No School = No Skimming

In some ways we, as Believers, are much weaker than our counterpart non-believers that walk through life with little to no care in the world. There is a lot of Christian rhetoric that will tell you otherwise, but I know it because I’ve felt it. Secular individuals believe that they neither need nor have a religious crutch which they will cling to. Whether they consider their “end of days” and the implications of not believing in something or not, they decide that Jesus Christ is a waste of time and a serious hindrance to living a fun and ceaselessly entertaining lifestyle. They may experience little earthly consequence because of affluence of the Western culture and the obvious superfluity of a God in a culture where we have everything we need. In many ways, I see how this view proliferates. We can relate to the doubt, the intrigue and the attraction of living in the moment. Oft considered, we can imagine how fun and easy it would be to drop the weighty responsibilities of following a religious creed on earth and seek the most sensual desires of our heart. At this very moment, at the moment of forming this wild and unbridled thought, something holds me back.

What is this weakness that I feel and the overwhelming sense of inability to pursue my most worldly thoughts? If I can imagine this so vividly and feel the self-confidence surging through my veins, what can possibly stop me?

Dependence is the thing that stops me. What a dirty sounding word to me. As I begin to formulate an independent and primal urge, I’m struck by an immovable experience of unyielding obligation. This obligation doesn’t feel like an obligation to change my oil or spend time with my overly precocious cousins at seasonal holidays. This obligation has no frame of reference in my life because I’ve only felt it in the context of my faith. In this moment I am weak. I am the anti-hero. I have no power to save the day. I fear death. I fear my own fragility. I doubt myself. My true nature is exposed and I am ashamed. Even my favorite tools like the power of positive thinking and my parent’s nurturing empowerment are impotent forces.

This is the moment that I see how weak I am compared to those around me who can dismiss this obligation of reliance. You think you know what’s coming, “He’s going to say that he feels God’s peace wash over and a warm buzz of good feelings dissipate the shame.” Actually, I feel none of that. As I see the world laughing at my weakness and fragility, I don’t feel better about myself at all. It is not a matter of my emotion, but of my soul. A spark inside my soul is ignited, a flicker of faith…that I have been redeemed by some power that I desperately need. In spite of the way I feel, my soul, my very essence, KNOWS that my pathetic weakness is my eternal strength. 

-Luke (I love you guys, hope everyone has a great summer and keep posting on here!)

He Loves Me

I learned something fundamental this year. I learned that God loves me. I learned to show emotion frankly. I learned to trust despite uncertainty. I learned to try to understand success. 

Finally, and above all, I learned that He loves me so much.

Can something be ‘very’ true?

That was a question a friend asked me years ago.  Well, not really a friend, or at least, as it turned out.  But, the question stuck with me.  Like gum on the bottom of your shoe.  Like that annoying friend who you later find out is really a better friend to you than you were to him/her

The reason the question stuck with me, I’m pretty sure, was because ‘truth’ and what it actually consists of has haunted me most of my life, and especially, in my study of the Scripture. 

John 8:32 And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.

People quote this verse all the time.  Pastors quote it, athletes quote it, ‘unChristian’ entertainers and actors/actresses quote it, Sunday school teachers quote it, and politicians even quote it.  Why?  I’m pretty sure because we all have a lot of natural yearning for freedom.  Freedom to what?  Usually this means to do whatever we want.  ….if we only knew what that actually was.  If we look at the context of the verse, we see that Jesus has just brought the verbal pain to the Pharisees, telling them they don’t know God, the Father, His Father.  And His statement about ‘being free’ is a conditional one.  It starts with “if”.  “IF” you continue in Jesus’s word, He says, you shall become His disciples.  THEN you get the truth.  Then you get set free.  Kinda how Peter was set free to get crucified upside down.  How Paul was free to get stoned and snakebitten and ship-wrecked.  How Jesus was free to give up His life and die the most gruesome death imaginable.

Which, tangent, but – every time we see a cross around someone’s neck we should really imagine a gas chamber or the electric chair instead – because if Jesus had lived and died and rose again today that’d be the symbol to remember Him by, not one with no cultural relevance to the current time and place.  But I digress…

The point of this passage, I think anyway, is that Jesus sets up a construct for following Him, His word, becoming His disciple, getting in sync with the Father, knowing the Father – THAT sets free.  Like a chemical process.  This is scientific…if-then…something happens.  And it’s not about us, it’s about becoming 1) a disciple of Jesus and 2) connected to the Father & knowing Him.

Which, according to most of the Bible, anyway, usually involves hardship, pain, death, torture.  That stuff.  Not exactly the American dream.  But I digress…

I think, by the way, now, after years of contemplation, that something can be ‘very’ true and other things just ‘true.’  What I mean is, a filet mignon steak is ‘very’ good and that cheap standardized flank steak you are getting thrown on your plate as you’re bused through a line like sheep or cattle yourself in a sketchy cafeteria is just ‘good.’  There are degrees to things that can be good or valuable or pleasurable, just like degrees to truth.  Jesus however is speaking of truth as an either/or.  Either you follow Him or you do not.

Main takeaway:  In summary, I would submit that he’s speaking about God/Him/Holy Spirit as the praxis of truth itself.  As in, truth being worked out in the hearts and souls of human beings.

Two supplementary quotes—one from the Indian author of ‘House for Mr. Biswas,’ and the second from my journal while building a log cabin in Colorado w/a buddy who embodies the Truth of Christ in His life in a way that has challenged me to the core:

"Most people are not really free. They are confined by the niche in the world that they carve out for themselves. They limit themselves to fewer possibilities by the narrowness of their vision." —V.S. Naipaul.   How does this relate to your intellectual and other pursuits?

Like the fabric and threads of that old blanket which conjures instantaneous sentimentality in your mind, God has been stitching together time, experiences, relationships, events, thoughts, feelings, and a plethora of components out of which he has, and is weaving, a life.  Your life.  Which, the Psalmist says is like a “fleeting vapor” that moves over blades of grass.  So guess what, it doesn’t matter anyway, at least, not as much as you might think.  We are all vapors, God-breathed, and may we settle well on His grass, and be enjoyed in His nostrils, freely, lively, abundantly…

-Matthew