I found myself thinking about a line that I wrote in my last blog. It was something like this.........”Christianity is not a “spiritual” affair......” I think I want to clarify what I meant by that. I certainly don’t wish to confuse people about their spirituality and I understand that to some it may seem a bit obtuse to say something like that. Everyone can be misunderstood, especially if you want to.
I guess that the above quote was used to suppress a lot of negative feelings and images that I have. It was a nice way of saying to the reader that we need to keep it simple. This is not something that was designed by God to be complicated, although we have founded entire Universities and Theological Seminaries in order to defend our different points of view. This is simple. As simple as love is.......or isn’t?
Have you ever wondered about love? Why do I love someone so much that I am willing to commit to an entire lifetime with them? How can love span 2,3,4,5 and 6 (or more) children and not be diluted and remain so strong? It is simple or not? It is. And it’s not. It is straight forward, doesn’t require a lot of thought and yet it is complex and can change the course of many lives.
I need to keep it simple. I also think that a lot of Christians need to keep it simple. We have spent centuries muddying the waters. We take what suits us and leave out the rest and that varies according to denomination and theology. Shame on us! What a legacy of hypocrisy and confusion, and in the wake of that, a trail of eviscerated corpses that have just a breath of life left in them.
Jesus upturned the tables in the temple because the moneychangers and merchants had turned the house of God into a business. Doesn’t sound too far off.......does it? I believe that He will again clean house and be aware that only He can, He took on that job once and He will certainly take it on again.
I once asked myself if I wanted to be a part of the multitudes. How great would it have been to sit through the sermon on the mount, the beatitudes, and the Lord’s prayer? To be a part of the five thousand fed by Jesus, to see the blind regain their sight, and the sick pick up their beds and go home....whole again. Then I remembered that the multitudes threw down palms at Jesus’ feet when He rode into Jerusalem and the next day they demanded He be crucified. I realized then that I didn’t want to be a part of the multitudes. I was not even happy with the behavior of the Disciples, how they scattered and were afraid and denied Jesus. Right then I wished I was a dog. A dog that would follow it’s Master regardless of public opinion, regardless of the status quo. I even imagined this dog with it’s tongue hanging out in the hottest part of the day, waiting and watching to see what He would do next, where He would go and I realized that I wanted to be like that.
Not blindly following, not stupid, but ever watchful, ever faithful, ever true to the Master I know. The Master who always has my best interest in mind even when I don’t know what that might be. Trusting, loyal and honest. Aren’t these the things we admire in animals and yet when a human being demonstrates these qualities we judge him to be weak.
It was the multitudes who were weak. It was they who refused to listen to what Jesus said when it got radical. “Too hard”, they thought. And with little thought to the consequences they had him crucified, which by the way turned out just fine. It was designed to turn out fine. The crucifixion wasn’t the problem, the change in consensus was. How entirely fickle.
I believe that if you know that you know the truth, then and only then can you be confident in it, and that confidence is not built on experiences or feelings, but rather on following and pursuing God “doggedly”. Knowing Him.
This is what I was getting at when I said that Christianity was not a “spiritual” affair. Yes, things move on a spiritual plane, yes we become grafted members of the Children of Israel, yes, yes, yes to a lot of things, but we don’t feel these things, we know these things. And we trust that God will continue to be and do that which He said He would do.
And the people said........Amen.
