Is an oxymoron: based on the definition of grace as freedom from law and yet freely accountable. It is not a contradiction; it is ‘transcendence’,  a description of the ‘raising up’ and putting up the tension in the activity of ‘gracious accountability’. In all the subsidiary couplets below, transcending activity happens. Each activity is peculiar to that area of judging and justice with that area of grace potential, which theonomy will meet. Transcendence without God is possible but the God beyond religion like Gandhi is preferable.

Inclusive Justice as opposed to Exclusive Judgement or a gracious way of law and a legal norm are possible. Non-hierarchical Justice as opposed to Male Dominating Judgement or a gracious way law and a legal stricture are also possible. A Non-violent justice as opposed a Violent judgement or a gracious way of law and a legal norm are potential. A Restorative Justice as opposed to Retributive Judgement or a gracious law and a legal norm, also figure in. How we differentiate, depends on the Complete Oxford Word Finder 1991? Both judgement and ‘make just’ are possible. The problem lies in the theological misuse of the original Greek and Hebrew and for centuries legal definitions followed this mistake.

Defining justice and grace as friends and judgement and law as enemies begins a theological idea of God beyond religion. For some we only live by grace. This means for us, another law, which transcends anything legal into grace and even terms like “law of nature”, “law of gravity”, and my favourite “economic law”, which is a figment of imagination. Literally, here freedom and equality transcended is the answer!

Inclusive not exclusive

All human beings are free and equal. If I am free and you are free, then we are equal. This is the basis of our thinking so that accountability is not ungracious but driven by freedom and equality, and is not based on money or wealth but on who I am as free and equal to you. Neither race, nor gender, not nation or village, is less or excluded. No culture, religion or ideology is better. The whole human race including nature and the cockroach are free and equal to me!

Non-hierarchical and not male dominating.

Male dominating religion falls away in this world of justice. See below. Muslim and Christians recognise that their religion falls short of God’s love. Calling out the demons in religion with joy so that people ‘enjoy’ one another as counter to religion.

Non-violent

The world chooses a non-violent way of life and in practising it, the habitual violence disappears. State violence is banned; the law changes to outlaw violence off the books. See below.

Restorative and retributive

In the past, the law did not allow human beings to see a gracious way to life.  Only retributiw answers in law, refusing a restorative way to life. All the above has two ways: an exclusive or an inclusive way, a male-dominating way or a non-hierarchical way and a violent of non-violent way. All the above are either driven by law or by grace.

Grace not law

Although this begins as a Christian way, it has not been implemented because Christians do not trust it. When it comes to people generally, we also go the lawyers. We have an enormous task ahead us, persuading people to trust grace in life at work, in religion and in law.

Justice

It begins in confusing judgement and justice. Certainly, in the major religions everyone seems to agree that ‘passing judgement’ and not ‘making just’ is the way.

Accountable

Whether legal or not as people accept that all human beings are able to reach transcendence on anything whether legal or not we can hold one another accountable. The Oxford Dictionary agrees that law is at times more than “rules” but about justice. By separating them and including things like equality and fairness to describe the law it implies but does not say that this characterise a transformative addition.

Behaviour Change

When we accept the process of including God beyond religion and finding transcendence, all human beings with joy will encounter new and innovative ways of transcendence possible.

This is not the conventional “roses and chocolate box” variety. It is not the biblical version, either. The Greeks have a number of words for love. They narrowed God down to only one word because all the other words were too human! If I could, I would take them all, but for thousands of years if we take the Bible seriously, we have agape and the others, which are closer to the term I enjoy in God I change direction and go to the study of being and say, love is the power that overwhelms separation, a nice neutral term. There are no roses here. I prefer love as “I am”. It is ontologically speaking, the study of being, “I am” is about being. In a community, there are ways of being. We could talk about, when you join me, I say “We are” and when we look at you alone, we say, “You are”. Then we look into the future and say “You can be” In psychotherapy, establishing relationships is about learning to love. Here the focus is on congruence, accepting the other person, empathy and challenging the other person. Congruence is both who I am and I am a mess. Acceptance is being warm and UPR, the unconditional positive regard for all of all humanity. Empathy is being but not owning your shoe and certain a certain “Aha moment”.Challenge is positive and negative. Practice makes perfect. I spent 18 weeks learning and unlearning. Love is very difficult to do, but once you take it, life takes off. Getting other people to own these principles help: Wendy did the course with me and my children follow it. Below is a summary of the above.

Explaining the graphic

The Genuine or Congruent I AM quadrant refers to me, the other and God. The Acceptant WE ARE quadrant refers to me, others and God. The Empathic YOU ARE quadrant refers to me, the other and God. The Challenge YOU CAN BE quadrant refers to me, others and God. When we as human beings learn the first two quadrants of “being God’s gift to me and others”, and being a total gemors but at the same time being warm and having an unconditional regard for all human beings. That is the easy part and the easy part. The Third quadrant considers the capacity that all human beings have to climb into the shoes of the other (and God) without judgement. It takes huge training in listening with every faculty in the Spirit. With hard work, not the first time, you will achieve “An aha moment!”. Then the fourth quadrant, you will know, because all human beings begin with Challenge. If you follow the process above the Spirit will guide you a balanced critique on the other person and God!

Reading about “Doing Justice” by Denis Jacobsen, he moves from power, self-interest, forming a good relationship, and then goes into agitation, how Jesus agitated his friends. Now I remember how I agitated you. It is my prophetic role to enable justice through you, but I have lost it so here is a new agitation to those who are fundamentalist; here are some myths I agitate in you. Because I declare that I am liberal here are my pointers in response to your myths. Then when I did that, I saw the line to my own fundamental faith:

Fundi Myths (not true

• God is One.
• God judges and retributes.
• God prefers heterosexuals, males, and violence.
• The bible is the Word of God.
• Prayer is the sole prerogative of Christians.
• Politics and religion do not mix (and economics).
• God prefers the law.

Liberal truths (but not true)

• God is divine multiplication
• God is inclusive and restorative
• God is non-hierarchal, non-violent and non-binary
• Many bibles (scriptures) are the words of God
• Prayer is encounter with the divine mystery; a thinking action and contemplation for gracious action
• Grace, above the law, in politics, economics, the nation, the law and religion lead to joy
• God enjoys humanity in grace: forgiving, empowering and setting people and nature free.

My Fundi Faith (true for me)

• I trust God (divine multiplication) is Jewish, Muslim and Hindu but in my experience is Creative Power (Father), Saving Love (Jesus) and Ecstatic Transformation (the Holy Spirit).
• God is the source of all power, expressed in love, formed by justice.
• Heaven is free (creative power) for all forms of faith; it begins now with joy.
• I trust that the act by God (divine multiplication) killing God on the cross sets me, and the world, free (saving love)
• God raised God in the resurrection God empowers us by God’s Spirit (ecstatic transformation) with grace to enjoy heaven
• Heaven overcomes idolatry, ideology and demons with joy so that money, sex and power are useful

A new look at theonomy and religion

I understand that some of my friends are either agnostic or atheist but they would love to honour the idea of ‘a good society’ based on religious principles. I honour these friends. ‘Religion’ for them is too exclusive and narrow. What they prefer is ‘a loving society’. Just read Dawkins as a representative of this group. I think there is a place for God beyond religion. Across forms of faith, however, people talk about their religion as the sole answer and God disappears from our view. On the other hand, where other forms of faith and thinking are possible and have legitimacy, then God emerges to us. An inclusive, non-hierarchical, non-violent and restorative justice describes that standard of God. Typically, some religions fail with an exclusive, male dominating, violent and retributive judgement. I prefer ‘justice’ as a positive biblical direction and ‘judgement’ as a negative word, even though it may work rarely in the bible, justice will do the same.

Theonomy

Literally, theonomy is the ‘law of God’. One of the bibles, however, also describes it as the law of love. In addition, love here does not describe the various Greek scholars idea of love. In particular, agape is a meaningless abstraction. The scholars refused to attribute human attributes to God’s love. This is not true; we are created in God’s image: the full human love is God’s love. This includes libido, eros, philia and storge.Not always happy with biblical terms, I use an ontological definition of love as ‘the power that overwhelms separation’. Separation and absence are connected too so that we can say love and joy are connected. See my word on absence and joy below. Love, then, is the power that overtakes separation, or apartheid, to put this in context. Broadening the context, denominations and faiths are separating people so God is not present – there is no joy. This definition of religion as separate churches, temples, shrines and meeting places signifies they are more important than God. We are idolatrous. We worship idols! Absence (as the opposite to presence) and separation (as the opposite to love) are connected because of the ontological claim that ‘birds have a demonstrative value of being’. We all have the capacity with birds to be joyful but we fall into the world of ‘having, knowing and doing’. Without reward birds sing; they love themselves. The birds are present, not absent, that is the definition of joy, being present.

Thinking our way to God beyond religion

The graphic below is a thinking activity that assists people beyond religion to look for God. The first one, and most difficult is freethinking, being open to other ways of thinking. Deep thinking, inspired thinking will happen automatically if alien thinking and freethinking are working. The last step is reach a gracious thinker:

Common Sense replaces Experts

God then is the power that brings presence, joy. Our task of promoting the God beyond religion is to bring joy, not dogmas, treatises, texts or death to those who will not believe. Popular in some areas of God is that the only good Muslim is a dead Muslim. So ideas get caught up in either freedom or equality: both sides are wrong. Joy is the answer; love is the answer. Driven by a continuing relationship with God beyond religion, joy and love shape the thinking of the world despite the religious experts and ideologists. My neo-Gandhian ‘soul force’ campaign is not to follow the Mahatma literally but to find truth or God beyond religion. To prepare his followers he set up ashrams with vows to follow a spartan, simple life. In my campaign, I focus on love and joy, being present, not absent, being love not separate from the enemy, who may hate us as we help them from the bondage of religious and other idols. Similarly, all political, economic and nationalist idols disappear with love and joy. Common sense is a freethinking, deep thinking process that leads to continuous encounters with God so that alien thinking is replaced with gracious thinking. A sign that the encounter is successful the following characteristic graphic puts it as a dangerous delight:

A New Religious Action Challenge

Adapted from the Wesleyan Individual and Communal missional challenge. I have re-read Karen Armstrong’s journey from being a nun to working for Muslim and Jewish people. She was hanging around with atheists, but she resists it only because in all religion she recognises compassion driving people across forms of faith. I suggest in response to her the above diagram with the explanation below:

• Interior individual devotion across forms of faith

• Individual Interiority of Compassion across forms of faith

• Communal regular gathering in the village Spiritual Centre with God

• Communal bringing about a just society with God

The bible mistakenly prefers judgement and yet both words are synonyms. They depend on the legal system of the day. We have to rewrite a world for justice – an inclusive, non-hierarchical, non-violent and restorative norms.

Literal and metaphor forms

In this piece, the power sign, above, does not stand for electricity. It describes God’s power but some people do not like the phrase, it ‘stands for’. For them, if it is electricity it means electrical power. How do I then describe God’s power: ridiculous old men with beards copying Michelangelo? Instead, I will use ‘power’, both literally and as metaphor, to describe a form of God. The empty tomb is the literal interpretation. But it also stands for an explosive power of God in and through us. There is only one definition of power, so when the adage bleats ‘power corrupts’, I say power is innocent; they who corrupt power ruin God’s world! Once we recognise power as neutral, we learn how to employ God’s power creatively.

Linguists say that some people do not or cannot abstract anything. Such a person still has cognitive faculties and education. This is not a lack in people; they do not abstract anything from the literal to the metaphoric. Jesus assumed this because he used both forms, sometimes literally, sometimes metaphorically. The parable was a handy tool in the middle east, where argument depended on people being able to abstract an idea. Jesus, being very close to God, uses both kinds of interpretation to instruct people in describing grace.

Close to God

Jesus knew some people see it literally and do not make metaphors from the literal because he was so close to God. The bible needs metaphor to explain things; some people do not move from the literal bible to the metaphor. They miss hidden messages in the text. Today, moving from the literal story of the seed growing on the ground, some people only see and understand the literal in Jesus’ parables. Jesus gave both interpretations, being so enamoured with grace, he could see it everywhere:

• The seed growing on the ground refers to his call to a Jubilee year; it means that God will give people sustenance in that fallow year, even if they carelessly throw seed on the ground! That is a literal interpretation and connects us to a permaculture praxis today.

• The metaphor refers to the reign of God’s unlimited extravagant resources if we learn to cohere with nature.

Resurrection

The resurrection has two interpretations, as well. Some people only refer to a metaphoric interpretation of the resurrection. The literal interpretation confronts his friends with the empty tomb. Even if we discount the five hundred who met the resurrected Christ, just his closest followers know the empty tomb as fact. The metaphor refers to God getting involved in humanity, permanently.

Some people say that they are agnostic about the resurrection, therefore, God works without the empty tomb. They assert that God continues but not in the power of resurrection, using the crucifixion as the point of departure. Yes, that is where the ‘God is dead’ theology began but most folk at least accept the event of Jesus Davidson

I accept the resurrection as fact. Obviously, I cannot prove it. The bible is very thin on the event. One of my worst favourites is this vague claim that ‘over five hundred people met the risen Christ’ so where are all these witnesses? I think John hides the witnesses in his text, but that is a debate for someone else.

Taking a much longer perspective, over two thousand years, ‘proves’ the metaphor of the resurrection. If we are going to look at metaphor, it is only in saying the resurrection continues empowering people with examples of the power. It sounds false to say, ‘It is like the power of God’, so am I playing at a double metaphor, without realising that I cannot see God, the perfect, unknowing, Mystery? I suppose, I must admit that power is the form of God from his mystery. This form is closely connected to ‘potential’, a word that comes from power but refers to the ‘about to be’. I prefer connecting to God as mystery than to power but I relax on the ‘potential’ of God because it echoes the “I will be who I will be” in Exodus 3. It is this power of the resurrection: the form that we enjoy of power from an inclusive, reconciling and restorative God. In contrast, the other corrupting power, is the exclusive, violent, hierarchal, retributive God from pre-resurrection experiences of power.

Resurrection Sunday connects power and our potential as human beings for over two thousand years. The power of God changed on that resurrection Sunday; it is God who empowers us; it is God doing the work. Easter, with bunnies and chocolate eggs, misdirects human beings away from the real God. The resurrection unleashes power in and through us to change the world for justice and is always available. There is only one power, it is literal power exploded out of the empty tomb for over two thousand years empowering us. We abuse it; we are afraid of it; all forms of faith use it and is available to the world. How do we correct our abuse of it?

Power, Love and Justice

The mystery of God actualises as power but this literal power actualises as love and its form is justice. There is a direct connection between power and love, defined as ‘the power that overcomes separation’, the definition of love. Justice is the form love takes when God empowers us. Reconciliation, inclusion, non-violence, non-hierarchy and restoration characterise this justice.

This means you are powerful but not aware of it.  Please, make power real in you; see your power potential. Read my book, Learn to Love, where, among others, there are two impossible realities: “God does not make junk” against the other, “We are a gemors”. Society believes and persuades that we are the latter. God believes in the former. Transcending society and God is difficult. Spend time with me, using the course above or on this website to check on me. Make love real and you can become a God-created powerful person. Do it on your own, you do not need me. Here are four steps to learn to love, first you, then God, others and cockroaches: being genuine, acceptant, empathic and being challenging.

The offer here is love derived from resurrection power. God implemented it two thousand years ago but we did not trust this power. We could point out pockets in history where humanity cohered with God. This is the trick, trusting God. Look at the promise from God and trust it:

• Heaven is free.
• Joy is the presence of God, so enjoy God.
• Power is available to promote joy.
• Love overcomes separation from God, leading to our joy.
• The power of the resurrection, leads to love of the world expressed as justice.

The metaphor? Am I the one that cannot abstract ideas because I experience the power of love after we separated from God, the cockroach and you? This is a literal way with me. We may speak of love being the form of power in us but all of it is ‘literally’ present in us. Even ‘separation’ as the wretched state of ‘non-love’ is literal. If I was to say, ‘it is just like’, what do I say? Resurrection ‘is like hidden Easter eggs’ suddenly hatching with power to transform the world with equal wealth. I cannot get away from the literal with ‘equal wealth’. All I am doing is mixing my metaphors, aren’t ?