“3 If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. 3 For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. 5 Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. 6 On account of these the wrath of God is coming. 7 In these you too once walked, when you were living in them. 8 But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. 9 Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices 10 and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. 11 Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all. 12 Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, 13 bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. 14 And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. 15 And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. 16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. 17 And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” (Col 3:1-17 ESV)

To be encouraged up, to be in fighting posture with the Unknown: strange teachers have familiarized us aplenty with atheistic doubt and self-injurious ways, but our Claim is in heavenly realms now, and in such Claim we motor right through the doubt and despair.

To declare like the bishopric Declares, God’s presence in the mixture, the milieu Coping with matters Divine, our bishop is Christ and our Statement of Fact is His declaration of war—not with any Man, but with sin and with that fruit of Man’s free will, doubt, denial, hegemony of the imp of the perverse. Somehow our Scope, our rifle’s cross-hairs, find a middle ground Meaningful and Decisive, nothing a mere “given” or “aspect” but all things of Eternal Weight: the eternal weight of Glory being ours to own and to counterbalance in chutzpah and fighting Posture over and against that spice of Atheism which we know depresses and bores so many souls. 

God designed Reality to entertain as much as it teaches submission and duty. God designed reality to up the ante around our culpability and the realm of Decisiveness belonging to us alone, the Spirit simply Aiding but not taking any Blame: when we walk by the Spirit we are in lockstep with a march Planned and Decisive but not automatic nor guiltless: we take the credit as much as the blame. We take all things because to declare War with the Unknown: this is always to check back and see our multitudinous errors but in them, a Hope. A promise, of a way Forward. Because we are dumbfounded by how much poor decision is made, and in this consternation we are suddenly buoyant, alit, with God’s patient hand in the matter.

To doubt, this is to reverse course and make even our Head into some banal or lazy up-and-down spirit, who one day blesses and in another day Forgets or Dismisses: no, we are now Encouraged and what did we say to the Depression,  but “begone!”. I give you no credit or purchase in my life! As if I could will myself out of the forlorn ways, but in some sense we can indeed so will ourselves. Post-partum and of lazy reflection, to intake what is Right, Holy, and True, maybe this spells relief from the meaningless searching?

To find peace is to find cause for fighting, and the errors that would implicate the entire organization, tend to Shut it Down entirely: these errors are familiar to mankind, and nothing to worry about. We have need to be of solid stock insofar as we Credit and Honor what organizational realities are present. We credit the Superstructure with having much that is uncontrived, good, benevolent, helpful. We turn the Errors over to God’s Cross because on some level every social structure, is carried along not by the Law, not by rules and law and order’s presence, but by some weird trust-fall and societal glue. In one era such-and-so sins were fashionable to discuss; in our Era, the fashion is elsewhere, the cops and bishops and teachers are looking for a brand unique and Pertinent to today’s gestalt. What is germane today, is that we stick close to the Glue of society, not to some blind faith in the rules, but to Glue, of good souls contributing and making hay while the sun shines.

Scary, indeed, thus to walk on a bit of water, but so be it: our Mission is heavensent, our lackadaisical at-times atheistic ways… these meet punch and punditry when we literally accept the Supernatural. Not a creed except a Creed that posits God in the supernatural. Oh, but wasn’t our faith in Christ, in His bishopric and Certainty? Yes, and in the fact, if Christ be not raised then we are most of all to be pitied. If the dead are not raised… our faith is meaningless and our hope void.