When a person is faced with life changing, earth shaking ideas, it seems that all they know can be easily torn down. This is my experience of late.
In my world, asking questions is of great value. To be in a community that does not allow questioning is unacceptable to me. However, one must also find the balance between questioning for questions sake, and giving into the concept of mystery when the time is right.
God is that mystery. If there is any one thing I have come to know and embrace in the past fourteen years, it is that he just may be beyond reasonable knowledge. This thought has played a vital role in my life because, If God makes perfect sense one hundred percent of the time, then I have achieved “it”. If he makes perfect sense always, then I have “arrived”. And lets be honest, if you know me, you know I am no where near this so-called arrival.
How do we, those who are entertaining a relationship with God, or those who are deeper than just “trying spirituality on for size” strike this balance between the seemingly hopeless and distant “arrival” of pure understanding, while also coming to terms with knowing pure understanding may not come in our earthly life time? It seems though, that this question may be missing the mark entirely. Is pure understanding of God’s character what we should be after? Or, is the simplest act of hearing him?
The bible is a book full of people’s stories; of their encounters with God; of his people hearing him, or not hearing him. This should be a clue for us. We have been given this book of life testimonies which show that “God says one thing, we do another.” And throughout the bible we see again and again that God speaks. It seems to me that the more important thing than asking questions is striving to hear God. If we do this, his character will be revealed, but even more so, a right relationship will be born so even in the midst of life and understanding being torn apart, his constant voice will answer those deep questions that plague us.
As I was standing on my porch around twelve in the morning, breathing in the cold air and breathing out the clove smoke I realized something rather simple about myself.
Only I can hold myself accountable.
I am a person of need. All of us, whether we choose to accept it or not are. I need to be in a community of people who allow me to be vulnerable, and with that comes accountability. However, no matter how many people know what I am going through only I am in charge of me. Is it a new level of maturity? Maybe. I just know that the fruit of my life will be shown through that which grows inside of me, and if I continue to choose poor, unhealthy things I will continue to feel poor and unhealthy.
“The strongest principle of growth lies in human choice.” George Elliot
“The glory of God is a human being, fully alive.” Irenaeus of Lyons
That is a quote that one of my instructors, Dan Wilt says often here at school. I had quite a hard time with that, thinking to myself, “How is this the glory of God? We are fallen people so that doesn’t make sense to me.”
I started to look for the biblical perspective of our humanness and how God’s glory is revealed in that. Bernard of Clairvaux, a French abbot who lived from 1090 to 1153 tells us of four degrees of love. First, love of self for self sake. Second is love of God for self’s sake; thirdly there is love of God for God’s sake and lastly love of self for God’s sake.
While the first three make a lot of sense for us, the last or fourth degree of love is hard to understand. How does one love their self for the sake of God? Is that biblical? Is that selfish? Aren’t we supposed to “die to ourselves”? After discussing it in my spiritual formation group, and thinking of the quote I stated from Irenaeus of Lyons I found that we do in fact have to love ourselves for the sake of God. While yes, we are supposed to die to ourselves and allow God to breath the breath of lives in us again, he then established a sense of identity–in Him.
We were not made to be cookie cutters, cream walls, everyone exactly the same. If you look into the account in Genesis about Adam and Eve being in the garden you have to understand that they weren’t just there, hanging out, drinking water, eating fruit and sitting on their butt. No no, God made man and woman to work. He made us to be individual, to be brought into the fullness of Him, giving over the things that make us tick for his sake–but not giving up those things. God is a creator, and we are made in his image, meaning we are also creators.
Creation is beautiful. We, human beings are full of beauty. If we weren’t then God wouldn’t have sent His son to die for us. He could have whipped us out but instead He gave us a more excellent way. God comes and inhabits our humanity. The human touch can be both beautiful and deadly, and we must remember to discern God in our lives as we move in creativity otherwise we can become too liberal. However when we are living in the fullness of God his creativity in us is lived out in our lives.
God loves us in our humanity; creator to created.
I saw Harry Potter last night. You know, the 5th one. Throughout the entire thing I just couldn’t help but get excited. Seriously, does that happen to you? You watch something where justice is being had, truth is being shown and the human condition shines through and it just makes you really want to freak out a little bit? It makes you want to live life more fully. It makes you want to live for something.
I’ve established that God intended us to relate to things like that. See, God can be found in just about anything. Where there is truth, there He is. When someone is being treated unjustly we (well, not everyone) look at that situation with empathy and sometimes even a righteous anger for what is right. Somewhere deep inside of us it is written on our hearts who we were meant to be; who we were meant to worship.
I however have a friend who would disagree with me on the truth factor. He would say, “If a movie (or cd, or book, or anything for that matter) doesn’t directly point to God it can’t be from God.” I disagree. That is too much of a box for this God we worship. He is bigger than that and a response to Him like that is actually making Him smaller in an effort to reconcile our tiny minds to such a gigantic creator. See, there are people who don’t know of this God who fall in love and stay married their entire lives. Some would say that that isn’t possible to have a fulfilling, life long relationship without God in the mix of it. However God is love and love is written on our hearts so sometimes we participate in what God is without even knowing it. Or, I will listen to a song on the radio which technically has absolutely nothing to do with God or Jesus or any of that; however I find myself worshipping God through it.
Where there is truth, we can claim it. We can call it His. So even in Harry Potter, a movie about the occult, witches and wizards and things that are dark we can find truth in the story. Sometimes we just need to soften our hearts and our theories and minds and boxes and let God speak without infringing on it with what we think.
Paul did this. There is a verse where he took a poem written by the Greeks unto their deities and he quotes it in the bible; but quotes it to God. We are allowed to do that. Even more so, more than being “allowed” we should do that. Where there is truth we claim it even if it wasn’t intended to be for our God.
I am not right. I often think I am right. I however want the Father of creation; God of the universe to rip that mentality from me. He is more pleased with the leanings and attitude of my heart than He is with my “right and wrong-ness”.
This does not excuse us from figuring out what is right and wrong, but to know that my map (i.e. my way of thinking, the way I look at the world) is not the territory (i.e., the real thing). To know that I am broken in my thinking, which gives me grace to figure it out as long as I am activley figuring it out. It’s repentance.
Greg Boyd of Woodland Hills Church in St.Paul, MN gave a really good sermon on conflict and friendship. It’s about 45 minutes long and for the most part is right on. I submit to you this; go listen to it.
I watched this pretty cool video about who God is today… it relates to music and our understanding of having a relationship with God and why Jesus helps us understand who He is. Pretty interesting. The myspace profile that posted the video may be a bit sketchy, but after doing some research I found out that this video isn’t produced by the person who posted it. Rather it is from a video series called NOOMA. I’d recommend going to NOOMA and seeing what they are all about, they are on the fringe of some pretty interesting spiritual stuff that really relates to our post modern society.
By this all people will know you are my disciples, by our doctrine.
opps wait, let’s re-think that.
A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. John 13:34-35
I have been reading different church’s doctrine for the past few days. Where in the bible does it say that we have to hold strong to this perfect doctrine? Don’t get me wrong it is important to have a statement of faith but no one has the perfect doctrine. Not one church that I can think of, not one doctrine that I have read. Each one tho, has had peices of what I have found to be true of our Father in heaven. That is encouraging.
I think the apostle Paul would be really, really angry at us right now. If he saw how we are taking his letters, which are really just his testimony to what he knows to be true of the living God, and splitting his words, fighting over them and making them this doctrinal thing he probably wouldn’t have even written them. I can only imagine what type of letter he would be writting to the church today. And who said that the bible is this almighty thing we are supposed to fallow? Wait, rethink that. I know and believe the bible to be true, and it is God given to us for a purpose. But the New Testiment isn’t over. We are the New Testiment. The “bible” ie testimony of God’s faithfulness to us, isn’t done being written. Each and every one of us is writting our testimony as we fallow God when he speaks to us. Paul wasn’t looking at the old testiment (at least not often since it was tough to get your hands on a scroll) as he wrote his letters to the churchs however many years ago. He was hearing from God. Because yes, we have a God that speaks.
God affirms us through the bible, but He also says things that can’t be found in the bible. Example would be me saying, “Hey God, I really want to get that 2003 pontiac vibe. Is that cool?” If God only said things that are found in the bible it would go something like this… “_______________.” Yea He would say nothing because there arn’t cars in the bible. But here’s the thing… just because it cant be found in the bible doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Scary, isn’t it? God is a black and white God, but we live in a grey world that we have to allow Him to speak into. There are things now that weren’t found back when Paul was around. God is the same God but we are a different time, and He will speak to us. If we hold onto this “only if it’s in the bible thing” then we are missing what God might have for us, and really we are just guessing. But if we fallow what Jesus says in the gospel of John “my sheep will hear My voice” we will begin to come into the fullness of what our Father in heaven has for us.
So let’s get rid of this doctrinal thing. Let’s love God, desire to hear Him (or ask Him to instill in us a desire to hear Him) and love eachother. Let’s fallow the things He speaks to us, whether that be through the bible or through His voice unto our hearts.
