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“No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the patch tears away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made. ²² And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins—and the wine is destroyed, and so are the skins. But new wine is for fresh wineskins.” (Mark 2:21-22)

The context of this passage falls early in Marks gospel nestled as part of three accounts of the religious leaders taking issue with how Jesus and his disciples are conducting themselves. The first concern is Jesus hanging out with sinners and tax collectors, and the third is plucking and eating grain on the Sabbath. This verse blossoms from the religious minds second concern over Jesus and his disciples not fasting according to the religious fasting schedule that even John the Baptist’s disciples were keeping.

The religious mind is always concerned with compliance. It cannot help itself from comparing…from counting…from making determinations about whether other people are team players.

My work since 2012 in this ministry has endeavored to free the religious mind, which we all possess to some measure. In part two of this series entitled: Plato Can’t Save us, I highlight the watershed and influence of Platonic Dualism. The very message of Christ, the Gospel itself, is fundamentally impossible to comprehend from a binary perspective, but that hasn’t stopped two-thousand years of church history from trying. In fact, the reason Catholics and Protestants are still debating, or that Calvinists and Arminians are still at war, has little to do with “WHAT” each side believes, and a lot to do with “HOW” they believe it.

In other words, it’s a framework thing. To translate Jesus’ words above so that a theologian could understand Him, we might say: “A new message can only fit within a new epistemology. If you put my message into the old theological construct, it will tear away from it, or it will blow it apart.”

Another way of seeing this is to phrase it inversely: “Anywhere that the “so-called gospel” is being preached from within the old theological framework, you can be sure it’s not Christ’s Gospel.”

Or said another way: “The true message of Christ, by comparison to the message of religion, is that it tears away from religion, it blows religion apart, therefore, the message of religion is not the true message of God.”

Or: “If you try and put the new message into the old framework, you’ll make things worse.” Isn’t this what we see in the world?

The shore message is that we are NOT saved by the religious framework.

Within the context of the passage, the disciples just witnessed the power of God when Jesus healed the paralytic AND forgave his sins. Both are right in the nose of religion, challenging its oppression, overreach, and its transactional and perfunctory compliance. What good is fasting? What good is keeping oneself holy and separated from dirty sinners? What good is keeping the Sabbath day law if God is fully present in one’s midst already...despite not fasting, despite the dirty sinners, and despite breaking religious law?

The religious framework (and this is true for all religions and systems of the irreligious) is to climb a “stairway to heaven”, or behave oneself into a better life. Religion is a transactional covenant. However, Christ-following (what I call faith in Christ) is not the same as the Christian religion, and it’s framework is that no stairway or path exists that gets us to God or a better life. Its framework, which blows up the old framework by way of subversion, is that God has come, and is already here…now. What if instead of trying to get to Heaven when we die, (old framework for salvation) Heaven was in the midst of us? (new framework)

Over the last decade I’ve helped many people discover this new framework. The more religious a person is, the more they reject the Gospel’s subversive message. It’s fascinating to me how the religious mind vehemently distrusts the Gospel which can free them, by insisting that since it doesn’t look and sound like religion, it must be a threat, or a dangerous heresy. Jesus’ message is dangerous to the religious mind. The New Testament captures how the Gospel subverts religious efforts to know and connect with God by revealing their impotence. The religious mind always retreats back into the institutional–tribal echo-chamber for reassurance that the dangerous gospel couldn’t be from God because they know nothing of it.

You’ve seen the religious mind outside of religion. Consider the “religious mindset”within the medical community. We saw it displayed during the Covid pandemic, where leaders (religious mind) advocated for the untested vaccine, claiming it was 98% effective, imposing compliance to their rule as the so called experts. Years later we’ve seen how mistaken they were. The religion of medicine is also a paternalistic religion, and has told me that if the diagnostic test I was offering was valid, they’d already know about it. This religions mind thrives in academics, business, sports, and governments.

The gospel is the Truth which tears away from such “I know what’s best for you” religions. The gospel is an alternative framework that blows apart small, tribal constructs of reality. The alternative framework is a ternary not a binary. It’s counter-intuitive in that down is how we rise up, giving is how we receive, dying to self is how we truly live. This alternative way to live, frees each person into a place where enemies evaporate in love, and there exists no “others”… only those that are not completely other than ourselves. True diversity AND unity together.

For many, the Gospel is still considered a NEW FRAMEWORK because it’s remains obscured by those who profit from it. The gospel is not limited to the sphere of religion as we typically define it. It’s the power to free everyone from the inside out. Once our minds are free from the biases and assumptions we protect so vehemently, they change (metanoia-rethink, repent), and we begin living in a new way, because we are seeing reality in a new framework. By living in this gospel freedom, everything we once thought we knew becomes renewed…not as we change what we believe, but moreso how we believe it.

Religious salvation changes what we believe, experiential salvation changes how we believe it.