My name is David Michael MacNelley. My surname is spelled that way because there is no computerized way to reproduce the following:
Now, that that is out of the way, and you can understand the why of this, I would like to get one point across as it pertains to this blog.
For those of you that know me, you are aware that I want to walk a fine line between two realities.
- There is a critical need, among those who follow Jesus Christ, to move towards solving problems that are not being solved, at the sometime cost of not incessantly defending truth, especially WHEN that truth defense (that apologetic) squanders your time that ought to be devoted to solving the problem you were made to do. When truth defense hinders your possessing your birthright, you are not following what Jesus made you to do.
- There is a desire for me to rightly and precisely articulate the whole counsel of Scripture, as part of the whole counsel of God (which is not comprehensively embodied in the 66 books of Scripture).
Concerning that second point, we have a relationship with God where He actively speaks to us about all sorts of things, including the grass, the animals, the appointment we have at 3:00 with the dentist, the camping trip we go on with our sons, our garden in the backyard, the row of holly shrubs we are thinking about replacing with blueberry shrubs in the winter, and that vacation we are taking to Nepal next year. The direct answers or insight that comes to us about each of those topics is not found in the canon of Scripture. Rather, it is found in a living and breathing relationship with the Lord Himself, who has given us He spirit and speaks to us with His own voice. He sets apart our spirits, our souls, and our bodies, and connects with us about an innumerable number of topics. He doesn’t leave us in a stale and dry relationship with a book with no warmth in our hearts, minds, or reins. Rather, He leaves us with our “hearts strangely warmed”.
He further does not leave us solely with cold, propositional truth.
Rather, the words of the Lord are frequently warm, sometimes emotion-filled counsel.
And He does not mean for us to interact with the spirit realm in the arena of only our hearts, or only our minds, but with both of those assets together with the asset of our human spirits. Indeed God is spirit, and He deals with us on the level of the spirit first, and then our emotions, mind, body, and other areas.
The purpose of The Paraclete’s Hammer, therefore, is in the execution of rightly dividing the written Scriptures in their context, folded with the principles of natural law (A/K/A the laws of science), the principles governing human relationships, and the principles governing the spiritual realm. We take those principles, in the frame of our fences (theology) and we seek to construct and build solutions to complex problems.
Consequently, there are going to be times in this blog where you are going to read something that may not make sense, because we have in the church trained people to only always ever have overly-simplifed solutions to massively complex problems.
“Just stay in love with Jesus”, is not the solution to every problem. It is a sweet sentiment, and enjoying the affection of a love relationship with Jesus is indeed central.
However, the love interaction with Jesus is just the beginning of on adventure that builds in complexity over time.
It is one thing to acknowledge the presence of the wind.
It is wholly another thing to take the reality of the wind and use that, together with a host of other dynamics, and build something that moves using the wind: an airplane.
I would rather fly that merely feel the breeze….
And if you are here, I imagine you intend to do the same.
So welcome, and may you be blessed in your search and in your adventure.