(NOTE: Mostly about gay relationships, but not exclusively so. This is explicitly intended as a way to open dialogues within my church, and loosely follows thinking from the do-be-do-be-do post) This is the first problem: We don't know how to discuss the issues of hetero-sex and same-sex practices without implicitly putting people on trial. This is the second problem: Until we know how to articulate our position, we implicitly and unthinkingly endorse a position by our reaction to emerging situations. Let's say a gay couple joins my church, lets call them Fred and John, or Susan and Jean. Great. No problem. In fact, wonderful, because it means the barrier of prejudice has been broken. The church is (should be) fully open and welcoming to everyone. OK, so there will be some grumbles from people who like their comfort zone to be left untouched, but hey, they're the same people who grumble when the homeless come into the services, or the rituals are changed. Now Fred or Susan want to help with tea or with sound mixing in the services. Good ... for as Mark Melluish said, "bless, belong, believe, become." We're all in different stages in our walk with God. Then perhaps Jean, who is musically talented, wants to join the worship team. Or John, a gifted teacher, wants to run a bible study group. Notice how the levels of authority change; we transition from being a family member serving others, to being a family leader. It's at this point we have to ask a critical question: "what are our leaders leading us toward?" ... for our leaders explicitly (supposedly) stand for Christian God-defined normality. If the church's theology agrees that same-sex relationships are good in the sight of God, then theoretically we have no problem in our hypothetical example. Jean leads worship, John teaches, the congregation sees gay relationships as part of the Christian norm, and those who don't like it grumble or leave. If the church's theology is that gay relationships are wrong, we have a potential outcome that can damage, hurt, and break relationships. So, we're back to our first problem. How does a church work through the dialogue without implicitly putting people on trial? This places the local church in a quandary, for it's the local church that needs to do this, because the situation arises in the local church. A typical response is to run to the nearest biblical proof text, and if we find the conventional interpretation uncomfortable, we look for alternative hermeneutics; what other ways can we legitimately shape our reading of the text to see if it can hold what we'd like to be true? Can we fit the issue into our desired biblical "Christian normal"? Unfortunately the almost inevitable result is that we end up drawing a line in the sand, an implicit "putting people on trial" to see of they meet a defined standard. The outcome? Argument. Condemnation and judgment ... at least implied if not explicit. Hurt people, broken relationships. Fragmentation and polarization. But ask yourself: who is perfect in all their finances, charity, spiritual disciplines, gossip, ambition, desires, mercy, love, or grace? No one. None. So a line in the sand is useless, because we're ALL standing together on one side of that line, and God is on the other side. Who can justifiably cast the first stone? The issue is not the line in the sand, it goes much deeper than that simplicity. The issue as far as God is concerned is "Where am I facing, what direction am I headed, are my life's habitual practices and actions convergent or divergent with God's intended normal?" Now the problem becomes not a question of "is that sin or not", but what is "God-normality"? For that is the goal, that is the intention of God as he gazes at all of us standing on the other side of the line. That is the Easter purpose, that is God's teaching, that is his desire: convergence with his unchanging normal. All of us are deviant. Whether born with such deviancies or whether we've acquired such deviancies through choice. For example, on the biological level I have two spleens (it's true). On the spiritual level I'm not going to list my deviancies here, but there are many. I am deviant in propensity and practice, yet I hope and pray that I am converging with God's normal. But I also know God's original design. He intended me to be perfect in nakedness, unashamedly unblemished in my physical and spiritual exposure. Able to stand face to face in his presence. Male and female he made us, as companions in perfection. Now wait a moment: before you jump to conclusions about what you think that implies about my position on gay relationship, let me go a further step. There are some things that are obviously not what God intended (murder, for one), and there are things God definitely did intend (the union of man and woman). But is there a grey zone in between? Take for example the question of polygamy. I don't see anything in the bible that says God either approves of, or judges polygamy. In fact we see many examples in the Old Testament of polygamous people who nevertheless had God's favor. Likewise, is it against God to smoke (it damages us, causes cancer, and shortens life)? It doesn't seem so from the bible. Or is it wrong to lose our inhibitions from drinking alcohol (and I'm not talking about all-out drunken stupor)? Wine was a common drink endorsed by Jesus (he even made it himself, and classy stuff it was by the sounds of it). These choices are in that zone of behavior where God seems to say "You've two choices, neither are sin, but one edifies and is pleasing, the other does not edify, and just is" (1 Cor 10:23). That's our grey zone - where its lawful but not edifying. We have all chosen some grey in our lives. To be clear, I am not saying there are some sins God is ok with. These grey "zones" ... that's only about our choices that edify or are neutral, not our choices that are against God's nature. God is perfect. Everything we do, say, and are is either glorifying to God or not. There is no "grey" for God. But don't we want to live in the ideal zone, the white zone, the light zone, the zone of intended creation? Should we not be seeking to be perfect (Matt 5:48), and be holy (1Pe 1:16), as originally intended? Isn't that God's desire for us, to come out of the dark and into the light? My whole life has been a journey, even a battle, to get further into the light, and I won't be fully there till the day I die. This is perhaps why we have Paul in the New Testament saying to Titus and Timothy that a leader should be of one wife ... implicitly he's saying yes, you could have more than one wife, but that's grey zone living. If you want to be a leader, then you need to be fighting to get into the white zone and lead by the example of seeking "God's normal". Relativism - the current name of the game, choosing our preferred reference - does not define God's normality (whether I like it or not). So, when all is said and done, where do I stand on gay relationships and other sexual issues, and where does my church stand? First I need to make one distinction: there is a big difference between bed-hopping recreational sex built on hormones and hedonism, and that of a loving relational commitment. Personally, I think the former is very much outside the grey zone. With that in mind the biblical position on sexuality and the gay perspective (Genesis 18:20 and 19:5; Leviticus 18:22, 20:13; Romans 1:26–27; 1 Corinthians 6:9–10; 1 Timothy 1:10) seems to be in a context of lifestyle attitudes to casual sex and hedonistic desire. Such behavior - general sexual promiscuity - is outside the grey zone. But what about a loving committed relationship, whether gay or of unmarried heterosexuals living together? It comes in varying degrees of ambiguity. So I place much of this in the as grey zone, and depending on the specifics ranges from darker to lighter shades of grey because of the inevitable broader consequences that sexual relationships have on other people. As with much of grey zone behavior, when it comes to Christian leadership I struggle to accept the implicit endorsement where a leader's habitual lifestyle is not "white zone". Through holding a position of leadership there is a tacit endorsement that what a leader practices as normal is God-normality. Leaders carry a burdensome responsibility and accountability that they "don't cause my brother/sister to stumble in their walk toward perfect holiness". God's call on our life is to journey toward his created normality. Hence Paul's position on leadership and polygamy; leaders should be "of one wife". Christian leaders have the responsibility to lead us into the white zone, the God-normality zone -- for that, after all, is our ultimate destination as Christians. Where does my church stand on this? It's ambiguous, for we have yet to really have that discussion, perhaps for fear of communicating judgment and implying people are on trial. How will we deal with this? I'm not sure, but I hope it begins with a focus on Holiness and Humility. Let God's light illuminate, not my prejudiced personal candle, not my comfort zone preference.
2 Comments
Nothing special ... simply recording thoughts on interesting issues others have raised with me.
1. On "we are all priests in a dysfunctional institution." Yes, but that does not equate to all being leaders. Being a priest is a definition of relational status, as a priest I have communication and access to God. But that does not mean that as a priest God sees me as the primary communication back to the church. So no, not everyone should have equal voice into the direction we go ... that would presuppose that God tells all of us everything. Instead God says I am a priest so that I may have intimacy with him, but I cannot presume access to his inner intentions for my community. If that were the case, why should I need a leader or obey my leaders. Perhaps the hidden question here is "what do I do with a dysfunctional institution". In my personal case, as a church community we are functional, and it is the external hierarchies are dysfunctional (we've been 5 years without a full time minister ... where's the pastoral oversight in that??? Systemic abuse I would call it). Fortunately in our case we can largely ignore the externalities. Internal dysfunction is that much harder. One of my most favorite stories in the bible is the rich young ruler. Jesus says to him, "for you this is the goal, now follow me". And Jesus moved on. The man had a choice, and fluffed it. Likewise, I believe a church needs to be future focused, "this is what's needed to get over there, now follow me". And if people walk away, better that than their being the inside poison. To what end are we our brother's keeper? Was Jesus not the rich young ruler's keeper at least as much as we are keepers of congregants? And yet there came a point where he walked on. 2. On "church management that it is incredibly focused on serving those inside rather than those outside". It seems oftentimes that a lot of church management is not actually serving ... but rather busy with fulfilling the criteria of management. That is, the management measures itself by how well it manages. If one looks at it spiritually, a different purpose should drive church management. All church activities can perhaps be wrapped up in two purposes; First to collectively worship, for true worship is the great leveler of pride, and the great unifier of spirit. Secondly, to disciple (whether that be internally or externally). Discipleship is too often (in my view) reduced to imparting knowledge: sermons, endless "courses you simply must go on", exhortation to read the bible (with associated enhancement of the guilt complex), and endless lists of "HowTo" and 7 steps to freedom. But, true as these are, right as these are, discipleship is also as much, if not more so, about facilitating people into action. There's a great similarity between discipleship and apprenticeship. We like to tell people what to do, but unlike an apprentice and his master, we don't do much showing how to do, and we don't hold their hands while they do the "do". But unless we apprentice people through doing, how can they ever grow into being. The master does not "do" his discipling, he/she is too busy being the master. Like the be-do-be-do-be blog post. 3. On "what is church and church leadership?" Church is not a democracy. It's also not a theocracy. Both concepts are misleading because they presuppose that the intention of the authority is institutionalization (excuse the innuendo). The leadership debate revolves on perspectives of what church is (or at least should be). The lay-perception of the mad-collective of leadership is just so because such leadership presupposes the institutionalism of purpose. And from this we get the destructive fights on style, ritual, activities, as factions fight for their preferred expression of the institution, and on the larger scale we have local church abuse by a disconnected upstream diocesan authority. For myself I find it helpful to think of church as the God-intentioned emergent property of community. Instead it seems that some churches turn it backwards and start with leadership imposed on community ... especially long established church. But think about it like this: we are saved individually to God who brings us collectively into family. Participation in family is not a flat structure; there is hierarchy of skill, intellect, wisdom, maturity and calling under God. The problem here is that leadership sometimes plays a token respect to family, and instead a weak leader's actions are played by how they are look up the pole at the deterministic hierarchical structures (that's not leader-ship, more like leader-slip), instead of standing backed by the hierarchical structures as they look into the dynamics of the family. In cases where there is family division, the former tends to focus on imposing structural solutions, while the latter seeks dialogue for healing. When I joined my current church we walked into a hurting legacy from the prior generations of leadership. Instead of resorting to "the institution says X", our new leader first researched to understand, and then opened a discussion of all the hurts and wounds to find how to heal. Only then could the issues be dealt with. Another way of thinking about it is, is the role of leadership to direct people, or to draw people? As a leader I can push a crowd of people in a direction with enough energy, effort, cajoling, and judicious application of the carrot and stick. I can even do it as a worship leader, employing musical skills to evoke a simulacrum of the real thing. Or I can instead walk toward a goal, showing the pathway around challenges, obstacles and structures, and the people follow like a herd of cats all jostling along behind the aroma of a pleasant meal (not drawn by the leader, but by the goal the leader is headed to). The cats will each follow short term diversions, move at different speeds, but as a group stay headed in the same direction as the leader goes - there's a group velocity. But the leader can only do that if the goal is clear to all, well communicated, the purpose is a priority, and the people accept and understand. The leaders job is to maximize the understanding of the mission so that like a cloud of particles the congregation is drawn along, entraining others along the way. 4. On "Where is our discussion forum to engage and grow on these issues?" At a recent leaders meeting over breakfast, one person really challenged me, and I had to work hard to articulate and reason a position with him, not with a view to winning, but to understanding. This is one of the leading areas where I believe we fail people in our discipleship, and which I find to be a huge gaping hole in my life. The pastoring of leaders is just about non-existent. (A comment on the previous blog was very helpful, so we've elevated it to a guest post here. Please read the prior article for it to make sense) Well firstly, I think the title [of the previous post] should be: "Buyers regret? Be-do-be-do-be". It should start with 'be', then follows a cycle of do be do be do. And finally, at the end of our lives we just be again. Be dead physically, be with God eternally. Right at the start of Jesus' ministry period he is baptized and then God says: "This is my beloved son with whom I am well please". I've often imagined Jesus looking up to heaven and saying: "But I haven't done anything yet!". I've also often wondered why he waited so long to start his ministry. Gosh, if I knew I was the messiah, the savior of the world, I would have started teaching and preaching and healing and all that stuff at least as soon as I was old enough to drive! What on earth was he doing for 30 years? Maybe he was just being? Its not just the religious culture that focuses on doing, its incredibly intrinsic to secular culture. At least modernist secular culture. I don't have space to talk about post-modernist culture! I see it in my fathers generation, and my grandfathers generation. The success of your life is defined by what you have achieved. I hear my father telling people so proudly that I have done a PhD. That I work at a University. That I give guidance to governments. It makes me quite desperate because I feel the pressure to continue achieving things so that he can keep being proud of me. What I would rather hear my father say is: "My son rocks, I just love spending time with him". Thats it. To hear my father say that would be earth moving for me. I've started trying to tell my kids that. Not just that I love them. That I really enjoy just being with them. They need to know that. My wife challenged me the other day by saying that she really hopes our kids aren't very clever! Her point is that she sees very capable clever people living incredibly pressured lives trying to live up to the expectations the world has of clever capable people. She would rather our kids were pretty mediocre, preferably that they have to struggle a bit to achieve much at all in a worldly sense. She would rather they grew up learning that real achievement is growing in humility, compassion, love, service. Its incredibly hard to learn those things when there are massive expectations that you achieve great things and "change the world". And so to reiterate the main message of the article I guess. The doing has to stem from the being. Otherwise the being stems from the doing and your identity rests in what you achieve which is scary. Very scary and very contrary to Gods view of things. And finally, the article begs the question of how do we just be? I'm not sure we ever really learn that until we die. But I think one clue I have started to home in on is that being is best done through doing something that has absolutely no link to any sort of achievement. That's why I stopped running races a few years back. The being I experienced in running on the mountain was lost to the pressure to become fitter, stronger, faster. That is also why I don't do quiet times. Because I feel like failure when I skip one and so the being is superseded by the pressure to tick off another quiet time completed. Funnily enough, for me, right now, gardening is the thing. Mostly because no-one expects me to be a good gardener! I don't think I am a good gardener. I haven't a clue what I'm doing to be honest. The other day I discovered that one plant I had been tenderly caring for is actually a rampant weed... I'm now quite attached to it. But there is still an intentionality to it. When I garden I talk to God. Sometimes he talks back but often he just listens to me prattle on about all the stuff going on in my life. But sometimes he does talk and sometimes I hear him. And that is enough for me to step back into doing... for a few days. Then I need to spend some time in my garden again. Be-do-be-do-be-do-be-done. Didn't receive what you thought you were getting? Welcome to the world of unfulfilled expectations. I know, it hits me often, and I once almost walked away because of it. The problem, of course, is me (if I accept the premise that God is perfect). So to face any shortcoming I need to look inward and question the basis of my expectations. This is a process of re-calibration -- adjusting my understanding to match reality. We all have poor perceptions, constantly bombarded by biased experiences, prejudice, cultural indoctrination, unthinking acceptance of what we've been taught, and of course our personal desires that tempt us into confirmation bias. I'm a perceptual coward ... many times I don't want to see what is in front of me. I can get so used to looking the other way that reality slips past like the proverbial elephant in the room. Life is a constant process of re-calibration, and I wonder if those we call wise are simply the people better calibrated to reality. So let's recalibrate our view of Christianity. The Catholics have long framed Christianity around "doing"; going to mass, giving, confession, taking communion, etc. Then along came the protestants protesting, and substituted a new regime of doing; don't drink, don't dance, dress demurely, suffer in silence, do charity, etc. Well, maybe that is a bit generalized, because of course there are exceptions. However, it seems that in general we're measured by what we do. Let's challenge that idea. Hamlet never said "To do or not to do", he said "To be or not to be, that is the question." If I focus on doing, then I have no energy or time to simply be. If I focus on being, then I can't help that all the doings get done; for to be is to do, but to do is not to be. Do-be-do-be-do? Some examples, first from life and then from the thorny issue of the Bible. If I focus on doing husbandly things, I've no time to be a husband. But if I focus on loving my wife, my husbandly doings uncontrollably follow. It's like some medical students who want to be plastic surgeons, dermatologists, or obstetricians, all because its a prestigious career (sadly, there seems to be too many like this). But this doesn't make them real doctors inside. Sure they can do the work, but their motivation is not rooted in compassion for healing; they're doing it for ego, ambition, or something else. They are not being-doctors, they're doing-doctors. Or training to be lawyers for the money, instead of being passionate about justice. Likewise, I could try to do the things an engineer does, but that doesn't make me an engineer. I could learn the skills, acquire the knowledge, but I would simply be "doing an engineer", not "being an engineer". Doing engineering things might forcibly turn me into being an engineer, but only by killing off what I already was inside. The external does not easily dominate the internal, for the internal is always fighting to be expressed. But this sad world chokes our insides, and tries to clone us into crude replicates of an idealistic vision that has no grounding in reality. It's about humility. Humility is to not try and be more than I am (by doing things that are not me), and humility is not to be less than I am (by not doing things that are me). Humility is to be merely what I am, and from what I am all the true doings will flow as naturally as a tail wags behind a dog (animals are so good at simply being). Humility is the process of recalibrating our being to reality, correcting the distortion of doing what we're not. OK, you might say, "so what's this got to do with Christianity?" Well, lets recalibrate the distortions we've been taught. So many times we see the Bible as the "do-things" for our life: "Go and make disciples." "Love one another". "Tithe your income". "Don't covet". We even apply the same mentality to God and say "Why doesn't God DO more?" "Why won't he intervene and DO something about this mess?" Its because it's easier to measure life by the doings. But the doings have little relationship to the beings, and relationship can only exist between beings. Recalibrate: Is the Bible really about doing? Zoom out and look again ... the Bible is a story of being ... it's all about being. Genesis: God says "Let there be ..." And when he gets to making Man and Woman he says "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion ..." Let, Be, Have ... not so much about doing. Of course there are actions involved, but they flow from being, they don't define being. The work is all about letting the inside out. God let his creativity be expressed. Man and Woman were fruitful and multiplied because that is their being. They have dominion because their being was authoritative. God first and foremost wants us to "be", he has no need for our "do." Skip forward, consider Moses: a man of justice, growing up in a palace of power and authority, he reacted to injustice and killed a man. It was not a right action; he was badly expressing the "being" that he was inside. Yet throughout his life, and despite his failings, his focus on being was expressed in doings that changed the future. Skip forward, consider Ruth: her nature was kindness, loyalty, diligence, and faithfulness. Ruth's actions express her being ... she lived outside from what she was inside. Boaz saw the external expression and knew her inside. Skip forward, think of Hadassah / Esther: she was a national beauty, concubine, strategic, cunning, brave. She was willing to be these things, and from her being flowed actions that restored a nation. Skip forward, remember Elijah. Fearful and exhausted from all his doings, God brings him to a cave to let him encounter being, and once he could be, the doings could begin again. Ok you say, that's old testament stuff. What about Jesus' time and all the instructions he gave. Fair enough, let's look at that. Probably his first command was "follow me". What does it mean to be a follower ... it means not being firstly a do'er ... to follow is to be a follower. A follower is all about becoming. Or the Samaritan woman at the well ... Jesus says to her go and sin no more. Nothing about doing, only about being. Then there's Mary and Martha, the one focused on doing, the other on being. Guess which one was commended. He says be perfect, be holy. I can't do perfect, or do holy. He says be salt and light. Salt and light don't do anything, they simply be and their very nature changes all they interact with. So when Jesus says "go and make disciples of all nations" ... he is saying "be salt and light in the world", because salt draws out the flavor, light reveals truth, and so to make disciples of all nations we only have to be. Jesus doesn't send us out to do, he sends us out to be. The Bible from start to finish is the story of people trying to recover what it means to be, and it's the story of God trying to open peoples eyes to what he is ... the ever-present-tense "I AM" ... his very name is all about being, not doing. Being exists outside of time, doing happens inside of time. Sure some are called to a very visible doing purpose ... Abraham, Moses, David, Isaiah and others. But they were only really called the let their internal being be available to a greater purpose. They were called to be a leader, be a soldier, be a king, be a prophet. They didn't "do" leadership, or "do" kingship. And so our call is to live in the simplicity of "Be", according to God's first word to us: "Be ..." Each of us does "Be" differently, because each of us is made uniquely. Some be a scientist, some be a farmer, some be an engineer, some be a minister. My own father wanted to "do missionary", but he learned to "be a doctor" and changed the course of lives and organizations. Each has a call on their life to be what they were made to be in the grace of God's restoration. By being we are able to be a light to the moths, be a salve to a wound, be compassion to the hurt, be a creator of new things, be a discoverer of knowledge, be a lover to the lonely, be a help to the helpless, be a leader to the lost, be a singer to the silent, be a scientist to society, be an explorer of the unknown, be expressive of what we are ... no more, no less, only ever on a journey of recalibration. It's a journey to be. The challenge is to know what I am meant to be. For that, first stop. Then I consider my desires, consider my capabilities, consider what I am when I stop doing. God has no urgency for me to do, only a desire for me to become what he originally intended me to be. So I let myself be and become, and before I know it, my being will have accomplished more doings than I can imagine. It's not an easy journey. It's hard to know what it means to be in God - it's not my birth condition, but my rebirth intention. To be means giving external expression to what God has rooted on the inside. It takes a life of continued recalibration, but each course correction brings a joy and wholeness we've never known before. UPDATE: don't miss the follow up post. "The Internet destroys religion" may be one extreme tabloid interpretation of an recent study on the topic: "How the Internet Is Taking Away America’s Religion" The decrease in religious affiliation is found to strongly correlate with a decrease in the chance of religious affiliation. There are lots of possible explanations, but I would like to offer one option here: People are scared of conclusions to troublesome questions, and any answer that gives a comfortable escape is gratefully adopted. We see this in climate change denialism ... where the slightest alternative explanation is leaped upon. We see it in conspiracy theories, where remote possible theories are adopted as fact. Both happen because they fuel an inner desire for a specific outcome, and both are fed by exposure to the Internet. Couple this with an increase in education (theoretically) which feeds the arrogance that knowledge is wisdom, and the outcome is not surprising. Yet these examples merely display an unconcious, and not-unnatural fear of facing conclusions that, from an external perspective, greatly disturb our comfort zones of ego and self-aspiration. God appears threatening to one who doesn't know him personally; the perception is that freedom will be removed, joy destroyed, and self-will replaced by rules (see planned freedom). To get through this misconception requires courage and intellectual honesty. No wonder CS Lewis called himself one of the most reluctant converts in history, yet afterwards peppered all his writings with the effusive knowledge of Joy. One of leading Christian dichotomies is that of "planned freedom". On the one side "planned" seems to be about a predetermined life, while "freedom" implies a self-driven, anarchistic, beautiful and creative expression. One is boring, the other is exciting.
No wonder people rebel against the perception that Christians who "follow the rules" are boring people. Yet, like most of the many apparent paradoxes in Christianity, it's really only a false dichotomy, one that has been poorly communicated, poorly understood, and misses the deeper and joyful insight that is to be found in true planned freedom. Yet this remains a problem for many Christians and they wrestle incessantly with the notion that they must hear from God about every decision, lest they possibly miss his "plan". Many a time one hears Jeremiah quoted "For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope." Often you hear this when someone is wrestling with difficulties and one hopes to comfort them, the implication being that God will sort out the affairs of your life - colleagues, friends, finances, work, marriage, whatever - and so one should take comfort in this assurance. But the reality is that our material life does not always fall into place no matter how close we walk to God, stuff still happens! And then the feelings of condemnation start; "I must be a bad person", "God doesn't love me", "What am I doing wrong", or even "God is nowhere near me." The blame for this I place squarely at the foot of neo-Calvinism: the truth of the sovereignty of God has been blindly layered onto thoughtful orthodoxy and left a distorted understanding in it's wake. This idea that God has mapped out your life for you in glorious detail - where you'll live, what job you'll have, who you'll love, etc., etc., is a dangerous and irrational approach. For it infers that your free will is only the freedom to choose against what God has pre-ordained. It says you have no choice in the good things because God has planned them already. But that is not free will, that is only giving you the option of rebellion. And so when things go wrong the thought "I must have made a bad choice" comes quickly following. Part of this problem is because people don't think. Really think. About the deep meaning of what they are saying. Part of the problem is that this treats the Bible as a recipe book; do this, do that, and it'll all make for a happy life. But the story of God is just that, a recount of experiences woven around a deep reality. The Bible is simply (!) the leading and reference compilation of this story. And the story is unique among all religions, and it's theme is about restoration and rescue from our alienation. This is what our life is about, what God's plan is about, an opportunity of reconciliation for a changed future. Thus God's plans are first and foremost, above all else, about restoring our relationship. Everything else is for that purpose. And if we know him already, then his plan continues on perfecting that relationship to release us to be what we were created to be; creatures of free will, creative and innovative, expressive, inquisitive and thirsty to know, designed for relationship with the ultimate in creativity, empowered by his presence - that's Grace! The plans are to let us exercise our free will all the more creatively, and moreover all the more joyfully. I can choose this job, or that one. I can decide to go on holiday or not. I have options to pursue love with one person or another. But behind all these choices is the real plan of God, the plan to dive deeper into intimacy, the plan to be who we were created to be, and this plan is the backdrop to all our choices. When I choose, I can choose paths which take me further from God, or towards God. That is the real choice, the only fundamental choice. In the same way that a young couple make choices to deepen their relationship toward intimate love, choosing from many paths of pursuit how the way one will chase the other. It could be through roses and fine wine dinners, picnics at the top of a mountain, long distance emails and calls over Skype, but they choose options and use these to grow their relationship. A boy may make a choice to teach his girlfriend how to surf so they can share this together. Or she may introduce him to hiking so they can do that together. Surfing or hiking: is only one "planned" by God? There's no right and wrong in surfing or hiking, only how they are used in the relationship. For many choices, perhaps even most of our choices, these choices are neutral. The key issue is only whether those choices detract from or contribute to God's plan for our deepening relationship with him. This is freedom; the freedom to choose from a dazzling array of opportunities and to live these choices for the betterment of our relationship with God. [PS: Of course, the deeper the relationship, the more our natural inclinations of our choices will align with God's greater purposes] |
Why?
Probably the best therapy is to express yourself. Why do you think psychiatrists make you lie on the couch and talk, while all they do is murmur "hmmm", "uhuh", or "go on"? Archives
May 2017
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