day or the other. I’m realizing that it’s not head knowledge that Our Father wants its heart knowledge. To face up to what is tourmenting us daily, the evil voices in the head (the devil) coercing is onwards in a downwards spiral away from all the good that our Father has for us.
We have just returned from the Be In Health conference in Georgia where we learned where all this turmoil comes from and how to get rid of it. I’ve never had a $ more wisely spent!! And we live in Australia so it was a long way. I can honestly say I feel a new freedom to hear what our Father has for us. Without the ‘voices’ getting us off track. I learned to take charge of what I listen to inside and outside my head. ‘Take every thought captive’. ‘For the devil as a roaring lion seeks whom he may devour’ My attitude to life has really changed. It’s not the driveness to do more for God. He doesn’t need me! He wants me. He love me. We’ll do it together.
Or course it is a daily choice I make to listen to my Father God and not the devil. That’s what Yeshua and Paul taught us. But we tend to gloss over it and think it is just religion. Bible talk and not real. Yes the devil is real and does seek to devour. He doesn’t want anyone in Gods kingdom. But as we learned at Be In Health, the devil is also a created being like us. We should not fear him or listen to him. Our God is greater and gives all the tools to defeat him.
All glory goes to our Father in Heaven.
Anne?
It is deeply painful, seeing these things in our selves. It feels very big and overwhelming at times. Thank you for being real, Skip, even when it’s very scary. Attachment, God is reorienting true attachment to Him and the beloved – the real joy of life. Every other attachment is a false joy. He knows what this process takes, is kind and He will never walk away.
I like the addition of human connection and therspeutic insight to the academic critical thinking. It is growth and true connection.
I thank you for this vulnerability and the addition of the emotional connection to the critical academic investigation. Enriches our experience and assists in growth.
Well, I just wanna say my brother – it’s true we have some theological differences but, as a person, as a friend of mine and as a man who I see as truly seeking relationship with the Creator of heaven and earth with his whole heart, I’d say you are an excellent representation of what it looks like to be humble before man and God. I personally, for what’s it’s worth, count myself privileged and honored to know you, Skip the person, your children and your wife.
Your willingness to be open, truthful and vulnerable is probably what keeps people here. Sometimes it’s just not about what’s theologically right or wrong. Sometimes it’s just about being willing to honestly look at scripture as well as ourselves and ask the hard questions that very well might make us and others feel uncomfortable.
May the Lord continue to bless you, your home and you’re family.
Oh, and I really liked listening to Ana Popovic’s “Business as Usual”. I love good blues.
Shabbat Shalom!
Skip, living with regret is the worst thing a parent can feel. It’s much more complicated than you can imagine. So much blame going around when what should be blamed is not. Some people even end up blaming God.
When I was around 12, I thought ‘I don’t have an earthly father who loves me but I have a Heavenly Father who does. Maybe he will regret the choices he’s making someday.’ I have no idea if the tear going down his face in his comatose state after he started drinking again had anything to do with that emotion but now many years later, I am wondering if he was also a victim of the system. Possibly. He had been in the military.
We have all been affected by poison injected into us after birth. (Most have if you are around 70 or younger.). It basically started in the mid 50’s (but before too) and has gotten unbelievably insane. Brains have been affected. Behavior modification is real. Brain damage (not chemistry) is real too.
I know a father who can’t get over the death of his daughter because of a drug overdose. So much blame in so many directions by all involved. He doesn’t know that his daughter was affected by the injections. That everyone is. (Trump knows what happened to his son.) The new normal is far from normal, far from what we were meant to be.
We can’t change the past but if there is something we can do to stop others from suffering, we have done something important which could ‘maybe’ alleviate some of the pain. All lies hurt. The lies about the role of Satan. Lies about the creation of the world. Lies about the relationship between husband and wife. A long list of lies.
I am not silent anymore regardless of how much opposition I get because I have figured out a lot in my 60 years with it concentrated in the last 10 years I suppose. My opinion is not important, only the truth matters. That’s my aim because every single lie that takes us in the wrong direction is harmful. I think it says ‘Don’t be deceived’ many times in the Bible.
Personal bravery is a sign of hope to everyone else. Thanks.
I cried as I read because I’m in recovery from 35+ years of trauma…..but Yah kept me all that time and I clung to him and I’m still clinging. His word and spirit uphold me/us even when we don’t feel it. You wrote some time ago something along the lines of ……’Yah keeps us until grace comes along’ how true.
A revelation regarding the act of a Mikveh caused me to regain my shalom as a change of status was coming. I filled the bath and sobbed out my situation and trauma to Abba and asked him to heal/resolve and renew my spirit and life. I’m sharing this because the result has been a shalom a separation and a restoration I did not expect. I am now in the place of just be being still and knowing He is Elohim.
Skip your one of the most real people I’ve met over the years (I actually met you at a meeting in Droitwich UK in 2014?) and that is sadly lacking in so many communities/ churches. May your cry be like David’s in Psalm 61.
You honor his name by your research/ openness and quest for truth so be encouraged …vs 7 paraphrased …….’that grace and truth which will keep ‘skip’ and he be established before Elohim to eternity’.
Blessings
Christine
Thank you, Skip.
Keep going.
A tribute to Skip.
I recently had an opportunity to hear Bart Ehrman, a once-conservative Evangelical Christian turned atheist. He grew up in a Christian home, went to Moody Bible Institute (publisher of TWOT), and graduated from Wheaton College and Princeton Seminary. He studied under Bruce Metzger and co-authored a major work with him: The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration. What led him to push the eject button on the Christian faith? He could not reconcile the goodness of God with the presence of evil in the world. How could God, whom the Bible describes as good, allow evil to exist in the world he created? Ehrman came to the place where he could no longer reconcile a supposed good God with the existence of evil. [But the foundations of his Christian faith began to crumble long before by discovering that his fundamentalistic (Christian) notion that the KJV was the inspired Word of God in toto was simply false.] Without going into all the philosophical arguments or moral reasons why Ehrman’s thinking is defective (as Christianity is inclined to do), Ehrman does have a point. Within the context of Christian Platonism, the perfect God of Christian dogma has really screwed up. But he is going to fix it, some day. In the meantime, just make sure you are on his good side or you’ll end up on the burnt side. End of story. Does this sound like a reasonable proposition to someone who looks at all the pain and suffering in the world on the one hand, and the God of Christianity on the other? Hell, no!
Enter Yeshua: “You are my friends if you do what I command you.”
With a Greek mindset, we simply ignore this. We assume Jesus meant to say, “If you believe (assent to the truth), you are my friends.” Therefore, the more “truth” we can accumulate to further solidify our belief, the closer we come to Jesus. As Western believers, thinking is our modus operandi. Platonism (and to a large part Epicureanism and Stoicism) is etched onto the tablet of our being. “I think, therefore I am.” Yes, Skip has helped many of us re-think our core assumptions and beliefs, but it is still mere thinking. How does the rubber of thought meet the road of life? Does it direct us to live with Kingdom priorities? Does it affect real life transformation? Is the world around me any different because of my thoughts?
By thinking, I exist; by doing, others know I exist.
Yeshua was the commensurate doer. In this sense, Yeshua was God “in the flesh” [eschewing Trinitarian overtones]. I find it astounding that Yeshua wrote absolutely nothing on paper, at least none that we have record of. [If he had a computer, would he have used Facebook, Snapchat, or even typed a single word for print?] Rather, Yeshua carved out change in the lives of his followers. He was Torah, God’s Word, with skin on (in the flesh).
Let’s be honest. It is easy to be vulnerable here–I don’t have to live with you. Moreover, I don’t “know” any of you. How could I? I cannot see your face. I cannot hear the inflection of your words. I cannot see the wrinkle above your brow. I cannot experience the warmth of your hug or the comfort of your gentle voice. However, I don’t have to endure your impatient tone or the bitterness inherent in a laugh of scorn. This (in many ways) is a sterile virtual community. Are we merely expressing ourselves according to our Platonic urges, or are we truly experiencing real life change in the context of community?
But wait, it is word itself that creates life, effects change, and directs destiny. Can anyone legitimately dispute that it was God’s word that created the heavens and earth? It was God’s word that illuminated Abraham’s path, guided the nation of Israel, and led Yeshua to the cross. It was God’s word that gave Paul the hope of resurrection. It is God’s word that gives us the hope of shalom and l’chaim.
So what about the word of Skip? Does it/he reflect God? Is he a modern day John the Baptist, a prophet in wilderness preparing the way of the Lord? Or, are these words we read in TW the ramblings of a malingering Christian reject? Maybe these are the same sorts of questions people were asking about the Apostle Paul. Time will tell, but more importantly, our behavior will tell.
So what about evil? What about the trauma? What about true healing? Are we agents of the God of healing or simply thinking machines, feeling fulfilled in our [correct] existential musings? Is Today’s Word a means of Platonic expression or God-induced transformation? “By their fruits ye shall know them.”
Skip, I love you brother. Keep up the good work! Keep pushing the envelope. But more importantly, keep putting skin on the Word!
Thank you for being real in your writing. I have been out of the loop for a bit…time! That said, I inquired shortly ago about sharing a fall festival. This forum is “safe” in that we don’t see each other face to face. Means we “know ” each other, but, not really. Seems to me we are searching for answers to similar questions, hence we are here together. I find it completely interesting that often, though in a different life, walk, world, Skip can write about subjects I am wrestling with in my world, I see others feel the same. I think it would be “Wow” to share a festival together, sharing these questions in real time. Not really in seminar format, but discussion forums, with a topic on stage, and round table discussion. RESPECT being key, in that we are all in different parts of the path. I imagine it would be both educational, inspiring, emotional and challenging, but…Wow!! Food for thought.