skipping was totally worth it

so yesterday i totally skipped c1. it was totally worth it. i sat and ate my breakfast in the living room in the morning sunlight. i drank my coffee and stared into the distance. and i had this picture in my head.

i've been trying to sort through what it should look like to be christian today. or what the kingdom of heaven on earth might look like. does it look like the organization that we're constantly pressured to look like. should we be teaching people how to look like the norm? should we teach people how to look bored to death with christianity by teaching them the rules and the organization and by putting them into classes on how to "be a christian"? i don't know. it's all good and well and those things help people but i wonder if there's a different way that's more practical to everyday living. for a people who think that family is more important than sitting in a class to learn how to read or write... for a people who understand stories and can memorize them and retell them because they can't read which means they can't cross reference from a stupid little list in the back of their bibles is a class on how to do all those things really necessary or even beneficial? i don't know. you tell me.

the reformation brought a lot of emphasis on literacy because it shifted the authority to the interpretation of the scriptures (i got that from phyllis tickle's book "The Great Emergence"). people had to be literate to interpret the scriptures for themselves. they had to have the scriptures in their own language too. whereas in the past, the Church/Pope (still is this way just not in the reformed traditions) interpreted the holy scriptures for the people and what they said was authority and THE way it was.

but in the meeting, we weren't even talking about teaching people how to read. we were talking about how to put an illiterate group of people into a class setting for literate people.

if family is important, then why teach how to be a christian as a family? or what does it mean to be a christian as a family member. what does it mean to be a christian as a family? why not meet as families.

anyways... that's beside my previous comment about having a picture.

picture... at c2 we were talking about gifts (please don't make me pull my hair out by having a theological debate about what the "actual" spiritual gifts really are. i won't listen to you. i'm postmodern remember.). but the scriptures being read talked about each person in the body of Christ having a gift that helps the whole. we should use those. it connected with the picture i saw earlier that day.

the lamb doesn't get eaten by the lion. they stand side by side.

the businessman makes decisions that recognize the humanity of those he works alongside and over.

the musician writes songs about the life he's stumbled upon.

the orphans and the widows are taken care of.

the convicted people of God who say that abortion is wrong, they go and adopt a pregnant single mother to walk through the difficult pregnancy and adopt the child she is unwilling and unable to take care of.

just some thoughts.

we all do what we're good at and we keep in mind the ways in which Jesus turned the system upside down which were practical ways of living out the greatest commandment and the second greatest. they were pictures of the kingdom of heaven.

this is long. sorry. just some thoughts. i'll be thinking of how this specifically applies to me and maybe write more later.