Can I just get this off my chest?

 

I dunno, going to the monastery this break really really fucked with me, head and body, mind and spirit. I feel like i’ve had a few too many screwdrivers and none of it was worth the drinking.

 

But I also feel like I got drunk on something substantial, and am inebriated with longing to return to the simple and unburdened life of the monastic way. Forsaking all things, and living a life in service to God and the world through prayer.

 

It was a challenging experience and I’m not sure I was able to really appreciate it fully because of the emotional baggage I carried with me there that i needed to sort through before i could find any semblance of rest. I haven’t slept well since that first night there. I did all my crying on the way over there, and was just exhausted by the end of the first night.

 

I feel like a shell of a person some nights, and i feel as if since i returned i’ve been living half aware and half exhausted, and fully guilty.

 

I don’t feel like I’m at all present in or even really observing my life. I feel as if all my energy is going towards incessant worrying and all i can do is sit back and wait until my whole world comes crashing down around me. I am honestly afraid, i’m afraid of what I’ll do with myself. Afraid of what she means to me. Afraid of what I mean to myself. Afraid that I’m falling too comfortably into orthodoxy and receding into mother church for the comforts of her ability to supply those answers which I need without being brave enough to seek them on my own. Afraid that I’m not devoted enough to Mary, and simultanesouly afraid I’m too devoted.

 

I’m afraid i’m too flirtatious, but not manly enough. I’m afraid that i am a shell of what it means to be a man even though i love it when she touches my beard.

 

I am restless and in awe at my own ability to choose failure and defeat when sometimes i’ve so clearly reached after success and managed to grasp it. I feel i have fallen in some inexplicable way and become disoriented in the midst of my sudden lucidity about myself and the world.

 

I’m not at all sure what to do with myself, and my once glorious intents have fallen to the wayside as I consider what i mean, and what my existence means.

 

I’m afraid to reach out and just be, i’m afraid to move on, afraid to hold on. I don’t know what the hell to do and i’m everywhere surrounded by fears, and undergoing the sufferings of love, those tender sufferings that wound most truly.

 

My eyes are swollen with restlessness, and my mind is awake in ever increasing streams of inaccessible consciousness.

 

What am I?

 

Who am I?

 

I am not sure how i would even begin to address these questions, or make satisfactory expiation for the blood they require in seeking an answer.

 

I am not as adventurous as I once thought myself to be, and feel as if I carry this unpronounceable weight of duty and devotion.

 

And I feel the part of the unloved child in the midst of all this. This is not a plea for attention, just the reality of me. I feel as if whether i am present or absent makes no difference to most. I feel like I am unlovely and awkward, the boy who wants to be beautiful, the man who longs to be told he is special to someone, somewhere.

 

My relationship with my mom has fallen into a deadening ritual of hellos and goodbyes that are interspersed with short polite withdrawn conversations. She can feel the change in me, i feel it in myself, and I am not aware of if there is a way to make peace. I am questioning my draw towards orthodoxy and wondering if it is out of childish fear, or out of an acknowledgement of truth in fullness that is drawing me.

 

I feel my own death impending, looming, but simultaneously endlessly distant.

 

I hate being the accomplished student. I feel as if I’m nothing else. I wish that Eli was more than just a paper writer, more than a name on the lips of the inquisitive or the disgusted. I wish Eli was the name on the lips of a lover, of a friend calling to check up on me, a name in the back of a mind, at the heart of a pleasant memory. I feel like everywhere i go i leave death and tragedy in my wake, and where it’s not there yet, it will be.

 

I feel overcommitted and under-appreciated, overtaxed and underpaid, mostly aloof even though I long so badly to be connected.

 

As I sit here I make a plea to have a simple life, i wish i could walk away from all of this, say fuck the world and go back to the monastery, back to the simple life.

 

I wish that was my calling. I’m tired of feeling like i’m part of something bigger than myself. I get this feeling like i’m being moved towards something tangible, solid, practical, all-encompassing and “destined” for me. But I hate that feeling sometimes.

 

It’s a wonderful excitement that helps me taste adventure, but I hate feeling this inevitable pull towards something I’d rather walk away from. I would rather just be empty, free of all commitments, devotions, positions, titles.

 

I hate this uncertainty.

 

I wish I was the whispered blessing on a lover’s lips, instead i’m the bane of a middle aged republican history teacher. 

 

I am not what I once was, i’m not an artist anymore. I’m barely a theologian. It all feels like pretend, and I don’t know where the fuck i lost myself, but I feel like i’m barely present here and now.

 

I am hurt and frustrated by unspeakable things that I wish I could take back, change, undo, avoid involvement in, and just never have been a part of. I wish that I could dump all the exteriors and retreat into a life of private faith, just the simple piety of a man trying to live a life as best he can for himself and maybe a family. Farm life in Ireland or something, just raw, and connected to the earth.
For more that I try to be a man, i feel like academics strip that from me. I want simplicity, but the academic circles force me into the realm of speculation on language and definitions, i just want to eat a steak with my hands.

 

Fuck me….

 

I don’t know what i want i’m uncertain on almost every level and feel wretched and terribly lost.

 

I feel like a little boy who doesn’t know how to begin to address coming out of his mother’s skirt and into the world at large.

 

I may be a pillar of boldness on the surface, but my shyness lurks underneath, and I feel the implications of my reservations, of the dignities that I hold onto.

 

I try to let them go, but I feel as if when i do they might be misinterpreted as romantic endeavors. I’m not trying to start anything with anyone. These dignities, these wants, these reservations and self restrictions, these ascetic choices that aren’t beneficial to anyone, these empty formalities that are further away from self actualized manhood than anything else. But I feel as if i look a certain way to the world.

 

I am not trying to fill some sort of empty gap with mockeries and jesting, I wish I had a connection. I wish i could bear my whole heart, and that someone would care enough to listen, to open up too.

 

I’ve hurt too many people along the way, ridiculed too many innocents, broken too many hearts, and confounded too many hopes and aspirations. I am the dark mirror which reflects back only the past, only broken hearts and weeping faces, bleeding eyes and broken places.

 

I am wandering the world in silence and I feel as if I need to scream. No night has ever been this dark, and for some reason though I feel this is one of the darkest nights of my life, I feel simultaneously that this is not the worst i’ve faced though it certainly feels like it in an indirect way. See, I don’t have a manifest panic,it’s more like a resignation to the darkness, that just treats the darkness as a trite formality.

 

i don’t know why that is, because I feel totally abandoned, and maybe this is me being able to meet God in the situation, maybe it’s just numbness, 

 

I can’t be sure.

 

So I wait, and wrestle with these questions in my mind, and let them sweep over me in over growing concentric circles of consciousness.

 

I guess that is all I really have to say, not a pretty poem, or a well crafted internal monologue, just a blurt, with a feeling of emptiness still not sated in the end.

A Voice Crying in the Wilderness: Oppression in America

New York City Today:

We are still oppressed in America. We are still captives to the State, to oppression and injustice.

Oh, well well, here we go again…more bullshit from the State. If you’ve been following this case like I have, you should be outraged.

A man, not just any man, but a black man gets shot 50 times, count that, 50 times. Not 5, 50. 50 times a man is shot, that’s not just injustice, it is sacrilege. That the state would acquit those responsible is a blatant disrespect for human life and justice. New York, you are guilty of perjury, fraudulence of Justice, and oppression. You are being held accountable for the life of a man who was about to be married, a future father, a son to a mother, to a father, a future husband, a close friend. You are being held responsible for the crimes you have committed. You have withheld Justice, and thrived on the fat of the rich, you have sided with the oppressors and forsaken Justice. You have ignored the pleas of the needy, and the desolate, you have made yourself an enemy to Truth, and to Righteousness.

This is not just about what sounds good. This is about respect for a human being. Is it racially motivated? I can’t say, but I do believe they were not charged with the mutilation of a body, nor were the officers held accountable for anything. Sean Bell was gunned down using 50 bullets from three officers, one White, one Black and one Hispanic.

Exodus 23:6 : <!– 6 –>You shall not pervert the justice due to your poor in their lawsuits.

Sean Bell was gunned down on his wedding day, it could have been any other day and it would be just as wrong, but this is intolerable. The acquitted officers may have made a mistake, but it is one that they should be held accountable for. Justice requires retribution, and these officers regardless of excuses need to be removed from the force at the very least, New York’s finest, I’m sorry but with these standards any memory of heroics is invalidated, any longing for honor among the force as a whole slips right out the window. These three men need to answer for their sins. Not only them but the Judges as well.

“We are all Sean Bell” the demonstrators shouted. “-http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23663924-38198,00.html?from=public_rss

Deuteronomy 16:19 You must not distort justice; you must not show partiality; and you must not accept bribes, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and subverts the cause of those who are in the right.

I think that we have seen a radical injustice, and that the state would arrest the Rev. Al Sharpton for standing for justice shows the oppressive nature of the state. Traffic should be blocked, civil and respectful protest is encouraged. This case cannot go by unnoticed. People of America, and the World, I encourage you to stand for Justice, love good, hate evil.

The Prophet Amos reminds us in the 5th chapter of his book:

¹⁴Seek good and not evil,
that you may live;
and so the Lord, the God of hosts, will be with you,
just as you have said.
¹⁵Hate evil and love good,
and establish justice in the gate;

…

²⁴But let justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

To a voice crying out in the wildernesss of an unjust State, Let Justice flow like rivers, to the judges in power, to the attorneys and the police force, let righteousness reign like an ever flowing stream. I am in support of all non-violent resistance, let America hear us.

As the Great St. Martin Luther King once said:

In a sense we have come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.” But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check — a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. [1]

Many thanks to: http://vegannramember.wordpress.com/2008/05/08/we-are-all-sean-bellnypd-go-to-hell

for the pictures.

All Bible Quotes taken from NRSV translation.

The Yahoo News Website Link:  http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080507/ap_on_re_us/police_shooting

[1] Steve Mount Presents: Martin Luther King Jr. “The I Have a Dream Speech” USConstitution.net. 14 Jan. 2008. http://www.usconstitution.net/dream.html 05 May 2008.

The Anointing and The Other: Reflections and Confessions on Solidarity

Lately, I’ve just been exhausted. Tired beyond belief, the semester is almost over, but i feel as if I’ve come out with more scars and bruises than ever before. It’s almost over, but at what cost? I know that God is faithful, and that we need to have faith in his goodness. But it’s a little bit of a catch 22 that the things you need to be faithful are the very things challenged by the problems you face day to day. The things you need to be strong are the very things made difficult by the problems you face.

Time and again, we are strapped to some irreconcilable grief or evil that afflicts us, and we are sometimes ignored, told to have faith, stop sinning, press through, or just keep on keeping on. These remarks are empty, and filled with vanity, the vanity of self righteousness. What about compassion, what abut binding up the broken hearted? I feel that too many times I have fallen short in realizing that the Spirit of the Lord comes upon me to bind up the broken hearted, to preach liberty to the captives, to preach good news to the poor, and declare the good and acceptable year of The LORD and the day of the vengeance of our God.

The Spirit of The LORD is upon us so that like Jesus we may care for others. When I go through hard times, how often have i sought God’s counsel through his Spirit to come upon me and draw me into serving others and binding up their hearts and in the process my own? I sometimes forget that the Spirit of God comes upon me to help me help myself through helping others.

I have often heard about how the anointing is for personal benefit, which by all means is true. How can anyone who has felt the blessedness of actual grace conveyed either through the Eucharist or in prayer deny the self development and personal benefit of actual grace? However, such grace is not meant to be used only for self, but through self, in relation to others. Grace should inspire me to be aware of theirs and to bind up broken hearts, to reach out to heal, to stand with others and comfort them by the grace that is within my life. The grace conveyed from myself to the other, that is where we connect with each other and relate to each other in Christ by the Spirit.

I confess that I have fallen short in proclaiming liberty to the captives in my own life. I have fallen short and allowed myself to become a captive as well. I have failed to be the voice of liberation and comfort to those who need solidarity and guidance, I have failed to love those near me in the ways they need it most, and failed at being the strong one. I have not lived up to expectations and have not strengthened myself in The LORD, nor have I looked to the presence of God for my guidance and support. I have not led people out of captivity, but have entered into captivity with them and at times found myself trapped in the very darkness that i was trying to bring the light of Christ to.

I have not preached good news to the poor, or at least not often enough. I often find myself isolated, contaminated by my own busy mind and packed schedules. My calendar is often overloaded with time to spare and at the same time packed to the brim with things to do. I have often found myself too preoccupied to live out the solidarity that I preach, too focused on my grades and my classes, or just myself to remember the poor. Sometimes, I myself am one of the poor, forgotten and untouched, isolated and alone, but this should not be impeding me from reaching out to others. The problem is that it is the very issues of life that tend to isolate me from others, I keep myself aloof in order to solve something on my own because there are days I have no one I can trust.

I need to remember the good news myself, keep it in my mind when I am poor, that there is a God in Heaven Who has done the unthinkable. While I was estranged and in pure enmity towards Him, a self declared enemy of God, He chose to adopt me into His family. The good news is that this family will reign over all the earth through the firstborn of many brethren, through the God Man who has been appointed to steer the world towards the recapitulation that God has ordained to be His will from the beginning. The good news is that Jesus Christ is already The LORD of this world, and that His kingdom is spreading through the work of his followers, those being conformed to his image and spreading the light of his image throughout the world by resembling him. The good news is that time is being redeemed by the work of God in time, and that all things are being reconciled to God by Christ and the Spirit.

The good and acceptable year of The LORD is now, it is when we choose to do right in the eyes of God. It is when we are the ones who bring the light of Christ into the darkness in the world. Martin Luther King once said that the good and acceptable year of the Lord is when [people] decide to do right. It is when we decide to bless others, to love our enemies, when we bind up the broken-hearted. These all foreshadow the final acceptable time wherein all things will be reconciled to the triune God in blessed assurance of continued purpose in being created by a loving Creator.

Our Father in Heaven has called us to be His agents, and by His Spirit to have compassion, by His Spirit, to give peace, by the same Holy Spirit to deal justly and establish righteousness. We are fallible and will never simply progress towards this goal in time without God. Creation necessarily depends on its Creator.

Any progress that is to be had will be in individuals dedicating themselves to causes and committed to those causes, forming deep bonds of unity with people and the world around them to accomplish those goals which the Kingdom of God has called us to. More important than anything else is to remember that the Holy Spirit, teaches us to bless others, and to help them, by bringing light into their darkness, but it’s not a quick fix process. I need to remind myself to look to God for strength for the long haul, this is not an easy bake oven or a microwavable situation. I need to inspire those around me, through real commitment to them, not shadows of real compassion.

This is the vengeance of our God, peace that burns chaos, love that dissolves alienation and marginalization, justice that overcomes failure and defeat injustice and scandal, righteousness that reestablishes order, and sets about the restoration of everything.

History After the Gospel

Perspectives on Suffering and the Gospel in Reality

The Spirit of God lives within us. How often do we hear that, among my Charismatic friends that entails, speaking in tongues and miracles, but do we really consider the idea? There is a wholly other triune person, living within our very being, having its essence in and alongside with our essence. Developing us in relation to Himself. The power of the Spirit is something you will hear about in just about any Charismatic church, about how God empowers us with a force we must release in order to make it effective. But that reduces and subjects the role of the Spirit to an impersonal power that indwells us, not a triune person that has the power and thus grants it to us from within. The Spirit of God is not just impersonal power that we must release, and I feel as if this is not treated fairly in circles I have been in.

We do not ask the Spirit to guide us from within except as the function of a voice, not as a whole person unto himself that is simultaneously without and within us. To be with God is to be in communion with God by the Spirit. We must interact with the person of the Spirit to be with God. The Eucharist points excellently to the indwelling nature of Christ within us. As we ingest the bread and the wine, the body and blood we experience grace, and such grace is experienced from within. Why is this? Because in the same manner the Spirit which is a person and not a force as bread and wine represent the actual Christ, conveys grace to us. The Eucharist is a symbol of our reception of Christ and the Spirit, by which we know the communion we need necessarily shapes and makes our being.

Thus our identity is again, a relation, between ourselves and the Spirit which while both remain separate from each other are joined to each other, as when in marriage the wife and husband to not become a single entity of being with both sex organs and a single consciousness but rather find the fullness of identity in relation to the other, so we too must find our being in relation to God. We do not become one with God because human marriage is the greatest analogy of that which should happen to us, we should be joined in intimate communion, aware of our being that participates in the being of another, but at the same time we are fully ourselves. The modern agenda of individual liberation form everything that is other in pursuit of authentic identity has only succeeded to remove itself from authentic identity. Identity, in every human relation is found in terms of the other.

What about mystics, and people trapped in desert places by themselves, are they less of people? Yes, and no. Yes they do not have the relationality that others in and amongst people. Thus they lack a vital element of humanness. But no, because there is still something other when we are all alone. There is the ever enduring and personal presence of the Spirit who is everywhere, and with everything, but there is also the world. The world is something other, and in terms of it also we come to know ourselves. We are always in the presence of something other, though whether we choose to engage it or not is our choice.

Relating to the other can bring us hope. In terms of the real spirit which lives with us it can bring us great comfort and hope to know the other. Finding ourselves comfortable in relations cam bring us great personal hope at the constant realization that we are not alone. But there are times when we are distraught and fraught with peril and despair at the sight of reality, but this is when we need to find hope and can find hope. Our hope is in Christ, and in his person, as the one who brings us hope.

We need hope, it is necessary to our existence. As Christians, we should hold to a personal revelation and expectation of the hope that we await to reveal itself. We need a personal expectation of the gospel that dwells among us. The gospel needs to have a personal and real presence in our lives and beings. Without such a life we are empty and have no hope at all. the gospel and its message need to dwell among us. a realization of the impending redemption of all things should live in our minds and have a real presence in our lives and actions.

The gospel is among us, its presence is known in our lives by the hope that we carry within ourselves. The gospel is not abstract ideals but is known as a personal and living reality. THe gospel must have its presence among us necessarily, because it like us is in the world but not of the world, influencing the world. We cannot forget the power of the good news of the kingdom of God that dwells among us as more than just the fact that we can now go to church and fit in with “the people of the pews.” Really, The power of the gospel is that it has personal power and relevance to every believer the world around.

In the midst of our suffering, we can look back on history and see that something has happened in history which has been done in our behalf. The New Testament writers witnessed something powerful and unique in the person of Jesus beyond just teachings or a god way of living. They saw something personally significant in his resurrection that allowed them to know that Jesus was with them in their lives.

The gospel is still among us today, in our hearts, as a reality beyond just intellectual or even intuitive assent. It is a reality, a powerful reality that carries presence, beyond just the words and ideas around which we shape our language about the gospel. The gospel’s purpose is to be among the people as a kerygmatic reality, to be among the people in proclamative presence. As we approach the valleys of our lives and find ourselves in them, we can acknowledge that we are not alone, that our hope is not in ourselves or in history, not in politics, not in emotional good feelings, not in self help, not in personal eternity after this life, but in the cosmic reconciliation of all things including but not limited to ourselves, our hope is in the true and living God. Our hope is found in the presence of the one who has declared from the beginning that we shall be saved. Our hope lies in the reality of a good and beneficial God who has personal redemption in mind for each of us.

Our hope is not idealism, we do not tell ourselves that the world is getting better and better without any alis, nor do we tell ourselves that it is so damned that it only serves to be destroyed. Our hope is that the God we see revealed in the person of Jesus Christ is among us, and living within and through us to indwell the world with His presence and Spirit. The gospel, is among us, it is in the air, in the words we speak, in our breath, in the grass and the trees, whispers of it can be heard in the mountains, and in the valleys, in the fire and in the water, in the trees. Creation knows something is coming, we know something is coming, yet is already among us beginning to change things within us, beginning to usher us into a new reality.

Our hope is not that Jesus would come back and take us out of the world,but that we would be kept in the world but kept from evil. We await not the destruction at the end of the age, but the redemption that is already breaking forth in each of our lives to appear suddenly and like a forest breaking through a city and transforming it, so to see the new heavens and new earth break forth out of this present reality and change, not only the world, but everything. The gospel is among us, it lives in our fingertips, in our emotions, in our suffering, in our triumphs.

The message of the gospel is not words alone but that which indwells the words and gives them life, that which lives among us in power and might, the very Spirit of the Living God. The spirit lives within us, we have a wholly transcendent Other, fully within ourselves as Christians. We have a completely different being not just upon us, but within us, working out the same resurrection that was worked out in Christ. This is the gospel in our midst: That the Spirit that omnipresently inhabits all things, even the very depths of Sheol as the psalmist says, is within us working through us and an actual presence for our lives. The gospel is a reality, the cross which is its center is our center.

As we face discouragement and labors, trials and temptations let us remember that something real and true happened to us because of Jesus Christ, and that because of this something true that has happened in history so too our history has a purpose. Divine history did not culminate in the incarnation, there is purpose to this life, even after the ascension of Jesus. History still has a purpose because we will be transformed at the last, and all those things which have been used in labor unto God will be tested. Everything we have set to use will be appropriated by the kingdom, and redelivered into our hands so that we can work out in the new heavens and earth the will of God as a present reality with those faculties, members and parts of ourselves that have been dedicated unto righteousness.

God’s will is to appropriate all that we can offer, and fill it with his presence as wine fills a chalice. The wine is not the chalice, nor does the wine become the chalice, rather creation is built to house God’s presence among his creatures and to be filled with his love, but still individual from and separate from.

Hope then takes this form, we know that the world we live in was created as “very good” and while fallen continues to have purpose, and that purpose is to be redeemed unto God through the gospel which has a real and active presence not merely as language or proclamation but as a reality unto itself made so by the Spirit.

History after the incarnation matters because God is going to use everything that has been put into his trust to extend his kingdom over all the earth. Our talents and “members” will be transformed and enhanced. Our talents will be renewed,a nd life itself will be completely different, yet altogether, not just a spiritual detachment but a grounding in this world, which needs the redempton that in Christ, we too can offer it.

Thus we can conclude that while we acknowledge and not blindly or arbitrarily the suffering that plagues the world, we look to God to be the solution to those problems, we must face the horrors of reality as we see them. There are those who today are raped, tortured, sold into slavery and killed, today in the world, parents kill children and children kill teachers, elders, each other as well. Violence takes place over inches and miles of land, children step on land mines, people lose limbs in combat, and female children are tossed aside into the garbage. These are realities that we do not ignore, push aside or turn away from.

You must hold yourself in front of them until it hurts, until your heart breaks with sorrow, until you cannot remember yourself anymore and all that exists is the suffering of humanity. You must feel every beating upon the skin of a scared and tormented housewife, every beating at the hands of a drunken father, every betrayal for the sake of material gain, every ounce of blood shed in the name of ideas. But once you have reached that place, it is not yours to remain there. To feel these things is to know the heart of God, but knowing alone is not ours. Once there, if we remain we will be overcome by distress and despair, and fall into a vulgar pessimism about life and God. When really our purpose is to realize these things are not culpable to God though we should wrestle with the reality of an omnipotent God allowing such suffering.

To know God is to wrestle with Him, and to ask the hard questions, not without reverence, but also not without really pressing to know why. We must be as Abraham and Moses, and ask the Father, why things are not getting better. We must be as Jesus and pray to the Father that the kingdom would come. We must live in awareness of the Spirit among us and in us and thus beg the hard questions of God. The problem of evil is no less complicated now than when it was first indicated by the first human thought that there was a real evil in the world. To truly know God is to beg the difficult questions and honestly expect an answer, not just passively submit mindlessly. To know God requires reverence, and honor that is due among friends, but does not require us to mindlessly accept things we do not understand.

To know God, is also to know grace, in the face of things we cannot comprehend, and then to accept in loving kindness that things are still being revealed to us in measures. To know God is to be gracious unto Him, as unto a lover. God is a reality, not a joke, not something we consent to, not an abstract person, but a person as real as your or I, as real as the lover in our marriage bed, as real as the children you have, as real as the friends you truly know from heart to heart.

God is not an empty idea, but a person, as we are people, this is known in Jesus Christ. God is Jesus, and therefore God has personhood. We cannot live with abstracts anymore, neither could the New Testament writers. They did not say Jesus represented God, they prayed to Him as God. God is personal, not impersonal, present in reality by the Spirit, and immanently concerned for us all.

We need to remember that grace is real. That the forgiveness of sins is not a divine joke, and that the reconciliation of all things is not going to turn out to be the greatest practical joke in all history. Rather, we need to remember that grace that is extended to us by the Lord, and remember that we are all called to inherit such a grace. We are all made to be filled with God’s presence and to hope in the eventual and impending reconciliation of all things. We are not hopeless idealists, but realistically concerned with God’s action in the world as a reconciler, eagerly urging on the redemption which has begun in us the people of God, and will break forth suddenly to redeem all things.

I hope this has made some sense somewhere, and that in reading these words something has come alive within you.

On the Church, The Individual, and Free Will in Fresh Perspective

On the Church, The Individual, and Free Will in Fresh Perspective

The Will of God: Organic Questions to Static Answers

What is the will of God for my life? Am I following God’s plan for me?

These questions are often the way we think about the will of God in our own lives. We stop to think of a static previously written book, even some Arminians may feel as tough the Lord has called them to a slightly pre-chosen destination for their own lives, that God has written the book or is in the process of writing and needs them to cooperate to the statically set will. We should be conformed to the image of Christ, and we should seek to honor God with our members, but this does not mean that we must have been set on a static one way track that requires of us absolute conformity.

The will of God is not a predetermined essence that requires of us absolute adherence to a book that has been prewritten, but rather, it can be thought of as organic and fluid. How often do we forget that among spiritual gifts are listed, helps and service as well as love. These things are not necessarily predetermined or prewritten essences of us, especially in context of our using such things for the benefit of the church. I think that what the New Testament apostles were doing was not to establish the spiritual gifts for all time in writing, even the ones charismatics tend to forget, such as giving, helps, service, teaching and several others. I think that what was going on is that the New Testament writers saw that people’s natural predispositions were being given over to the spirit for cultivation and this was producing incredible acts of charity, of teaching, of giving, evangelism, compassion and love.

The will of God was and is that the kingdom should come to the earth as it is in heaven, and this is met by us as we become the new humanity in our ability to embrace our dispositions to different things that we enjoy as we turn them over to God.

What I think was going on was the new testament writers observed people being empowered and energized by the spirit to do things that were amazing, but inexplicably natural, such as just giving, may be seen as a natural act of kindness, but they discerned a spiritual power in that giving. They saw in the people a spiritual empowerment unnatural to things as they previously were.

Ultimately the will of God is this, offer your member, faculties, intentions, disciplines, purposes, talents, abilities personality quirks and even tastes to God. By offer, I do not mean sacrifice, but rather, allow them to develop by the spirit into an expression that serves the living God.

There are times when things are necessary and we must necessarily surrender something good for a time so that we can live unto God. But these things are exceptions, not necessarily the rule. We cannot be deceived into thinking that it is more spiritual or more holy to stop doing those things which we love in order to serve God. The will of God is not a book, He is open and willing, and if he has truly given us free will then it is evident in that we can choose to offer up our members to him and they will be empowered by the spirit for the good of all people.

Our lives are commonly preached by our elders and more conservative generations as inconsistent, or incomplete, without stability, to and fro, double minded, sometimes inadequate. I do not believe this to be the case, not at all. I think that rather, we are seeing people become more aware of their loves and trying to empower those loves in service to God. God’s plan for our lives is the eventual conformity of us into the image of his son, but if humans were originally created in the image of God, then why the diversity of races, ideas, passions and intellects?

I find that I myself don’t often take this into account when thinking about the will of God. Rather than thinking of the conformity to the image of Christ as a cumulative loss of identity, we should think of the trinity, and realize that God is diverse in action but unified in purpose, revealed as the community of three in one.

Cannot the living God do the same in those whom He loves? Cannot then this God diversify our actions but unite us in the spirit. The New Testament gives us glimpses into early church life, and i think what we see is variegated and wholly differing churches and gifts, and services and evangelisms, and ideas, yet all are united by one faith, one hope, one baptism, one Lord, one body, one spirit.

Paul goes on to say that there is one God that unites everything, and is through everything, the everything in everything. This does not preach the gospel of modernism, the contentment with the herd mentality, it does not ask for conformity in our idea of the word, it does not ask us to be another brick in the wall, but another conduit for intuitive and organic work of the spirit to flourish individually, for each according to their members.

We are they who are one in many, many in one, and everything everywhere, we are in the air, we are in the sea, you can feel us in the wind, hear us in the trees, we are the one and the many, we are united in diversity and by our difference we expand through awakening others to their own potential, we are the manifold chorus of symphonic voices reverberating, resonating, everything, everywhere, different, unique, unrepeatable, ineffable, we are the sacred, the holy, the united, we are the arts themselves, creating arts and spreading light, igniting in all a passion for individual expressions of light for unity amidst the diversity of the many, you can feel us in a raindrop and hear us in the roar of the oceans.

Free will serves to allow us to diversify our gifts to God by choice, the more we acquire, the more it is that we can offer, and again not in giving them up, but by inviting them to be empowered by the spirit. So to offer a corrective to myself, the more we acquire and engage in, the more dwellings we can invite the spirit to fill, empower, and enlarge.

Destiny is simply this, that we would invite the spirit of Christ to inhabit our dwellings, our members, our faculties, our intentions passions, habits, creative expressions, careers and concepts. Their being flooded with light is what is truly predestined, for it is the will of God to fill and empower those diverse expressions which are found in ourselves.

This is not to say that everything is up to choice as “the spirit” (we don’t always know which spirit it is in some cases) leads.There are necessary events, necessary things that take place as well.

To use a rather limited metaphor, think of the will of god and us in it as the water in a stream or a river. There are stones we will come up against that will alter our paths, and necessarily shift our directions. There are times when God will ask us to surrender that which is good, so that which he desires may be done. There are times when we surrender the good, when God calls us to sacrifice, but there are times when we are free to explore, to develop and to cultivate.

This is the true investment of the talents, to explore and cultivate a variety of interests and use them for the kingdom. The one servant who was given one talent necessarily rejected the need to interact with the world, forgot to take into account a risk of being in the world, but being able to cultivate something out of it.

The parable of the talents to me asks us to cultivate something out of our experiences in the world and to bring back with us, more than we left with. What I mean in short, is that the parable teaches us to want to acquire more, but not at the risk of empty colonization, but rather, through interaction with risk and the possibility of failure, we see that we are empowered to take chances, to explore different avenues of bringing back more to ourselves and to our God than we left with.

Thus free will empowers us to choose our interactions and what we wish to bring back to ourselves, but as we bring things back to ourselves, we invite the spirit to help us choose, or to help us by inhabiting what we have already acquired.

This by no means is an end all, say all, but can be a good starting point for fresh discussions. I hope that this begins to open new doors for fresh insights, in my own life personally, as well as those who would read this.