Kevin-Douglas Olive, in Friend­ly Bible Study and Jesus my Friend, talks rec­on­cil­ing with the sto­ry of Jesus because of a meet­ing Bible study:

So who is this Jesus? The Jesus I know is the one who asks his fol­low­ers “Who do you say that I am?” The Jesus I am try­ing to fol­low is the one who tells me to DO what he says and I am his friend (hence the name of Quak­ers — Friends). He is the rad­i­cal rab­bi or prophet who turned con­ven­tion upside down and on whose teach­ings a new world reli­gion was formed (for bet­ter or worse). Through Jesus’ life and death, gone is the need for sac­ri­fice — it’s been done. Gone is the need to appease God, Jesus’ life and death does that. These ancient Jew­ish and pagan notions of god(s) and our rela­tion­ship to the Divine were made obso­lete. If we enter into the Life of Jesus, there will be cer­tain fruits of the spir­it which will man­i­fest through our walk in the Light.

I’m old enough to remem­ber K‑D as the prankster­ish young adult Chris­t­ian Friend delight­ing in con­found­ing the Lib­er­al Quakes at the FGC Gath­er­ing and then lat­er, in 2008, as some­one try­ing to start some sort of Con­ver­gent Friends pres­ence in Bal­ti­more. I’m glad he’s been con­tin­u­ing to fol­low the light and that the Bible study has been ben­e­fi­cial. If you want more, there’s a 2017 Quak­er­S­peak inter­view, How I Became a Quak­er.

It’s also good hear in this post that Bal­ti­more’s Home­wood Meet­ing is attract­ing lots of new peo­ple under 40. I’ve been notic­ing that at my (tiny) meet­ing (a few weeks ago a few of the old­er Friends were off trav­el­ing and I looked around and real­ized the medi­an age was some­thing like 28). I’m hear­ing sim­i­lar sto­ries else­where. All anec­dotes but I’m start­ing to won­der if Quak­erism is hav­ing a bit of a moment.

Friend­ly Bible Study and Jesus my Friend 

A blog about spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, social jus­tice, and liv­ing the life.

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