This is our basic composition as a living organisms. We are lumps of muscle, skin, fat, nerve, bone, hair etc. But more basically still, bits of lumpy, bumpy protein, fat, and minerals.
Reflect for a moment on the importance we place on these 'stuffs.' Isn't attraction really just a statement of, 'I really like the arrangement of your protein' ?
Now think about the consequence - the sometimes devastating consequence - of having protein fat and mineral arranged in a manner others do NOT find attractive...or worthy...or capable.
We honor some protein, mineral, and fat lumps with praise, money, power, titles. And from others we demand subservience, disgrace, scorn, and invisibility.
Chemically, we are all within minutia of being identical...identical. And by portion still interchangeable. Your heart can serve me, my liver you, our protein, mineral, fat, the same.
Now think of the beauty of the spirit, the soul. Truly here is beauty worth honoring. Here is the delicacy of uniqueness. Here is the tender lamb within us each - the lamb designated by the great creator for whatever life and purpose the mighty and tender I AM intends alone. Unfettered unlimited by the likes of organic molecules. Of organs. Of flesh.
Testes, ovaries, muscle, skin, beauty, pale. None of it is real, & none of it life!
Jesus in John 4:
23Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth."
Be not enamored with the arrangement of protein, mineral & fat! And be not dismayed by those who are, they are wrong, base. But those that use it as a criterion of true relationship & calling from God - mourn them! But do not be crippled by them, they are powerless and empty - as their protein, mineral and fat! For these chemicals are but collections of atoms - nearly entirely composed of vacant space, void. Those that stand upon such to reach God, or impede another's reach, stand entirely upon a house far emptier than one of cards.
So be not fettered by such nonsense. Dance. Dance regardless of your fleshly composition! With each movement in praise your spirit, delicate, beyond comparison, rejoices mightily in its kinship with divinity! And are you ever beautiful! Oh my! The likes of you have never been seen before! A beauty of the ages indeed! Fearfully & Wonderfully Made! Rejoice!
Salvation & Authority
A consistent theme throughout Jesus' teachings in the Book of John is the concept that God draws those that God would to God -that God calls the flock. That salvation is IN FACT up to God & God's leading. I like the implications of this teaching. Somewhere along the line, we all get this notion that we can proceed with our lives, live in sin when we want, then return to God at our own choosing. 'I was blind, but now I see' - because I chose to see. We all believe - BELIEVE - in our own Free Will to faith or refusal. It is up to us...on our own authority. Christ teaches the exact opposite. It is NOT up to our timing, discretion, or will to come to faith. God calls those that God would call. None come to God except those that God calls.
It is interesting, the implications of this for evangelism, for revival, for individual reformation. I was listening to a sermon on the way back from Minnesota about people who harden their necks against God - that was the phrase - hardening the neck against God. That resonated with me because it was in fact such an accurate description of rebellion - as in the rebellion I practiced in my own life, and the rebellion I had witnessed in others. All of us fell lower and deeper into vice and distress. This rebellion did not advance any of them or me but to the contrary cost us much. This rebellion is the living death that Christ teaches about in John, in it we are as dead, spiritual husks, self-centered, spiritually aimless, given to vice and shackled by the needs and wants of the flesh.
I know in my life, while living as an atheist, I was clearly called by God, ignored it, forsook it for the promise of atheistic freedom, felt the strangulation of distress, shackled firm in my own emptiness, and was then given a beautiful son, whose life was in fact, the sunrise of my faith. A gift too beautiful and too divine to ignore - the subtle calls lifted to an aria that surrounded me with its majesty. I trot freely through life now, submitting, as best as I am able, to the Holy Spirit and delightedly so.
Our individual will is a troubling thing. Striking out against God and the leading of the Holy Spirit we live in that death rebellion, in concert with Them we live in submission. Many - of Neitzschian persuasion find any submission to be intolerable, delighting in the promise of the superman, resulting in their own steady reduction to walking husks, dead, empty. Even while knowing that God desires for them more goodness than they are ever capable of imagining for themselves, they would have none.
Submission is the only path to life, even to freedom, certainly to goodness. Some will stubbornly harden their necks, and will God call them to life? That is what I want to know. Will God call my friend? My foe? The man on the street for whom I prayed? Yet, we can only know for our own hearing, our own story. We are only authors of our own submission and only hearers of our own call from God. Of course we can be led by the Holy Spirit to evangelize to someone, or pray for someone to be called...or to intercede on behalf of someone...the key is to submit to being led in those and all matters.
A beautiful passage in Job describes :
God heals the afflicted by their affliction,
and opens their ear by adversity.
And he also allured you out of distress,
into a wide open place, with no cramping.
And what was set on your table was full of fatness.
I think of the woman at the well, and how Jesus reveals Himself to her - replacing her shame with infinite worthiness. Her freedom was granted in that calling, that revelation broke her bondage of death in empty vice. Her future instantaneously wide open, with no cramping. And she became a prophet.
It is interesting, the implications of this for evangelism, for revival, for individual reformation. I was listening to a sermon on the way back from Minnesota about people who harden their necks against God - that was the phrase - hardening the neck against God. That resonated with me because it was in fact such an accurate description of rebellion - as in the rebellion I practiced in my own life, and the rebellion I had witnessed in others. All of us fell lower and deeper into vice and distress. This rebellion did not advance any of them or me but to the contrary cost us much. This rebellion is the living death that Christ teaches about in John, in it we are as dead, spiritual husks, self-centered, spiritually aimless, given to vice and shackled by the needs and wants of the flesh.
I know in my life, while living as an atheist, I was clearly called by God, ignored it, forsook it for the promise of atheistic freedom, felt the strangulation of distress, shackled firm in my own emptiness, and was then given a beautiful son, whose life was in fact, the sunrise of my faith. A gift too beautiful and too divine to ignore - the subtle calls lifted to an aria that surrounded me with its majesty. I trot freely through life now, submitting, as best as I am able, to the Holy Spirit and delightedly so.
Our individual will is a troubling thing. Striking out against God and the leading of the Holy Spirit we live in that death rebellion, in concert with Them we live in submission. Many - of Neitzschian persuasion find any submission to be intolerable, delighting in the promise of the superman, resulting in their own steady reduction to walking husks, dead, empty. Even while knowing that God desires for them more goodness than they are ever capable of imagining for themselves, they would have none.
Submission is the only path to life, even to freedom, certainly to goodness. Some will stubbornly harden their necks, and will God call them to life? That is what I want to know. Will God call my friend? My foe? The man on the street for whom I prayed? Yet, we can only know for our own hearing, our own story. We are only authors of our own submission and only hearers of our own call from God. Of course we can be led by the Holy Spirit to evangelize to someone, or pray for someone to be called...or to intercede on behalf of someone...the key is to submit to being led in those and all matters.
A beautiful passage in Job describes :
God heals the afflicted by their affliction,
and opens their ear by adversity.
And he also allured you out of distress,
into a wide open place, with no cramping.
And what was set on your table was full of fatness.
I think of the woman at the well, and how Jesus reveals Himself to her - replacing her shame with infinite worthiness. Her freedom was granted in that calling, that revelation broke her bondage of death in empty vice. Her future instantaneously wide open, with no cramping. And she became a prophet.
The HIGHEST Bar
Well I have been thinking about Christians...being a Christian...and the altogether too common tendency of non-believers to hold up our failings as cause for their disbelief. I have known MANY atheists - agnostics - AND pure heathens who cite the misbehavior of Christians to refute the existence of God or to distance themselves from and justify their refusal to pursue a life of faith. Whenever something bad happens with a Christian - the priest pedophilia, a televangelist's affair or embezzlement - whatever - I hear the talkers talking. It is the exposed hypocrisy they delight in, the downfall of the ones who seemed to have been lifted high.
I used to have a little saying: 'You can't judge Christ by Christians.' It is a little like Isaac Newton's school classes. He was always scoring top marks. BUT if the class score was averaged it would always fall well below his individual grades. And no one would consider judging Issac Newton, mathematician & physicist extraordinaire, on the marks attained by the LEAST functional kid in the class. Or for sports geeks, think of Michael Jordan's teams. He is not remembered for their worst performance! Nor should he be remembered through the lens of the lowest performer's statistics. It simply makes no sense.
Yet this is the popular mindset toward Christianity. Yes there are idiots, criminals, philanderers, and cretins abounding in this world. EVERYWHERE. Some are drawn to Christianity as a means to their salvation, as we all should, but many others use it to advance their own devices...and vices. That fact has no bearing on the person, the Deity, or the perfection of the Christ! Nor should it cause vacillation in the vast movement of individuals towards spiritual growth and development through relationship with the Christ!
No, WE are no God-incarnate. We simply recognize who was and how desperately we need Him to get through our days, our lives. No, WE will NEVER attain Christlikeness, and that is simply how why we need Him so. He is the highest bar, one that we will only leap for and fail to reach, but arise ready to leap again! If you should happen to see a glimmer of Him in us it is simply in spite of ourselves, and it will not remain, but will fade as we remember ourselves, unsustainably selfless. We are not the Christ, but maybe through our tears, our worship, our prayers, our cries, His voice will sing to your soul, His laughter delight your spirit, His tears wash clean your wounds. That is at best our aspiration.
I used to have a little saying: 'You can't judge Christ by Christians.' It is a little like Isaac Newton's school classes. He was always scoring top marks. BUT if the class score was averaged it would always fall well below his individual grades. And no one would consider judging Issac Newton, mathematician & physicist extraordinaire, on the marks attained by the LEAST functional kid in the class. Or for sports geeks, think of Michael Jordan's teams. He is not remembered for their worst performance! Nor should he be remembered through the lens of the lowest performer's statistics. It simply makes no sense.
Yet this is the popular mindset toward Christianity. Yes there are idiots, criminals, philanderers, and cretins abounding in this world. EVERYWHERE. Some are drawn to Christianity as a means to their salvation, as we all should, but many others use it to advance their own devices...and vices. That fact has no bearing on the person, the Deity, or the perfection of the Christ! Nor should it cause vacillation in the vast movement of individuals towards spiritual growth and development through relationship with the Christ!
No, WE are no God-incarnate. We simply recognize who was and how desperately we need Him to get through our days, our lives. No, WE will NEVER attain Christlikeness, and that is simply how why we need Him so. He is the highest bar, one that we will only leap for and fail to reach, but arise ready to leap again! If you should happen to see a glimmer of Him in us it is simply in spite of ourselves, and it will not remain, but will fade as we remember ourselves, unsustainably selfless. We are not the Christ, but maybe through our tears, our worship, our prayers, our cries, His voice will sing to your soul, His laughter delight your spirit, His tears wash clean your wounds. That is at best our aspiration.
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