I like taking pictures. I like photographing the sky, the landscape, cool-looking cars. And when I am engaged in some project or other with my family, I like taking pictures of that too. And I like posting those pictures on the net like this, letting people see what I saw. But there are things going on in my life which are much more important. You see, when I say "family", I mean it in a sense that many people might find unusual. My dad, in particular, is not just my dad. As far as I'm concerned, he is the face of God in the world.

Allow me to explain. My dad, consequent to a long series of events, was granted an exceptional insight into the Bible and the gospel, one that disabused him of certain misconceptions and made clear to him the truth about who and what Jesus Christ is and was, what he did and why. As it turns out, we as christians have much to unlearn on this subject. Jesus Christ's mission on earth has been largely misconstrued. The fact of the matter is, while we have been offering Jesus up in substitution as a propitiatory sacrifice, revelling in the notion that he went somewhere we didn't want to go and did something we didn't want to do, all along, according to his own teachings, rather than celebrating him as our substitute sacrifice, we should have been following him, going where he went and doing as he did, in order to get to the same place.

The christian church calls herself the body of Christ, a metaphor Jesus himself never used. Rather Jesus, as quoted by those who knew him in person and learned at his feet, referred to himself and to his followers as a vine and its branches. Jesus's disciples sprouted from him and received life by means of him. But that meant that first they had to recognize him as God's representative in the world. Think of it. A man stood before them, a flesh-and-blood man, and they had to recognize this man as God's spokesman. So far as they were concerned, Jesus' utterances were God's utterances, and had divine authority behind them. It's a big gamble to embrace such a declaration of faith. Imagine their consternation when they watched as the representative of God was led away and crucified. Needless to say, it took the resurrection, and a whole lot of holy spirit, to make of them the servants and indeed the children of God that they ultimately became.

This is where the gospel message gets really interesting. When Jesus said to them "As I am, so are you in the world," he was teaching them that, as branches of his vine, they would in their turn become God's representatives in the world as Jesus himself was. "He who receives whomever I send receives me, and he who receives me receives the one who sent me," Jesus said. He was conferring on them, by delegation, the selfsame authority he himself had from his father and making of them partakers in his own office. Just as Jesus' own disciples entered the kingdom and household of God by means of him, future disciples were to enter that same kingdom and household by means of them, the apostles. Future disciples had to recognize in them the same divine authority that they had recognized in Jesus.

I've had to admit that my dad recognized these things before I did and acknowledged that apostolic authority before I did. He saw and learned that the Way, as Jesus himself taught it, was one of submission, faith and trust, and these expressed in a set of relationships Jesus called the Vine, the ultimate objective of which is oneness, oneness with God as our father, and with one another as God's children. So having acknowledged this authority in those who genuinely had it, my dad became, for me at least, God's representative in this world, with the delegated authority that is conferred on him by virtue of the Vine of which he is a part. So when I participate in some project or other with my family, it's way more than just a project. It's an opportunity, an exercise if you will, in submission, faith and trust, an occasion in which these attributes, and the "agapé" love of which they are manifestations, can be cultivated.

There's a lot more to this. There is an overarching theme to the Bible that has for a long time remained hidden in plain sight, a theme of which my dad was made aware quite a few years ago. This theme does not pander to human nature. Rather it exposes it, and I've had my share of struggle in coming to accept that theme. What it does do is it clarifies the Scriptures from beginning to end and makes of them a coherent whole. It also explains the whys and wherefores of Christ and the gospel as they really are.

My dad wrote a book. In it he includes meditations on the Scriptures, and discusses these matters at greater length. It's posted at the address below.