an exhortation..as 
a lay Christian examines his faith..

By James Ross Kelly
True to the fact that in reality Jesus Christ is always about His Fathers business down through the centuries out of this constant harangue of our culture comes a generation of Christians not content with the standard fare of Christian worship and the 19th Century hymnology and you find “Christian Rock” streaming across the airwaves that, if you flip through the dials and hear this music and stop to listen for the rhythm and blues riff of Rock and Roll you begin to hear lyrics balming the radio waves as pure Christian praise and worship. Listen:

“The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips [in Church] and walk out the door and deny Him by their lifestyle— that is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.” This comes not from Billy Graham’s crusade pulpit, but from a spoken intro to one of the songs on the dread locked hard rocking 1995, DC Talk, Album, Jesus Freak. This intro follows with the lyrics:

Is this one for the people ? Is this one for the Lord? Or do I simply serenade for things I must afford? You can jumble them together, my conflict still remains For holiness is calling, in the midst of courting fame… Copyright 1995 In The Mix Music (A Division of The Forefront Communications Group, Inc.) (BMI) All Rights Reserved

This is deep abiding faith. Same deep abiding faith written from the quill pen of the 3rd Century Saint, but blasted over the airwaves at the end of this one. Same God, same travail of reaching out and knowing how unholy each of us are in His presence and the same existential angst of a world gone wrong and having to live in the middle of its humanity. Looking heavenward is not as an upward outer leap into flat earth theology as some would suggest of present day Christendom, but a direction toward an inter-dimensional leap to the arms of Father God of the universe—Who inhabits congress with our own life because He created it!

Is it patriarchal? I think not. And I think not in the least, for inside this truth women ( to whom he first appeared after the resurrection) have roles of supreme significance. But at the same time Christ wasn’t going to a divine ‘mother.’ For Christians fitting Lord Jesus into a politically correct new age scheme courts blasphemy. But in His going and again in His expected coming, we all now have a new role in that there is a feminine quality of all of us as believers in the waiting for the groom. The waiting for God in our lives is a sanctification that has no patriarchal male gender related stigma to it at all, in fact—quite the opposite. The most macho of men have become believers of the almighty God come to earth and become the feminine receptors of the body of Christ as a bride waits for the bride groom in loving waiting desire. This is not patriarchal. Trying to fit into a feminist de-constructionist scheme will be always the square man made plug fitting into an ever elusive divine receptacle that will retreat at light speed leaving something only human.

“There is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.” Galatians 3:28 KJV