Category: My other stuff

Personal and psychological integrity, including matters of the spirit

Equality


Jesus is the great equalizer.  Paul, the apostle, declared that all are equally sinners, that Gentiles have equal access to God through faith in Christ, that we share with him equally the inheritance as joint-heirs to God.  This spiritual equality translates into organic unity, where there is neither slave not free, Jew nor Gentile, male nor female.  From this unity flows political, economic and social equality, as in the Jerusalem commune in those first heady days of the church, or in Paul’s collection for the poor saints at Jerusalem, in which he appeals to equality as a worthy goal and a motivating force.  Jesus himself spoke of a Father who causes the sun to shine on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust.  He made the neighbor and the enemy both one’s equals, and advised equal generosity both to those who can and to those who cannot or will not repay.  He did not separate life, as we so often do, into secular and sacred components.  To affirm spiritual equality and at the same time to uphold and recognize political, economic, and social inequality, fulfills the divine  prophecy that there will be those who “having the form of godliness deny the power thereof.”  This supposed form of equality turns out to be merely a fantasy, a word-game, and utter hypocrisy.  The power of the Kingdom will be seen when individuals live out its principles trhough the enabling of the Holy Spirit in their own personal lives, and through the same Spirit refuse to separate personal decisions from business decisions, or political ones.

This paragraph  was written sometime in the mid-1980s. I haven’t backdated this post, though, because all these years later I still agree with what I said then.  

by therevr