Reading the Signs

The Treehouse: Conversations About God

El Cosmico Bunkhouse Campground, Marfa, Texas. March 2017.

Last week I read an article in The Atlantic about the right-wing religious movement called the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) that is heavy on power and money and control and light on Jesus’s teachings and actions. I’m mentioning it because I think it stands in stark contrast to the Jesus we are getting to know in the four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, which are the only Biblical records of Jesus’s life and three-year ministry.¹

Proponents of the NAR talk a lot about bringing God’s kingdom to earth. I suppose the sticking point for me is the working definition of God’s kingdom. For them it’s a militaristic reign of brute power demanding strict obedience to a narrow set of rules and interpretations (theirs, of course).