If you think about it, religion is just what the human soul acts like when God is around. And just like gravity is everywhere, people can’t really escape from religion. Of course, people react differently according to how they act to whatever situation…but they still react.<\/p>\n
Thing is, people’s reaction to God can only go down three different religious ways: head, heart or will. It’s like the basis of every religion and people wind up dabbling in any of these, or a mixing of them.<\/p>\n
That’s just religion but then we get to the source of religion. You either have religion that comes from God or religion that comes from people. So God’s religion would be religion that he tells you about, and takes in all three spheres, or it would be religion he doesn’t tell you about\u2014and people make up\u2014and dabbles in all three spheres.<\/p>\n
So you have two sources: one comes in with the authority of God and the other doesn’t. One has complete authority the other doesn’t. One’s authority is grounded in what God says, the other is grounded completely inside of a person.<\/p>\n
Really then it doesn’t matter if the religion is head, heart or will\u2014if it’s not from the source with authority, it has no basis. Sorta’ like Rudyard Kipling makes his “Tommy” say:<\/p>\n
The heathen in his blindness bows down to wood and stone,<\/p>\n
He don’t obey no orders unless they is his own.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Enter Jedism. Or mysticism. Whatever. It’s one of the current (yet old) aspects of religion that doesn’t really aim at the head, or the will, but rather at the heart as the ultimate source of authority. If you’re doing it out of love, it can’t be wrong. This is why you’ll see Hindu Jedi’s, Buddhist Jedi’s, Muslim Jedi’s and even Christian Jedi’s. The spiritual is only known by the heart\u2014not by our rationalistic thinking or our desires.<\/p>\n
The Jedi can’t help it. He (or she) has to dig within himself to feel out his religion and then he speaks out what he feels\u2014in the subpar language of talking. So you’ll see Jedi’s believing two obviously opposing ideas, but it’s okay: its his understanding of the Deep Deep Things. What winds up happening is that it doesn’t matter what the deep deep things are, as long as the Jedi stands next to the deep deep pit and feels it.<\/p>\n
If he’s a Hindu pantheist, the deep-deep things tell him about the Divine Surging within; if he’s a naturalist, he interprets the deep-deep things according to his love of nature; if he’s a believer in God he’ll slap some Scriptural labels on it or, better, call it the Holy Spirit.<\/p>\n
There’s no difference from the Christian Jedi than an actual Jedi in any Star Wars movie. The proof of this just goes down through time. There’s always been people that look inside to hear the inner voice which they label Whatever. So you’ll get Jedi’s that are trying to attain Power in their life, or Jedi’s that are looking for Knowledge, or Jedi’s who are just happy Feeling Things.<\/p>\n
They’re all the same; looking into their own heart and feelings, for confirmation and direction.<\/p>\n
Sure, some of them attach supernatural labels (beyond mere midichlorians) but that’s just makes it sound better. It’s the Holy Ghost inside moving within and telling me what to do!<\/em><\/p>\n
This all stands apart from what God revealed. What God revealed as a guide for his people is recorded in Scripture. The Jedi, on the other hand, has no problem walking away and looking within to make the revealed Word less important, less direct, and thus less authoritative. What matters is those sweet-sweet moments, alone, with “God” inside. The actual revelation of God in Scripture goes down in value.<\/p>\n
What’s funny is that this position, of looking within, generally forces the Christian Jedi to shift in feeling, not to the actual categories, to either rationalism or pantheism. Once he doesn’t feel as religious, his rationalism goes up. Once he feels more religious, he starts to see God in everything. It’s all designed! It was orchestrated for making me smile!<\/p>\n
It’s as if Christianity is only this religious feeling that got started rolling when it was properly bumped into motion by Jesus Christ and flowed down through time through the natural laws of motion; sorta’ like how you would hit a pool ball with pool-stick.<\/p>\n
The Jedi either gets what he hopes for, and his approach to everything becomes pantheistic or he doesn’t get what he wanted and he keeps looking for proof.<\/p>\n
The biggest Jedi’s the church adopted where the neoplatonists via Pseudo-Dionysius into the Eastern Church, and eventually, into Aquinas via John Scotus Erigena. It’s gotten to the point where we get our Schleiermacher trying to rescue Christians from rationalism by going beyond reason. Good luck with that.<\/p>\n
When the church adopted it, we wind up getting this gangrene that rejects outside authority and elevates the experience. Scripture? God’s revelation? Bah. It’s all about the inner illumination, my boy! And then they run off, blurring words, so as to elevate the Experience over the External Revelation of God in Scripture.<\/p>\n
What’s sad about this is that since these persons can’t rise above themselves, they’re stuck hearing the revelation of the sinful self. It is dangerous, prideful, unlovely and ultimately idolatrous. The individual who started off looking for God finds God\u2014it is himself. Sure, the Inner-nself is helpful, but it isn’t enough and really a tragic fate for a person.<\/p>\n
Christ is historical\u2014outside of self. Scripture is recorded\u2014outside of self. The Christian Jedi can have, really, nothing to do with either. Christ winds up being a sign of internal grace. Scripture is merely the sublime confirmation of inner revelation. The fact that the Jedi has no one but himself, he must sooner or later “pass beyond Christ.”<\/p>\n
Christ inspires the Jedi, surely. He may even be someone that the Jedi really loves. He might even be called Big Brother and stands as a leader in the foreground\u2014but Christ can’t possibly save the Jedi. The Jedi ultimately sinks into himself to seek God, to find God, and to be “saved”. He has no need of “salvation” and allows no place for it.<\/p>\n
Justification? Imputation? Atonement? Everything external in Christian salvation goes poof; it was just a door for the Jedi’s Religion. If they still speak about Christ it’s only because that’s what Christians Do. If you threw them under some other God system, they would talk in ways that sound right under those other systems, times and places. It winds up being only an accident that the Jedi happens to have Christian labels.<\/p>\n
The Christian Jedi, on the other hand, can’t have this: a message of the living Christ, coming into them and waking them from the dead\u2014not waking them up to a new experience! The Jedi can’t imagine Christ bringing something new\u2014it’s just something that continues from the very beginning and has already been there, only needing the proper motivation.<\/p>\n
The Jedi doesn’t only wind up neglecting Christ and his cross, but God speaking in His Word is forgotten. His words may stand as magical symbols for the whole Jedi ideals\u2014but its actual content is emptied of everything that makes Christianity the religion of salvation for a lost world the cross, Christ Himself, and the God and Father of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ who in His love gave His Son to die for sinners.<\/p>\n
The issue which Jediism creates is thus just the issue of Christianity. The question which it raises is, whether we need, whether we have, a provision in the blood of Christ for our sins; or whether we, each of us, possess within ourselves all that can be required for time and for eternity. Both of these things cannot be true, and obviously tertium non datur<\/em>. We may be Jedis, or we may be Christians. We cannot be both. And the pretension of being both usually merely veils defection from Christianity. Jediism baptized with the name of Christianity is not thereby made Christianity. A rose by any other name will smell as sweet. But it does not follow that whatever we choose to call a rose will possess the rose’s fragrance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If you think about it, religion is just what the human soul acts like when God is around. And just like gravity is everywhere, people can’t really escape from religion. Of course, people react differently according to how they act to whatever situation…but they still react. Thing is, people’s reaction to God can only go […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[314,543,542,545,544],"class_list":["post-2116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spirit","tag-holy-spirit","tag-jedis","tag-mysticism","tag-quotable","tag-warfield"],"yoast_head":"\n
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