The Concept of Covenant

'It is possible for Christians to esteem the Bible wrongly and equate the Bible with God. But it is not possible for Christians to esteem the Bible too highly. Every word in every sentence in every proposition or command or question in the Bible is inspired by God, authoritative, trustworthy, true, useful, and aids our joy in God. Despite their differing interpretations on some matters, Christians of various theological stripes in all ages have believed wholeheartedly in this previous sentence. My hope is that emerging Christians are not departing from it.'

The above quote can be found in the following book review: http://www.joshharris.com/2007/12/new_book_why_were_not_emergent.php

This quote alienates me. It’s not a big deal because I really couldn’t care less, but it’s still a problem because there is a significant amount of people who aren’t prepared to be excommunicated from their tradition, especially on account of something as miniscule as failing to hold to the nonsensical doctrine of Inspiration.

There are people who have grasped the most crucial elements of Christianity (I would define these as Love/Restoration/’Kingdom’) and refuse to hold to the humungous belief structures. There are, in actuality, significant amounts of people who used to hold to the latter (myself included), who have found it necessary to utterly discard the latter on account of discovering the former.

Three weeks ago on October 18th 2009, I set up covenantdaw.ning.com.

I immediately wrote a proposition to begin the discussion. In retrospect, it’s actually a lot more neat than it should have been. I want people to realize that the conversation is messy enough for their contributions to be crucial and valuable.

*****

The following is a proposal. It is not established. It is not decided.

Covenant began as the question, ‘What should the church look like?’

Covenant is an answer.

Not necessarily the answer, but its our answer.

Covenant answers, ‘Love.’

Covenant rejects love that requires a certain collection of beliefs. Covenant rejects love that requires return.

Covenant began as the conviction that God extends love without imposing a certain perspective on truth, even without imposing a certain perspective on God.

There are people all over the world living the way of love and suffering that Jesus taught us to, and the only thing dividing us from them is the arrogant notion that we have the truth and they don’t.

Christianity is proud of its separation from the other religions that pursue love.

Covenant is sick of it.

Covenant is an inter-structural support network, consisting of humans striving to love, accept, and support each other beyond religion, beyond personality, beyond distance.

Covenant exists for the holistic restoration of this world, and especially the restoration of the powers of this world – humanity.

Covenant is not a structure. It is an ideal, a purpose.

The first obstacle to Covenant is that the above is a collection of beliefs.

Covenant acknowledges that the notion that beliefs are not necessary is in fact a belief in itself, and is thus self-contradictory.

Covenant could include a statement of faith such as the following:

‘A distinction must be made between the pursuit of love, and Covenant.

Though love requires no beliefs, Covenant requires two.

1. Covenant consists of people who believe that love wins.

2. Covenant consists of people who believe that no other beliefs, other than these two, are necessary to be a part of this movement.’

Rather, Covenant chooses to acknowledge that it is a conduit of brokenness, a conduit of contradictions, just as the world beyond it.

Covenant consists of the people who strive to love within and through this world’s brokenness.

The above is a proposal. It is not established. It is not decided. It is my thoughts on direction.

Thus far, Covenant is a conversation.

*****

This is justifiably ridiculed. There is simply nothing practical about it. But for me, giving up this ideal is not an option, because it’s essentially an attempt to express who I am and what I can’t help but stand for.

I can throw away the name ‘Covenant’ and I can forfeit any opportunity of networking with other people who would strive for a family of unconditional love and I can make myself very, very alone (with the exception of my gorgeous fiancee).

But I can’t let go of my personal struggle for the heart of what I currently call Covenant.

Phase III: Establish Jesus' death as substitution rather than participation.

The following speech was given at the Assembly of Antichrists, on the 30th of October 2009. This is Part Three of the fourteen-part series, THE BIBLE 2: HOW TO BURN CHURCH.

(The speech began with the congregative reading of 2 Timothy 3:16, which was then repeated until the spiritual manifestations became too disruptive)


Settle down everyone.

I beg you all to brace yourselves.

We are about to summarize the enemy’s Gospel.

I apologize for any trauma that may be caused. Please calm yourself. Purge your mind of aggression. Meditate on something happy.

Close your eyes.


Jesus was killed because he was a threat to the empire.

He was a threat to the empire because he demonstrated the Kingdom of God.

The Kingdom of God is a threat to empires because it removes their power.

It removes their power because it demonstrates that to be truly alive, you have to live beyond yourself.

Empires function by human selfishness. Empires depend on each person doing what’s best for themselves.

Jesus demonstrated that love wins. Before he died. One man lived beyond himself for restoration, and as he restored, a secret of the Kingdom was revealed.

This secret of the Kingdom is that there’s nothing more beautiful than living under it, because it’s what we’re created for.

Kingdom living isn’t demanding. It’s liberating.

God as Jesus lived this life that freed us.

I repeat. This life.

Then Jesus was killed. And we thought God had left us.

So God came back. And made it very clear. That was life.

Jesus’ resurrection was God’s definitive statement that Jesus’ way of life was victorious over the empire’s.


Now open your eyes.

I now unveil our master plan.

We are about to dislodge every ounce of power from this Gospel.

We are about to replace the entire message of Jesus with concept and celebration.

This is a big deal.

Here’s the word. Substitution.

Let me unpack that for you.


Jesus was killed because it was necessary to appease God’s wrath.

God required appeasement because all of humanity has fallen from the perfect moral code.

God required appeasement because without justice, the Divine is incapable of love.

Jesus was able to cover over all our sins because he was born of a virgin and thus bypassed the sin gene.

Jesus’ life was essentially setting up his death. The Kingdom of God was not about restorative life now, but about looking forward to an eternity of bliss.

His death created the possibility within humankind to pass a spiritual border that upgraded their souls from Hell to Heaven.

His death was the fulfillment of the prophetic ritual of Jewish sacrifice. Jews sacrificed in anticipation of Jesus, and Jews sacrificed to atone for their sins until Jesus.

Because Jesus only covered the sins of people who lived after him.


Our victory is at hand.

Our only concern is that people might think about this too much.

There are some connections between Israel and Christianity that we can’t afford to let people make.

In particular, the connection between Jewish sacrifice and Jesus’ sacrifice must end now.


In genius fashion, we’ll accomplish this not by ignoring the connection, but by distorting Jewish sacrifice down to something that fits with our Plan, which we can then use to promote the burning of church ever further.

We are going to shift the concept of Jewish sacrifice from participation to substitution.

We are going to be so thorough that Christians will be speaking of Jewish sacrifice like it was no different from pagan sacrifice.


Please turn in your Bibles to Leviticus 1:4.

‘You shall lay your hand on the head of the burnt offering, and it shall be acceptable on your behalf as an atonement for you.’

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the traditional beauty of this scene, allow me to depict it for you.

After the Jew had placed their fattest calf on the altar, they placed their hand on its head and watched as it was slain.

That was once their prized possession.

With their hand on the animal as it died, they identified themselves with its suffering.

At a time when meaning was communicated more with physical imagery than detailed sentences, some fraction of understanding sunk in:

This is what is necessary for restoration.

This is how my Creator has purposed me to live – alive only for my God and his purposes.

This was God’s act of parenthood.

Think. When a parent disciplines their child for making a mistake, the priority is not to make sure their child suffers sufficiently according to their mistake, but to teach.

To teach the child that it’s a mistake, why it’s a mistake, and how it can be fixed.

That’s what Jewish sacrifice did. That’s what Jesus did.

That’s why we must twist them both.


Sacrifice wasn’t new to the world.

Most nations sacrificed to their gods to appease their wrath, or to make them extra happy for increased luck.

We just need to convince the world that Jewish sacrifice was like that, instead of parenting.

‘…and it shall be acceptable on your behalf as an atonement for you.’

There’s our chance.

We’ll replace atonement with appeasement.

We’ll replace the pursuit of humanity’s restoration with the escape of divine wrath.

Jewish sacrifice becomes beautifully pagan.

Jesus’ death becomes the climax of Jewish sacrifice that means that we don’t need to sacrifice anymore.

We can be rich, comfortable, AND certain of our eternal salvation, thanks to God having done all of the work for us.

The only requirement is that we hold strictly to our beliefs, as set out very, very clearly in the Bible.

Phase II: Establish salvation as a change of belief rather than a change of being.

The following speech was given at the Assembly of Antichrists, on the 23rd of October 2009. This is Part Two of the fourteen-part series, THE BIBLE 2: HOW TO BURN CHURCH.

(The speech began with the usual pleasantries. The speaker was introduced as ‘friendly,’ ‘wise,’ ‘knowledgeable in the Scriptures,’ ‘loving life,’ ‘blessed,’ ‘anointed,’ and ‘a powerful man of Beelzebub.’)

In a world where everything made sense, I wouldn’t need to give this address.

Our understanding of salvation would be directly affected by our understanding of sin.

Yet sense evades us.

Somehow, salvation can still mean being transformed into God’s design whilst sin revolves around a moral code.

But we’re not satisfied. Our purposes necessitate that we distort this dilemma even further.

Through the spread of the Law-Grace Hypothesis, a rare opportunity has presented itself.

We are now perfectly capable of making the meaning of salvation even less relevant to sin without anyone noticing.

Briefly summarized, the Law-Grace Hypothesis suggests that Israel and Christianity had and have two utterly divergent purposes.

So will be ultimately judged by two distinct criteria.

Israel was designed to stay away from the sinful world and strictly follow the law.

Christianity is designed to convert the sinful world and loosely follow the law.

The law matters less for Christians because God is now more concerned about being popular than having people obey him.

Therefore, God invented grace.

Grace means that it doesn’t matter what you do so long as you belief the right stuff.

This makes sense, because it would be very difficult to convert people to Christianity whilst it had very strict rules.

People like freedom most, which just so happens to be Christianity’s favorite slogan.

And the best part of the hypothesis – it suggests that salvation is now nothing to do with action whatsoever.

Israelites will go to heaven so long as they keep the law.

Christians will go to heaven so long as they keep their beliefs.

Brilliant. Let’s adopt it.

Let’s utterly crush every possibility that Christianity might have something to do with present change.

Salvation becomes the moment that the soul switches eternal destinies from hell to heaven.

The Christian life becomes the pursuit of that moment for every soul.

Fortunately for the church, that moment is achieved by accepting precisely the beliefs that strengthen the Institution’s status in society and therefore the status of its members.

Aided by this subtle persuasion, the church would potentially lose all focus of its restorative purpose.

It is even possible that if this plan is executed, the phrase ‘salvation is God’s work, not ours’ could even become ‘orthodox’ doctrine.

Wow.

Picture a hospital where the doctors do nothing but point to the Chief of Staff and say ‘healing is his work, not mine.’

Christianity could become so beautifully ironic.

By merely defining its success by the number of people who join it, we have the ability to mold the entire movement into one that uses all the same words with completely contrary meaning.

The death of a movement is the moment it concerns itself with the number of people who constitute it rather than the change that it effects.

What could be a more genius method of sabotage than suggesting the purpose of a movement to be the pursuit of its demise?

Now that we have the method, we need to decide on a game plan.

Let’s start from the beginning – right at the entry point to Christianity.

We need an initiation rite.

We’ve got to make people do something that immediately conditions them to perceive Christianity as being primarily concerned with beliefs.

Something that distracts from themes of earthly restoration.

Here’s an idea.


God, forgive me. I am a sinner.

I want to stop sinning.

I don’t want to feel guilty anymore.

Thank you for dying on the cross and making everything okay.

I accept my immortality as accomplished by faith and belief in Jesus.

I accept you as my final authority, as defined by the church.

Come into my heart.

In Jesus’ name, Amen.


Faith and Belief.

We need to say those two words together so often that people forget that there’s any difference.

Phase I: Establish sin as breaking a moral code rather than being broken.

The following speech was given at the Assembly of Antichrists, on the 16th of October 2009. This is Part One of the fourteen-part series, THE BIBLE 2: HOW TO BURN CHURCH.

(The speech began with a sadistic ice breaker that only an antichrist would appreciate and thus cannot be put on Facebook. I have edited this out)

Our brilliant subterfuge begins at the over-arching concept of life.

Brokenness.

All of creation now bears varying amounts of dysfunction, some level of imperfection.

Not only does all creation die, but none of it ever achieves its full potential.

Every layer of reality is permeated with digression from design.

The church’s imminent purpose is to restore creation.

Yet for the last millennium at least, the church has continued to fail.

In fact, for the last millennium, the church has been slowly, excruciatingly killing itself off.

All we’re going to do is put it out of its misery.

We begin with a touch of genius.

All we do is change a definition – the definition of sin, Christianity’s famous nemesis.

Instead of dysfunction, we just call it something else.

They’ll never notice.

Our sources report that they wouldn't change their vocabulary to save the world.

Whenever anyone insists that a word they use means something different, they tend to shout and scream for while but eventually they go along with it.

Now, this part of the plan was amusing, because it became quickly clear how many deviating concepts there are to select from, ranging from suffering and separation to wrong, disobedience, and evil.

Sadly, not all five are usable for our mischievous purposes.

The most debatable option is that of separation from God, but unfortunately that carries with it too much of sin’s original meaning.

It does have some potential.

We could use it to suggest that sin is nothing to do with fixing the present creation and is entirely about getting people to heaven.

But it works too well metaphorically.

Sin is separation from God’s design.

Preferably, we want something close to the original meaning (since that makes it easier to deceive our victims), but not that close.

Another option is suggesting that sin is disobeying God.

Because this is the kind of language that Sunday School teachers use to simplify concepts for children, it sounds so beautifully right.

You scarcely notice that sin has just been narrowed entirely down to what humans are at fault for, and completely ignored creation’s state of suffering.

The brokenness within every relationship of society.

Or the inherently flawed communication between all creatures that exists with or without the help of humanity intentionally disobeying God.

It ignores the plane that gets hit by lightning and crashes, killing hundreds of people.

Or the shark that tears apart a scuba diver’s limbs.

It ignores the married couple who fall out of love with each other and break their child’s heart.

We can’t blame humanity’s disobedience for all the suffering that exists in this broken world.

Theologians have tried for decades to do somersaults over this by invoking the story of Adam and Eve and blaming them for the tragedy of sin.

Always the fanciful lot for utilizing wondrous leaps of logic.

Whether or not the story of Adam and Eve is pure mythology, and even if sin was in fact originally caused entirely by disobedience…

We don’t know and can’t know and don’t need to know.

All we do know is that there is now a state of sin outside of our disobedience.

The Christian must strive to fix that sin as much as they must strive to stop creating more of it.

But it’s much more convenient for the church to confront only the sin that makes them uncomfortable.

And a fair amount of sin does not come into that category.

Obesity and environmental deterioration, for example.

Sin being defined as disobeying God works well for our purposes.

It sounds perfectly correct whilst being suitably misleading.

Yet we can go one better.

Instead of disobeying God, we’re going to define sin as disobeying a moral code.

We’re going to take God out completely.

We’re going to replace the Divine with the concept of right and wrong.

It’s beautiful.

No concept could be much more opposed to the Kingdom of God and yet you can rest assured, the church will adopt it without a second thought.

Instead of perceiving design and dysfunction, they will judge the world according to their specific moral code.

Instead of broken people in need, the world at large will be seen as the Christian’s enemy.

Incredible, isn’t it?

A single definition has the power to sever the relationship between the world and its medic.

Try to picture what this is going to look like.

Imagine doctors began assessing diseases only according to the patient’s actions that caused it.

The only solution that could be given would be to stop doing those actions.

If the patient remained ill, the disease might be declared a ‘consequence’ of the patient’s past mistakes – a deterrent for those who might also fall prey to the action.

Never would it cross their mind that the dysfunction that infects an individual is broader than their choices.

Broader than their mistakes.

A moral code – the concept of right and wrong – smoothly distracts them from an understanding of design and dysfunction.

When the individual’s problem has nothing to do with the individual’s actions, the moral code is ineffective.

If the moral code were the only known possible cause, more often than not a moral cause would be ‘found’ anyway, leaving the dysfunctional with guilt and shame.

Imagine church done like that. Imagine the chaos we could create.

Imagine Christians being incapable of helping broken lives because they genuinely can’t perceive a cause beyond the individual’s actions.

They wouldn’t be able to see how to help the drunkard or fornicator who break their moral code except to keep pushing it.

The church would perceive no obligation to the mess that surrounds the dysfunctional.

Only an obligation to make them aware of what a cesspit they live in, in the hope that they might sort themselves out.

It takes a single definition to sever the world from its medic.

The moral code will burn church. We’ll make sure of it.

(Five minute interlude whilst the antichrists debate the nature of sin)

There is now only one threat to our ultimate victory.

The risk is minimal, but we must respect all possibilities.

It is the rise of the old mentalities.

The understanding of them has all but diminished, but there are a few who carry them by oral tradition.

Even worse, there are those who are discovering them merely by practical thinking.

This will not be tolerated. They must be contained.

If rumors of sin as dysfunction got leaked to the church at large, the results for our genius plan would be catastrophic.

Merely understanding the sinner as broken rather than evil may create the most impenetrable compassion known to humanity.

Even if we were to contort and pervert every other philosophy of Christianity, this one philosophy would leave those few Christ-followers who would yield enough love to keep the church alive for centuries.

Their homes would become orphanages, homeless shelters, pharmacies, hospitals, schools, job centers, rehab centers, and headquarters for recycling associations, breeding doctors, lawyers, teachers, care workers, counselors, and politicians with a head and heart for restoring a broken world.

We can’t afford to let that happen.