And second…
SUBMISSION
mitchellmckain:
“God values love and freedom not power and control. Submission is only the interest of those who use religion as a tool of power. As the shepherd, God would guide us away from the self-destructive habits of sin to the ways of greater life (more awareness, more choices, more of the things that make a continued existence worthwhile).”
Kguess:
I don’t believe submission has to be what you say, although it can be. As a teacher, I seek to do for my students what you say God seeks to do for us within the limits of teaching music/piano. If they submit to my guidance, I can do that most effectively. If they do not, they hamper my effectiveness as their guide. I am not God, though, so my students and I are both within the same larger reality that God created and through which he is seeking to guide us. If I submit to that larger reality, if I submit to God, then the situation of a student refusing to submit to me becomes an opportunity for God to guide me to be a better guide for my student. For example, rather than try to force my student to submit, the cause of their refusal often becomes more known to me and the larger purpose in what I’m doing more clear. Through this how to proceed to be of benefit to them and to that larger purpose becomes more clear. If do not submit to the situation, however, then I become embroiled in a conflict with my student and things get worse. There could be exceptions to those two scenarios, but I’ve been teaching for 30 years, and there have not been many.
My experience reflects what God demonstrates in the Old Testament. God uses coercion often in the Old Testament, in both the form of threats and of rewards. This rarely leads to the fulfillment of his ultimate aim (Jeremiah 31:33-34). With Jesus, the tact is different. In fact, I would argue, it is not a tact at all. It is an honest demonstration of our nature as both bodies and souls, of our relationships to material reality and to God and to each other.
“For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it.” (Luke 9:24)
Isn’t this the crux of the matter? If we cling to our Self—whatever form that may take—we resist God, we resist Jesus (who is God), and lose our true selves, which are not separate from God and, therefore, cannot be clung to. In the case of the Pharisees, they clung to their doctrine and the perks of their position in society, and this clinging blinded them so much that they could not recognize and thus rejected God standing before them in the form of Jesus.
I feel a need to caution you about getting too attached to your own doctrine. I lack the awareness to know if you are right or wrong, but I believe I do have the awareness to know that you are very enamored of your own interpretation of God’s word, your own conception of God and us, of what is going on in this existence and of what the purpose and nature of it all is. Maybe I’m wrong. I say this as a fellow member of the Body of Christ, as one who wants all to become members of that body and of none of those who have become sheep following Jesus to become lost sheep.