Good Friday!

Good Friday, Holy Friday, Great Friday, Sorrowful Friday (in German), High Friday (in Armenia), or Passion Friday (in Russia) is the Friday on which the Christian Church keeps the anniversary of the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ. For most Americans it's a day off, a shortened work week rather than a shortened life, as it was for Jesus, who became the Christ.



I see Good Friday, Easter, and the whole Lenten season much differently than I did as a child or even a young man.



I am so thankful for the denomination that I grew up in. They gave me a foundation. I'm thankful for the men and women who went out of their way to instruct me in religious and Biblical matters. Those were all good places to BEGIN, but not good places to END (my spiritual journey).



I had so many questions as a young seeker of spiritual questions to which I was given religious answers. I wondered how I was bound by the genetic sins of Adam who lived thousands of years ago. I questioned how Jesus had to die on the cross to satisfy some legal transaction or deal that God made with Satan. Who could make God do anything?



>I was pointed to Adam and Eve, but they weren't killed for eating fruit.

>I was pointed to Cain, but he wasn't killed (actually protected) for murdering his brother.

>I was pointed to the scapegoat, but he wasn't killed but sent out to the wilderness.



And whoever thought Satan, the liar, would honor any deal anyway? How's that work?



Most of all though, I could not understand how a "loving God" was turned into a "blood-thirsty" being who demanded of Jesus what He had commanded Abraham to not do (sacrifice his son). I cringed when I was told of this "blood theology". Try as I might I could not rest or find a peace. Good Friday really wasn't. It was murder from on high.



That was then. Here's where I AM now.



I believe in a love theology. If God is LOVE, then God is LOVING! Love will have the last word: not on this side of eternity, but in the fourth dimension when we shed our physical bodies in exchange for a glorious one. Jesus went to the cross so that we could see that there really is eternal life. Jesus went to the cross to show me, you, and everyone that the power of LOVE can overcome everything, even death!



Jesus said Follow me (not the Pharisees or the legalists) and I'm doing it the best I know.



And if God is JUST, and I know Him to be that, then there cannot be an eternal hell. What's JUST about eternal torture, punishment without purpose, or hell fire and damnation infinitely, for finite and temporal sins? Correction and punishment for restoration purposes? Yep, that's hell enough.



I've left the pagan system of thinking that one can only get or earn God's favor through sacrificing something or someone- usually the other guy! What I need to sacrifice is my EGO, my SELF ABSORPTION, and my FALSE SELF and let my LIGHT shine, which is Jesus, who was the LIGHT, from the original LIGHT- Abba Father.



Yes, it is a GOOD FRIDAY indeed!