HOLD it!

“Not that I have already obtained all this

Or have already been made perfect,

But I press on to take    HOLD

Of that for which Christ took

HOLD

Of me. 

Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken

HOLD

Of it.

But this one thing I do:

FORGETTING WHAT IS BEHIND

And straining toward what is ahead

I PRESS ON

Toward the goal to win the prize for which GOD

Has called me heavenward in

Christ Jesus.”

 

Wouldn’t you think that this would be wonderful news for “progressives,” inasmuch as it was the exact opposite of the Pharisee that Paul used to be?  Ah, but it is defined by the goal, not the process.

It is interesting that the Pharisees were the Populists of their day; and the Sadducees were the keepers of many traditions, even as they were in charge of keeping up the Temple;  unlike the Pharisees, the Sadducees had no belief in the supernatural, like most Jews today, who are barely even cultural Jews for the most part.  One can tell no difference between a materialist Jew and a materialist Gentile. So in essence, the Sadducees were experts in undermining people like Simeon and Anna; but also very much using tradition to keep themselves in governance as a hereditary oligarchy who were, well, religious hegamoniacs.

As the counseling dictum goes, “People are usually what they say they are; or the exact opposite.”

Is is not ironic that the Jews of Jesus day who were considered most progressive, and the ones who compromised with Greece and Rome most completely, were in fact ferocious traditionalists bent on keeping the few privileges they had left?  But is it not the same now?

If it is true, that the more things change, the more they stay the same, this is quite understandable. People actually do still believe that they can

HOLD 

Onto their piece of the pie and not only eat it but make it bigger and stronger by rabid consumption—and I am not really talking about mere stuff here.  I am talking about the essence of one’s life.

Conservatives per se and Progressives per se actually worship at the same altar, even as the Sadducees and the Pharisees worshipped at Jerusalem together more than not; and governed in the same ineffectual way that our country is governed now. 

But note, “this one thing.” :

Neither party is ever going to FORGET WHAT IS BEHIND!!!

Indeed that is their/our  chief undoing, and why we progress only backwards, as Kerry Livegren once sang.

Grace and Forgiveness and even general maturity and not being constantly subject to a hail of emotions, are also conspicuously lacking, then and now and for the foreseeable future.

It is the goal of this blogger to divert my focus from what is disintegrating in front of my eyes, with all my “privileges” which are being taken from me—I must learn to rejoice in this and be free in this stripping, in actuality—in order to

TAKE HOLD

Of what Paul was striving for; yet even in this last epistle written from jail pending a painful execution for nothing more than proclaiming that Christ was what He said He was; the “patient” said he was not well but falling apart, apart from his will which was at least part way subsumed under Christ’s. And that before his will crumbled as well, it needed its maker most of all.

  Can I get much farther in life, towards my Loving Creator, than he did?

“I Can Only Imagine…”