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● For me, as well as many who shared my particular faith-experience, the choice to follow Jesus seemed like a ‘no-brainer’, if you will. “Accept Jesus and go to heaven or reject him and rot in hell forever”. Okay…what was that first one again? Things seemed pretty well established from that point. Now it was all about learning “the system”: regular attendance at all club meetings (church services), fulfilling your obligation to God (salvation is a “quid pro quo” arrangement), adhering to the commandments, realizing the “favored life” (you know, the one that works according to the plan) and ultimately, some disembodied utopia called ‘heaven’--- which was just this really long church service. As unappealing as that might have sounded to me, it seemed the least objectionable of the (2) options. ● Something was ‘lost in translation’, I think. Most seemed, in reality, rather ‘unaffected’ by their decision. It was still generally assumed that you could be mean-spirited, bitter, unforgiving, gossipy… and know that, well, that’s just who I am. Nothing that a good ‘chiding’ or ‘spiritual trip to the woodshed’ wouldn’t cure! ● I would love to finally become convinced that the potential for the life that I desire already resides in me through the Holy Spirit, so that I will no longer feel pressure to change who I am in order to secure the love my heart longs for. ● If we are honest, we rarely find a sense of ‘equilibrium’ when it comes to our approach. We seem to consistently waver back and forth between expressions which are more rigid and personally-demanding and those that are more relaxed and indefinable. ● We’re too adept at ignoring the really deep places in our hearts, the issues which seem insurmountable, and leveraging the places where we feel we are showing the most advancement (i.e. the athlete who performed best when they were ‘high’--- allow for the dysfuntionality). ►But, the ache never goes away. Every human creature has an innate yearning for the fullest experience of God, ourselves and others in a way that is in keeping with Creative-design--- a way that makes us feel most alive. This yearning, this hunger, this desire--- however you choose to describe it, can easily be neglected or ignored, but it never leaves us. Most often, because the desire is so strong and our failure to satisfy it so obvious, we choose more attainable ambitions--- collect ‘spiritual souvenirs’ (like the grapes the spies brought back), getting by, making it, surviving, etc. ● Jesus would never let anyone get by with a ‘superficial’ approach to life or God. He brought a message that undeniably connected with people at a deeper level; a message that seemed to address the deepest longings of their hearts--- a message of loving-exposure. Whether it was a woman with a long history of failed marriages, the stealthy tax-collector in the tree or the religious leader setting up a clandestine rendezvous with Jesus, they were all confronted with the deep ache in their hearts and the many methods they utilized in order to numb the pain or ignore the tension. ►Sometimes it’s good to feel the ‘emptiness’. Those feelings of emptiness are often what gets our attention. It is the feeling of emptiness that finally allows me to confront all of the hollow distractions and my lifeless preoccupations. ● I have identified (4) concepts that our theology rarely allows room for: [evidenced in modern teaching, song, literature] 1. Deficiency: our own apart from God and an unwillingness to accept ‘partial fulfillment’. It doesn’t make sense that we are required to make a full commitment and only realize partial fulfillment. 2. Perseverance as an indispensable component of our faith [because endurance presupposes adversity and fatigue]. “I want to know Christ…” [Phil.3] There is something about sharing the experiences of another which makes you feel as if you somehow know them better. But Paul is not just referring to having similar experiences as Jesus, but actually ‘sharing in his sufferings and death’; that Paul would realize that since he was in Christ, he was suffering ‘with Christ’ and Christ ‘with him’. I’m pretty sure that had you offered Paul the version of the gospel that we tend to embrace--- the one which has carefully eliminated the potential for suffering, he would have respectfully (or, if maybe disrespectfully) declined. How could you possibly know Christ and not know suffering? 3. Grace as the ‘unaided’ movement of God toward us. Grace ceases to be grace if it is offered as a ‘gratuity’ for our compliance; and, grace ceases to be grace if it can be withdrawn due to our inconsistency. We all know that if we have to earn it, then it’s not the love that our hearts have been longing for. We know deep in our hearts that if love is conditional, it’s not really love at all. It may be attraction or association, but it’s not love. So, we spend our lives running/hiding from God, determined to prove that he can’t really love us unconditionally. We say that we’re just testing it, but we’re really avoiding it--- it makes us uncomfortable. ● God says, “Come near to me, and I’ll come near to you”, but if we don’t believe that he loves us without condition, his closeness only seems to intensify the feelings of guilt and shame we experience.
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Transformation as the indescribable power of God to radically alter the nature
of the human person. |
