Modern Gospel

~ Jeff Turner - Sound Of Awakening

 Here's the modern 'gospel' in a nutshell:

God the Father had been imbibing the wine of his own fury for around four millennia, and finally, due to his weak constitution, he found himself spiralling into an angry, drunken rage! Having had one too many cups of wrath to drink, the father began to make his way up stairs towards junior, the apparent 'object of his wrath' and the cause of all of his woes. But thanks be to...god...big brother Jesus was on alert, and upon hearing daddy's heavy, drunken feet trudging up the steps, burst out of his room and intercepted him. Big brother endured blow after blow after blow from his enraged parental unit until finally, daddy's wrath had been fully vented. As though emerging from a trance, suddenly, the father found himself sober. He turns around to behold the tear stained face of his youngest, and now hysterical, son. Having vented all of his wrath on his eldest, daddy now looks at junior and exclaims, "No worries son! We're cool now! I beat big brother in your place! I've gotten all of the fight out of me and now we can be buds! Seriously. You can trust me son."

An over simplification? Yes.

A still accurate portrayal? Yes.

Good News? Heck no.

How could one ever feel comfortable in the presence of a 'father' who needed to maim and kill another in order to keep him from doing the same to you? Just as a child can never fully relax and be at ease in the presence of an alcoholic father, no believer can ever be truly at rest with such a notion of God lodged between their ears. What if the ubiquitous unrest and anxiety that plagues humanity can be blamed almost entirely on an interpretation of God the Father that makes Him look more like a Furor than a father? More like a Hitler than a healer? What if even our dysfunctional 'christian' families are simply mirror images of our own misinterpretation of God's dealings with men? What if our brokenness and bankruptcy is the byproduct of our toxic folklore concerning the Father of our spirits? I think most of us can agree that the 'what if?' isn't even necessary, we all know it's true.

The crying need of the hour is for the Church to recapture the image of the Father. We need sons who have learned to behold Him as He is and who are then able to express and project that image to a broken and bleeding humanity. Are you out there? Have you seen Him? Have you heard His voice? Have you tasted His sweetness? Then what are you waiting on? Let your tongue be untied! Let your voice be as clear and sharp as glass! Let your pace be swift and intentional! Run and find the broken wherever they lay, and declare to them the heart of the Father who has saved them!

This is real. Lives are at stake. God is Love.