Why Rummage?

Rummage (verb): "to search unsystematically and untidily through a mass or receptacle. Search (through), hunt through, root about/around (in), ferret about/around (in), fish about/around (in), poke around (in), dig through, delve through, go through, explore, sift through, rifle (through)." 

Eureka!  I hit upon the perfect title for my new blog. After all, I come from a long line of junk rummagers: people who scavenge for gold amidst the garbage "One man's trash is another's treasure." Amen.

I was raised by "the junk man," aka my dad, and my grandfather did plenty of scavenging during the depression, bringing home odds and ends from the Richest Hill on Earth (aka Butte, Montana). I think my other grandpa was a garbage collector, but I may have made that up. I also osmotically absorbed the penchant for rummage by living with my husband for 28+ years; his mother never passed up a garage sale or auction if she could help it.

This blog, however, will serve as a probably disorganized search  (if I'm blessed with brave, opinionated readers) for TRUTH.  Not doctrine, not rules, not church tradition, but the most basic of all truths. That THE GOD created us and our reality. That He formed us into carbon beings with free will and infused our earth-bodies with a mind, will, emotions (soul) and also an eternal SPIRIT, by which we are equipped to relate to Him.  He also allowed us to choose to live in such a way as to doom ourselves to ruin (sin).  He then sent His Son (which is also Himself because of the unique trinitarian structure of GOD-which you don't need to worry about right now as we'll explore another time-it's a God-thing not a human-thing) to rescue us-to REDEEM us from the mess we made of ourselves.  And by that action He enabled us to be truly free. Not free to be selfish jerks and "I can do whatever I want," but free to experience the fullness of an eternal relationship with the most fantastic, brilliant, amazing, rescuing, powerful and loving Being who ever has existed or will exist.  To be ALL that He made us to be, which is far cooler than amassing great fame, fortune and/or power.

But then bad stuff happened to the simple redemption story.  Fallible and fearful leaders and thinkers took the simple recipe of the gospel and mixed in other ingredients: rules, formulas, jargon, obligations and biblical misinterpretation.  So then the gospel became corrupted and no longer clear.

I don't like that. I am sick of believing things that I have been told since childhood that frankly, dear friends, is not the truth. Or perhaps there's SOME truth in it, but it is no longer pure truth. I want the pure truth, the unadulterated gospel, and my mission is to ferret the gems from the mud. To surgically extract pearls from the guts of swine.  To wield the Sword of the Spirit and the Word of Truth (bible) against the lies that have filtered in.

"For I feel a divine jealousy for you, since I betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a pure virgin to Christ. 3But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ. 4For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough."