The Holy Spirit is my publicity agent.
My message here has little appeal to mainstream Christian believers as a whole. They are not my target audience. It’s not that nothing I write has anything to teach them. On the contrary; I think they are mostly wrong. However, it comes as no surprise that they don’t want to hear that message.
I don’t seem to recall having any particular demographics in mind when I first opened this blog. Franky, I was writing in search of my own peace with God. Had no one ever read this blog, I would still be posting here pretty much daily. The message would be the same stuff, though I can assure you the particular content of the posts would be different. That’s because much of what I write is answering questions or responding in some other way to others. However, the guide for what I write remains the Holy Spirit.
He is the director of curriculum, as well as the publicity agent.
And how does He seem to you when His touch invades your soul? What personality would you deduce from His Presence?
I often say in various ways that our fallen intellect so easily gets in the way of God’s work in our lives. I’ve written whole books trying to help people break away from bad intellectual conditioning that limits what we expect from God. How many ways do I have to say it? Western intellectual traditions will blind you from seeing the truth. God will work with what you bring Him, but if you ignore the prompting of His Spirit about the contents of your mind, you won’t leave much room for His blessings.
I’ve also written tons of material critiquing our Western sense of sexual identity. This is easily one of the deepest deceptions I contend with in my work. The Western notion of manhood is a pretty confused mess and it makes it hard for us to understand what God meant by choosing to portray Himself as a Father figure. I assure you good men of God in the Bible did things we find repulsive, and you can’t dismiss all of it as mere cultural context.
So tell me how many women experience the touch the Spirit with what we might regard as feminine characteristics? Why is it so hard to accept the idea that the resurrected Christ could commune with women in girl-talk? Not the silly crap you overhear from cell-phone conversations, but in the wordless touch of Someone who truly understands the moral torture a woman faces in this world. He’s the Savior of all humans.
So if Sister Wildcucumber mentions her “goddess” on her blog, to me that’s little more than a personal avatar for the Holy Spirit. It’s not how I would say it, but if the result is that she follows Christ, are you going to complain? Because I assure you whatever it is she means by such talk, it has nothing to do with the false worship of idols condemned in the Bible. The whole point of condemning the cult of Ishtar/Astarte was that it made women rebellious against their own husbands, and weakened the covenant relationship with God. I don’t see that happening in her case.
If it bothers you, no one is twisting your arm. Don’t read her blog. I don’t see too many other folks stepping up to the task of working alongside the stuff I’m doing here. Let me assure you: The staff of this online virtual parish is not closed. The standards I applied when I invited her on board will apply to anyone else. Start making comments, send me emails about what I write, etc. Show me you are involved in virtual moral leadership — obviously that means posting something online somewhere, because we just don’t have anything else to work with right now.
Let the Holy Spirit speak through you. The worst thing you can do is be ambitious about being in front of others. Be ambitious for His glory on this earth.
In case you haven’t already noticed, this thing with the virtual mission here is taking off. I can’t easily put it into words, but the power of God is oozing all around us here and things are happening that human eyes cannot see, that human emotions cannot feel. Find your place and get involved if you like. Or start your own work with your own teaching. I’ll do what I can to help, because I don’t take myself that seriously.
Whatever you do, don’t let your own boundaries keep you from getting in on the work of God, because He’s pretty busy right now and it’s a good time to come to the party.
