By Another Name

My regular readers know that I blather a lot about divine moral justice, the moral fabric of Creation, the Law Covenants and Ancient Near Eastern intellectual traditions.

We don’t have to call it that. Those are terms I use consistently simply to get the point across. To be honest, there are times I wished that I could think up another nickname for Jesus Christ because the reader/listener surely carries lots of improper baggage with the mainstream name and title. I’ve literally watched as my attempts to help peel folks off the broken merry-go-round horse missed completely because using that name simply precluded anything I had to say that didn’t fit the officially approved pool of meaning. It’s great if you honestly believe there’s power in His name, but not if keep riding the dead churchianity horse.

Part of what I’m doing in my current fiction work is attempting to break away from all the previous definitions and terms and simply steering the main character into moral justice without all that stuff. In the story, he encounters an entity that is a direct reflection of moral reality, which is completely different from what he grew up believing. You and I know he’s dealing with God’s divine justice, but we don’t call it that in the story. There’s no discussion of “born again” nor even the common concept for it. Rather, we have a man who comes to the point where he simply acts according the Laws of God.

He becomes a biblical moral agent but I describe it in different language.

This is consistent with my teaching that knowing the name of Jesus has nothing to do with how the Father decides to breathe life into a dead spirit. Those of us how pursue a life walking in Christ can’t really know about that in another human in the first place. All we can know is whether the power of God is manifested in their lives. When people change and move closer and closer to the Laws of God, they tend to change their act. More, the greater miracles of God come in the shape of greater freedom to obey His Laws and less fighting against the flesh. The flesh won’t die unless the spirit is alive. No change? No power.

I’m describing a human who changes, and not merely because of psychological conversion.

At the same time, the story describes spiritual fellowship without even Christian religion. It’s there in substance, but not with the same old labels. It’s a bunch of people operating by a radically different ethical assumption about how human groups are supposed to work together. If you aren’t driven by that power, your religion won’t help you. If the power calls your name, you can make up your own religion.

I don’t regard the trappings of First Century church life as completely necessary, just exemplary. You can get pretty close to the spirit of things without the precise image carried over from ancient Hebrew synagogue habits. That’s what Paul meant about “rightly dividing the Word.”

The story is writing itself, but sometimes I have to stop and let it percolate down from the Spirit Realm. I have been surprised by a couple of twists in the story line, but once written it becomes obviously correct. The rest of the story just keeps coming from some place out past the edge of my conscious mind.

I think you’re going to like it.

Update: I think I can see this may be more than a single volume. In that case, it should be thought of as Brotherhood Book 1, with the actual volume title as AI’s Minion.

Update 2: Published.