These past few weeks have been almost a nightmarish rollercoaster of ups and downs. The high moments have included playing with the band out at a couple of venues, hiking in Bankhead National Forest, spending day-to-day moments with my kids, sharing margaritas with friends at Guadalajara, and enjoying a simple breeze blowing off the river at Rhodes Ferry Park during a cool evening.
I wish life was all high moments. Unfortunately, there have been low moments these past few weeks, and they've been
really low. Knocked in the teeth, down on the ground, too knocked silly to stand up kinda low... Nauseating moments... The kinds of moments where you wonder if anything will ever be good again...
Yet here I am. Alive and well. Still breathing. Slowly opening my eyes and moving my hands away from my face wondering how I survived the impact...
But my mind is still not completely clear. It will be weeks...months...maybe years before the ramifications of these past few weeks aren't ever-present in my mind.
I can't go into details because I want to protect the privacy of some people involved in these low points. I can only say it's been very difficult. All I can say is that things have happened that have made me take a close look at everything I believe about God, my career, my sins, my church, and the shortcomings of my own personality makeup.
And here's what's emerging...
I believe God is beyond comprehension. I believe our greatest, most in-depth insights into his nature barely skim the surface of the depth of who He really is. Even the Bible - as much as it reveals and how important those revelations are - is not an exhaustive text on all He is. Any God who can breathe the entire universe into existence by simply "speaking" it to happen is more than my teeny, tiny mind can grasp. He's infinitely creative. He cannot be put in a box. Though we can describe what aspects of him we do understand, our words...our thoughts...our 'conceptions...can never really wrap total meaning around Him.
I believe God is loving. Infinitely loving of people. All people. A love of such depth we cannot comprehend it. A love proven by the cross. A love utterly amazing because we are absolute scum, yet he loves us anyway...
The depth of our fall from grace is amazing. Terrifying. How we can turn from a God this magnificent is beyond comprehension, but is the grim reality of our existence. At nearly every turn, it's easier to reject God than embrace Him. Even well-intentioned Christians fall into this trap. We box him in. We redefine Him to service us...to accommodate our standards of living or our own belief systems simply to make life less confusing and void of mystery or simply to bask in our own glory and sin rather than fall on our knees before him in solemn recognition of our innate worthlessness when compared to Him. We exchange the truth of God for a lie. Boxed in by one system or another. Our mock God either serves the traditionalistic, religious, institutionalized Christian culture, or -worse - serves the over-the-top rejection of all things church and Scriptural for the pursuit of our own pseudo-faiths. Both are impossible re-creations of God, and I think a God who loves people at all costs and utterly hates the sin that destroys us hates it when we are so presumptuous as to dare redefine Him for our own purposes (even if we are utterly blind and deaf and dumb in doing so). To redefine Him is to reject Him, because somehow who he
really is isn't good enough for us...
If one wants to know God, then we ought to let God do the speaking (through his Word...through His creation) and be very careful not to superimpose our own agendas onto him.
That said, I love the church. In all its institutionalized, caricaturized imperfection. I love it because Christ loves it. He died for it. He created it. Today, it may be a fallen shadow of what it's supposed to be, but it's still the church. Much like the very people in the church, the church is an embodiment of our imperfections...yet it is still the vessel through whom God works. It's still the body of Christ: His hands, his feet....his means of continuing his ministry in the world.
So
being church ought to be about overcoming those imperfections. Neither blind following of the "system" nor cult-like rejection of it. It's knowing how to shed the baggage of traditions and religiosity...but it's also knowing how to shed the baggage of sin and utterly stupid stuff that is nothing short of spitting on the cross if we allow them to fester.
...
I have no idea why this is so difficult. I have no idea why our struggle becomes so consuming that simple reliance on God and involvement in his body becomes a source of conflict and division rather than one of harmony and mission. I have no idea why we excuse and even flaunt sin that was worthy of cruciform atonement (there's a big phrase for you)...
Likewise, I have no idea why I'm being so forthright about this stuff. Maybe it's because I think sometimes when we talk about things like mission and vision and even our own spiritaul formation and desires, we get so consumed by the "us" in the equation that God - who He really is - takes a backseat to our own agendas, whether we intend that or not. Then our actions - our responses, our life directions - become skewed because we have skewed concept of God. When that happens, community becomes more important than conviction, tradition becomes more important than creativity, chaos becomes more valued than order, self-tolerance replaces repentance, and suddenly we're standing on a foundation built on the sandy ground of our own agendas. Ironically, we go "off-mission," and we don't even know it...because we're either caught in the extreme of legalism/traditionalism or the other extreme of anti-establishmentism/nihilism and cannot see the truth because we're looking through the goggles of self-interest.
Living here in Decatur, I've witnessed both extremes over the years. And the solution is not finding a balance between the extremes, but focusing solely on God and going from there. If we did that, I think everything else would fall into place.
Anyway, it's late...and I'll reaffirm that these are emerging thoughts, which is why they may dance all over the place or feel 'incomplete' at points. Maybe John Piper says it better:
"God is pursuing with omnipotent passion a worldwide purpose of gathering joyful
worshippers for Himself from every tribe and tongue and people and nation. He
has an inexhaustible enthusiasm for the supremacy of His name among the nations.
Therefore, let us bring our affections into line with His, and, for the sake of
His name, let us renounce the quest for worldly comforts and join His global
purpose."
With no alignment with Him, life is doomed to "low points." I cannot speak for everyone else, nor do I presume to nor do I intend to sound accusing to anyone in light of recent events. All I can say is I feel it's more important than ever for me to make sure that I'm "bringing my affections into line with His." I realize that's no easy task, but the alternative - to pursue my own affections - is increasingly becoming an option too terrifying to entertain.
