I finished Rob Bell’s book. I’d like to offer a full review, but this post isn’t it.
However, he ends with a story of him at age 7, saying a prayer with his mother and father on his bed, asking Jesus into his heart. Perhaps Bell included the story to really throw off some Calvinists and cause them angst in figuring out Bell’s eternal future. But I think more likely he wanted to plant the seed that the occasions that many Christians celebrate so much – those “come to Jesus” moments – really are important in the life of faith, but perhaps not in the way we’ve believed them to be.
I think he would say those moments aren’t just the all-access rights to heaven. Those rights have been available since Calvary. But those decisions have the power to set us on a course in life that continually chooses to live in the grace and love of Jesus. Those prayers on beds of 7-year-olds, or on the beaches of Panama City during a tumultuous spring break trip, are tools that God uses to help us walk in The Way. Perhaps sometimes we get to thinking that the journey is too far, hard or rocky; but we can remember the decision we made to follow this Jesus and we continue to put one foot in front of the other.
But it doesn’t have to. I’m sure we can all name one person who made a grand decision of faith only to see the fire fizzle months later. It happens. What about those people? Well, the path is still open for them to choose; sometimes they might just have to mow through some weeds to find it again.
And then there are those who feel that the other decisions they’ve made equally define their lives. Bad choices. Hurt. Other loves and pursuits. Guilt and pain eat them up. But just as Bell’s 7-year-old bedtime decision had the power to move him in a direction toward God, these guilt-ridden decisions have the power to move people away from Him.
If you ask me (and you are, because you’re still reading), these decisions only have as much power to direct your future as you decide to give them. They may define your past, but that is the limit to their power. This, my friends is the beauty of grace and mercy. I’ve never really understood the concept until now, but what a beautiful thing. When people use descriptors for God’s power as “breaking free from bondage” I can see that it includes the ability to say, “Yes I did… but now I am….”
It seems that seeking the Kingdom of God is simply choosing to allow the moments of God’s light define you and the moments of darkness pass away.
Category: spiritual (Page 10 of 10)
Over the years I’ve begun compiling a list of reasons why we need good friends. For example:
1. To proof read your resume. Seriously, have someone make sure you’re not putting stupid stuff on there.
2. Calorie-laden food and beverage is best enjoyed in pleasant company. The calories diminish with laughter. Which is why book club and girls night are a means of exercise for me.
3. Your kids don’t become your identity. Because to true friends you’re not H/M/C’s mommy, that is just an element of your identity. You’re YOU to good friends.
4. Friends provide occasion to put on pants with real zippers and get out of the house, even if just for a walk. They also help you decide if you’re to a point that you can pull off horizontal stripes, jeggings or a fun hat. In short, friends are crucial to the shopping and wearing process. Because we all know husbands just don’t know how to answer the epic questions centered around how we really look in particular garments.
5. Friends straighten a crooked theology.
Though the first 4 reasons to have friends have been quite important to me as of late, number 5 poked his head in to say hello this past week. One of my favorite parts about being a youth director was our monthly cluster/cohort meeting with other area (NW Ohio) youth directors. I loved who I worked with, we had a great mix of personalities and perspectives and they always helped fulfill my hankering for thoughtful conversation. I’ve really missed several of these individuals over the years, as I’ve become further removed and as others have moved on to other positions and callings as well. My youth director friends landed a position in my Top 5 Groups I wish I could have a Reunion with list (also mentioned: college friends and my youth group kids).
So when I posted the other day about some wonderings I had about God “moving into the neighborhood”, I asked a friend to educate me about a related topic. You know, Luther and the entire movement of the Reformation. Nothing big. And my friend was good to offer up some resources for me to be enlightened.
He was also kind enough to call up my Trinitarian theology and show me some holes in my thinking. I was thrilled.
The essence of blogging, for me, is to ponder; I’m such a verbal processor that this more or less keeps KLR from having to set the phone down while I rattle off umpteen different thoughts while she gets the dishes done or pays attention to her husband. I never hold that any post is absolute, but rather a beginning point. I’m not in a pulpit (nor do I want to be. Nor should I be). But if I were, my bloggy thoughts aren’t the place to begin.They’re more of the chatter over coffee “what if” variety. So, apologies if anyone ever thinks that they’re much more than that.
Perhaps that’s why there are some pretty heated debates in the bloggy/social networking world. Others don’t have friends, like I do, who will simply converse and correct. Ask, differ and question but in a loving and considerate way. I’ve had more than one spiritual conversation over my meanderings, and I appreciate each one. Well, the ones in which I’m not simply trying to be converted to another way of thinking… but most of my conversational partners also enjoy a level of cerebral exercise, so it’s a mutual understanding that agreeing isn’t necessarily the goal. But sharpening, opening the eyes, or even heart, is paramount.
I hope you have friends like that. Good friends that ask you to think, reconsider, or even go back to the drawing board. Friends that say, “what if…”. Yes, I hope you have friends like that.
I’ll be honest. People that have the strength of character to avoid the dessert table simply annoy me.
I’ve never really understood self-control from a spiritual perspective. I know it’s a “fruit of the spirit” and that we have a spirit of “power, love and self-discipline” rather than timidity. But it just seemed to make the list with patience, another character quality I seem to lack, as a good suggestion for an easier life. Not a command with an actual bearing on life outcomes. But for some reason, Peterson’s paraphrase began to set it into new light.
I generally like to skim through the passages that were real pointy-pointy on “issues”. Like 1 Corinthians. But yet, here I am today in chapters 5 & 6 with some very blatant opinions by Paul. These kinds of chapters are hard for me not because of generalities but because of specifics. We’re not talking about what does “love your neighbor” mean… he’s talking about a specific man and his specific affair with his specific step-mom which brought on a whole soapbox of scorn. But it’s hard for me to completely understand because I didn’t know the man, or the situation, only that Paul is none too happy with the hanky panky. And I’m trying to lessen my practice of making life principles out of specific instances. I suppose what I’m trying to say is, that although I’m about to make some observations about this section, there’s a lot I don’t know about this passage and it’s context, or what I think of it.
So, things started getting interesting in my brain when I read: “Just because something is technically legal doesn’t mean that it’s spiritually appropriate. If I went around doing whatever I thought I could get away with, I’d be a slave to my whims.” (6:12). What a great paraphrase of the ol’ “everything is permissible, but not everything is beneficial”.
I think this whole idea of living 2 steps below the line is foreign in our culture. I put that passage in my FB status and as I refilled my coffee, I thought about my FB friends who don’t necessarily strive for the “christian life” and what they’d think about it. (Yes, I’m vain enough to think it – and honest enough to admit it. I think about what people think about me, even in terms of FB image). I’m prone to think the idea of living on whim is somewhat appealing. I mean, we only live once, right? Bon Jovi certainly endorses it: “it’s my life, it’s now or never, I ain’t gonna live forever… it’s. my. life.” (The implications of this song as a way to understand our culture is a whole other blog post).
And there’s a part of me that agrees with it, especially when brownies are involved. Who wants self-control when you can have chocolate? Why deny yourself the pleasures of the world? What good is it to miss out? What do you gain? And I can even give spiritual justification: God created it and said it was good. “Eat and enjoy.”
But the idea of being a slave to anyone, or thing, is not as appealing. I do things that are “not beneficial” all the time, but when put into the context that I do those things not because I choose to, but because of an unseen inability to choose otherwise…. well, no one likes to feel powerless. It’s one thing to live on a whim, but another to become a slave to it. But it’s not the obvious masters that we really have to worry about in life, like my boss; it’s those that exert control over you when you don’t even realize it that should make us squirm. Like abusive boyfriends or bossy friends.
But like abusive relationships, we’re convinced we can’t live without it. It might be misery, but it’s familiar misery (I think I just read this in A Million Miles). And who knew that food or sex or anything that indulges us with a sense of feeling good could do that?
This all makes me want to reread The Screwtape Letters in its opposite/hidden nature of it all. I’m also quite astounded by the fact that I didn’t even touch on another aspect of this section, the bodily life and how it interplays with the spiritual side, which is quite entangled in the topic and actually jumped out at me first, but apparently a completely different post because this one is running long and I’m starting to ramble.
But back to my point. If I can find one. Yes. Self-control does seem spiritual. Because according to this section, something is always controlling you, be it the Spirit, or your whims. I think Screwtape would agree that the key to controlling a person is to fool them into thinking that they’re actually in control. We say things like “I can do this!” But perhaps… we can’t. But Another can. It’s not so much self-control as selfless-control. That I can take myself out of the equation to look at what is right and good, and with eternal perspective I can make decisions.
There were a group of people back in Jesus’ day (and before. And after. And now, I suppose) that believed that anything of the physical nature had no bearing on the spiritual and should be avoided. I can’t get behind that (see above reference to “another post”, forthcoming). But I also can’t live on brownies alone; I need substance. Sustenance. Living based on whatever I want at the given moment isn’t going to fulfill any more than living a life with nothing of pleasure. I will always continually want more and crave to satisfy in ways that simply won’t meet expectations.