5 Jan 2022
(Draft: 2022-01-11, 2022-01-30, 2022-02-03, 2022-02-19)
(Typing: 2022-03-07, 2022-04-30)
(Draft: 2022-06-05)
The work of Christ is wonderful. It is with good reason that the angels burst forth at Christmas, and yet I found myself oppressed by the “gospel”. Here I hope to share where I was and where I am now to the praise of our one glorious and Loving God and to perhaps help others who have similar struggles.
I have structured this essay in two parts. In this first part I am going to describe the distortions views I had and how they are oppressive. Then I will provided a summary thesis statement of the changes in my view. I will follow this with the second part of this essay which explains why each distortion is a distortion, explains an alternative and why it is wonderful. Finally I end with a musing on what this means for daily life as a Christian.
Now my preferred way of writing is merely to extol wonders and drown errors in truth. Here, however, I will spend much time criticising. This is dark and heavy, yet I believe that starting the path here is helpful for some who are stuck there. It is the path I had to take to be able to escape the distortions. I had to identify them as distortions. But the goal of this essay is not criticism for the sake of it, but rather to share the wonders, the beauties, the joy that is found in knowing God. So, please do not stop in the criticism. If it gets too much, skip forward to the thesis statement and read from there.
There is sharp criticism here and I think it necessary. But let me start by saying that, although I am about to be harsh on the evangelical establishment (church with a small c), I owe a great debt to them. It is they who taught me to read Scripture and love Jesus. Moreover, there was no-one malicious in the churches of which I was a part. By and large, everyone was deeply loving and doing the best that they knew with the wisdom given them. I am deeply grateful.
So let me begin: one of the chief questions that presses Christians, is how to live. “Given all this teaching, how do I live? How do I deal with school or work, family and friends? How do I follow Christ? What does He want from me? What is important? Why are we here? What is the Church supposed to do?” The practical question.
There are many aspects and variations of this practical question, and there are many and varied answers to it. Some answers are taught explicitly in places like sermons and discussions. Many answers are taught implicitly through things like priorities, actions, budgets and expectations.
As I was navigating this question I found a myriad of answers, often conflicting with ordinary life, sometimes conflicting with each other, and sometimes conflicting with who God has revealed Himself to be. Thus I, a relatively careful listener, was left with conflicting instructions. I found that whilst all the teaching I was given was well-meaning and given in love, it somehow came together and became oppressive, sapping life and adding confusion, oppression and anxiety instead of giving freedom, peace and joy.
It has taken me considerable time and crises to unearth and unravel the explicit and implicit teaching, and more time and much love to find better teachings. Let me share these with you.
A good place to start is by articulating the expectations I found working on me. These can be phrased as what a good Christian should be: the good Christian should be holy and righteous, the good Christian should serve others, the good Christian should sacrifice themselves, the good Christian should continuously repent, the good Christian should know the truth, and the good Christian should do all things for the glory of God.
Now all these things are good in principle, but became bad in practice for me. Indeed, all these things are either direct injunctions or can be motivated from Hoy Scripture. I will go through them and show my distorted or deficient understanding of each.
First, holiness and righteousness. This is one of the direct injunctions, 1 and perhaps the more bewildering as a result. Under this injunction, I felt simply that I should not be sinning. And not merely not doing wrong things, but sinning in the sermon on the mount sense; not thinking or feeling in the wrong way. Thus righteousness was a call to profound “correctness”.
In addition to this requirement to not sin was the expectation that the good Christian progressively sins less as they mature. A lack of change is translated into a lack of repentance, and so a lack of faith2. A lack of faith is only a short step away from a lack of salvation.
It is easy to see how this would become oppressive. My maturity, success and worth are measured in “righteousness”, and so my sin is considered a failure. Moreover, this was not judged on actual actions, although I sinned there too, but on thoughts and motives. The thought police of Orwell’s 1984 could not have done a better job than I and my theology were doing on me.
So, somehow, I ended up with the paradox: it is all about grace, therefore work really hard at not sinning!
Next is service. Again, this is a direct and profound injunction modelled by Jesus3. Here I found two problems at work. First was the trap of measuring my worth by how much I served and, second, was a narrow definition of service.
Service is considered a good thing and is emphasised and encouraged. I am inherently particularly susceptible to all forms of the trap of proving myself, and so this emphasis on service made it easy for me to think: “Oh if I serve I am doing well and am valuable.” The encouragement to serve fed into this.
There are always at least two problems with needing to prove oneself. First is that it removes love, everything becomes transactional, exchanged of worth. The second difficulty is how quickly this becomes oppressive: I must do this thing to be valuable.
With service there is the additional problem that it is often defined in very narrow terms. This is often accidental or implicit. Nevertheless service often became only “doing things at church” or “teaching people about Jesus”. Sometimes there was lip service given to trying to broaden service, but the overall weight of expectation was that service meant doing things for “church“.
This narrow version of service was exacerbated and reinforced with a hierarchy of the relative importance of services: it is greater to be a teacher than to serve by stacking chairs, but both are greater than merely showing up.
This hierarchy of forms of service naturally works with the self worth trap. It enabled and encouraged me to measure my worth by how much I am doing the “important” acts of service, and to aim for doing the more important ones. Thus the good Christian aims to become a minister or missionary.
This emphasis on serving and the hierarchical and narrow definitions of service conspire to invalidate the worth of most of human activity. What is the value in my work as an engineer? It is not valuable in itself, but is an excuse for to me be around people I can “serve”, by inviting them to church and “serving” them tea. Art, engineering, family, friends, fun or the world at large have no value outside of whether they help the church run smoothly or teach people facts about Jesus.
Furthermore this emphasis on serving and its hierarchical definition teach me that all God cares about is that this organisation runs well, and that people are a part of it. But this does not match up with reality I see around me or read about in God’s own word. Why is the world so beautiful and life so rich and diverse if all God wants is for us to sit in pews? Why are each of us unique with interesting jobs, or why do families exist, if the really valuable stuff in life can only happen on a Sunday or at other meetings?
Third up is sacrifice. What should we sacrifice? I’m not sure that I have stopped to consider this, until this very moment. I suppose the answer is our very selves, although typically sacrifice comes up in the context of time, possessions and desires. It is implied that sacrificing my wants and desires and time and money for the sake of others is a virtue. Furthermore, it was taught that sacrifice is only significant or authentic when we feel its sting.
This understanding of sacrifice as virtue works in a similar way to the self worth trap of service in that to be value I must continuously deny myself, my desires and wants. Couple this with the teaching of my utter sinfulness and it taught me to mistrust all my wants, so every pleasure is a guilty pleasure. Chocolate is a wasteful luxury that could, theoretically, be given to the poor.
However sacrifice was not modelled to me as radical generosity to the poor and needy, even though it was occasionally mentioned, because the Bible is inescapable on that topic. Rather it was modelled as fervent dedication to the church and acquiescence to authority. If I disagree of feel strongly I “sacrifice” myself and work with what is being done.
Here is a strong and dreary cage where all pleasure is denied or a source of shame. Moreover pain is the marker of “true” sacrifice, so embrace it as a sign of success, all the while suppressing my own impulses and desires out of self-distrust or noble cause. Any warning that this is abusive or damaging is inverted to reinforce the wretched bars. Life is sapped, joy crushed and peace replaced with guilt.
Apart from the self oppression and potential abuse, this has the insidious effect of making real trust in God difficult and abstract. I am told to believe that He has my best at heart, but all I experience is the denial of all that I consider good, or guilt when I do not deny these things. Thus any trust in God has to overcome the tension drawn my daily desires and God’s abstract goodness. This also makes salvation abstract and heaven unattractive.
Forth let us look at repentance. Again this is a direct injunction4. Moreover this is taught as one of the core practices of Christian life with the 1st of Luther’s 95 thesis: “When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, ’Repent’5, He willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.”. But what is meant by repent?
In principle this is taught as changing your life away from sin (turning around.) In practice it has often become an exercise in self reflection with the intention of identifying sins. This has been exacerbated by the idea that we know God’s love for us more deeply by more deeply realising our own depravity, sending us on an ever deeper search for our own flaws. Thus the thrust of the teaching of repentance is actually one of remembering my own failings, and somehow using that to be grateful for God’s love.
This use of remembering my depravity so as to know God’s love has the triple effect of making God’s love insubstantial and condescending, while disempowering me and yet expecting me to work harder at my own salvation.
God’s love becomes condescending because He loves me “despite” my sin. My primary identity is caught up in my failings, not my uniqueness or value. He does not love me became I am lovely in any way. Rather He loves me arbitrarily and against all reason. Moreover this focus on my sin to somehow know God’s love shifts my focus onto my failings, giving them substance, and away from anything good, making love an ethereal shape floating in the background.
This focus on my own sin teaches me that I am useless. Indeed my uselessness is a core teaching: I am useless that God had to save me. This disempowers me to act meaningfully in the world. I am supposed to sit and remember my sinfulness, uselessness and failings, and praise God for His actions. If I ever act I will fail. If I somehow succeed it is a miracle from God.
Paradoxically this emphasis on repentance also has the effect of compelling me to work harder at my salvation, despite my uselessness and God’s love for me. This works similar to the emphasis on holiness, I am suppose to repent, to turn away and stop sinning. So I must work hard at finding my failings and work hard at fixing them.
It is easy to see how this is oppressing. It is essentially a command to never forget my uselessness. This is coupled with the teaching that I must work hard, but remember that I cannot achieve anything. As surely as tying an anchor to the feet of a sailor will cause him to sink this teaching will drive any person to despair. But somehow this is supposed to help us remember God’s love for us.
Fifth is knowledge. The emphasis of the church I was in was on teaching. Teaching well and knowing theology clearly. It is true that knowledge serves relationship. It is also important that the true doctrines be preserved6. The motivation and uses for deep theology were glossed over, as matters of theology themselves, not matters of practice. For you, it may be things other than knowledge. Perhaps service to the poor for its own sake? Perhaps “evangelism” or “saving souls”? Either way, this became a goal to pursue.
This ideal of detailed theology is again a triple distaste. It diminishes the character of God and life, encourages pride and embeds fear. If knowledge is the most important thing it teaches me that what God wants from me, what is really important to Him and to life, is accurate representation. Not love.
The emphasis on detailed knowledge makes space for pride because we can have better or more detailed knowledge than others. Moreover this pride impedes growth by covering up our faults or deficiencies with he excuse: “at least we have good teaching.”
This ideal of detailed knowledge led my church to fear of error. If accurate knowledge is so important then error is terrible. Paradoxically our detailed knowledge of the good and loving God, lead us to be hesitant to engage with other Christians, because they may be wrong. Moreover this fear of error, in particular, penetrated my heart and caged me. It caused me to be hyper self-critical.
Sixth, and finally, the good Christian does all things for the glory of God. However, “for the glory of God” was seldom defined, and so could easily come to mean: to make him famous. This had the same effect, as was mentioned with service and sacrifice, of eroding the value of anything that was not obviously “for the glory of God.” In practical terms, this has, at times, meant that something is worthless unless it is actually praising God or causing people to praise God for His salvation.
Another, perhaps more sinister effect, is what it does to the character of God and salvation. He becomes completely vain! Everything is about His fame. Our salvation is merely Him boasting of His greatness, not an act of love. And Hell is a demonstration of His poser, not a great tragedy, or cause for patience. Thus salvation is an arbitrary set of rules and fulfilments devoid of any real meaning, they are excuses to show off.
“All things for the glory of God” is also becomes a club to require acquiescence. If I don’t care to live for the glory of God, I am told He demands it and what I think is irrelevant. If I do not understand the suffering in my life or the world, I must simply accept it, because it is, somehow, magically, for the glory of God. Thus all thought and tenderness is crushed under the terrible purpose of God’s glory. The end justifies the means, as it were.
Having considered these things, it would not surprise you that they mixed up into an abusive cocktail. These doctrines robbed me of joy, filled me with fear, and told me that all this was my own fault and that the pain was good. Where then are the grace, love, peace and joy that the Bible speaks so highly of and that salvation is supposed to result in?
The great crime here was that all this was done in the name of God. He is supposed to be good and loving. I think this is what God meant when He caused the third of the ten commends to be written: you shall not misuse the Name of the Lord your God. Surely He meant, you shall not use my Name to oppress and sap life.
Now I have painted a very bleak pictures, so let me say again that this was not done in malice, but by accident, by loving people. Further, the way I received it comes as much from my own background as being under their teaching for most of my life.
Nevertheless, this is where I was. If you found yourself doubting, or troubled, or confused, or “deconstructing”, and what I have said reflects how you understand the doctrines of Christianity, then I think you are having the right response. I think that if this is indeed what we are to believe, then we had better abandon it! Indeed, I think putting God’s name on that is blasphemy, we may as well not mince words on this.
I do not think that this is what Christianity is all about. But are not all those things Biblical? And I even pointed out the scriptures from which they came. And it is perplexing, and it is the very reason why I write. Yes, these things are in the Bible, but I think they have been given improper emphasis. Let me gently suggest that these things are wonderful when in their right places. But let me substantiate that with some explanation.
Here is my thesis:
It is not about holiness, it is about life.
It is not about service; it is about intimacy.
It is not about sacrifice, it is about rest.
It is not about repentance; it is about hope.
It is not about knowledge, it is about people.
a gift of God is to join in His Glorious work.
To discuss these things, let’s start with a question. What is the goal of the Christian life? Or, what did Jesus die for? When he was in the garden the night before, stressed and praying, what was the hope that the angel reminded Him of? What does He want from us and for us? What is the goal of salvation?
not holiness, life
Did not die so we can follow the law
Died so we may live
did not purchase slaves, but freed us.
What is life? Fruitful.
What fruit?
How do we live? not selfishness.
Holiness is a gift.
Not selfishness
fullness?
The goal is not holiness; the goal is life. Jesus did not die merely so that people might again follow the law. No, he is the Good Shepherd who laid down His life so that the sheep may live, and live to the full7.
He did not purchase us so that we may be a new kind of slave; rather He brought us out of slavery to death so that we might be free8. So Christ dies for us so that we may live, and live to the full. The closest description I can think of, is a fruitful life. Think vine and branches9. So what fruit? Service? Sacrifice? Holiness? No! Love, joy and peace10. He calls us to be alive, to love deeply and to be joyful. The church of which I am a part, has a lovely liturgy describing this: “we remember that your promise of abundant life is not a promise that we will lead sheltered lives, free from all harm, but the promise that we will live intricate, rich and extraordinary lives, full of hope, grace and love”
How do we live this life of love and joy? Well, for starters, selfishness will impede this, so one of the means to this end is holiness. Not the only means, as we will see later, but one of them. Thus, the call to holiness is a part, a subset of the call to live fully. The goal is to live. Holiness is a gift to help us do so.
Not service, intimacy
He already has servants.
Into the Bride, the beloved.
What does intimacy do?
dotes (proud)
joins
Intimacy begets imitation.
Intimacy is expressed as common activity.
What is God doing?
What is the activity of God? Service.
So He would deny us intimacy if we could not serve.
Invites us to take part.
Service is an invite to intimacy.
We also share intimacy with each other in the same way.
Sharing intimacy with each other is a part of sharing intimacy with God.
Part of intimacy with each other is serving each other.
Again, what is the goal? Is the goal to serve? No! the goal is intimacy. Indeed he already has servants. As it is written,” He makes winds His messengers and flames of fire His servants.”11
His goal is greater than merely gathering more servants. Rather, He is making us into His bride, the object of his great love and affection12. He died, not to purchase servants, but to redeem His beloved. This is the pattern laid out in the garden, where He walked with us13. This, His great work has been to bring us back into intimacy.
Yet to some extent, intimacy begets imitation. Additionally, intimacy is expressed in common activity, and it is the very nature of God to serve. It is by Him that all things were made 14 and by Him all things are sustained 15. Moreover, it is he who serves us directly in salvation 16. Thus, would He not belie His own expressed desire for intimacy if He told us to stand back and be merely spectators of His work?
If He desired spectators surely that would speak of His pride, not of His humility and love. But He is not proud, but humble and loving. He desires intimacy with us, and so He invites us to take part in what He is doing.
What is it He is doing? Serving. Thus again we see that the goal is not service, but service is a gift17 in the pursuit and expression of intimacy.
Sacrifice?
Ultimate sacrifice so we can sacrifice?
Does He need us to provide for Him? Does He need us to prove our authenticity?
The goal is trust ad rest.
Sermon on the mount is a call to trust and rest.
Other calls to rest.
So where does sacrifice fit in?
God shows Himself worthy of our trust and rest.
God shows himself good.
Sacrifice of death as trust for life
Sacrifice of self out of rest for intimacy.
What shall we say about sacrifice? Is it His goal? Did He make the ultimate sacrifice to enable us to sacrifice? Surely not. So what is the goal?
The goal is trust and rest. Christ dies for us so that we might find rest in Him. He calls us to trust Him and rely on Him. Indeed, this is the thrust of the sermon on the mount in Matt 5-7. See, for example, the ca not to worry, saying , “what shall we eat? Or what shall we drink? But trust your heavenly Father, for He knows that you need these things18.
Elsewhere this trust is expressed directly as resting from labour. Trusting God to provide. This is called the Sabbath. It is out of oppressive slavery that God calls Israel into rest. This call is for us too, as “ there remains , then, a Sabbath rest for the people of God” 19. It is expressed similarly in Matthew with “come to me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest”20. The goal for which Jesus died, is to bring us to rest in Him.
Now, He has shown His promises faithful, His character good, His plans wise, His strength boundless, and His inclination to us is only love. This is what we rest in: His character, wisdom and power. He tells us that we can give good gifts to our children, though we are evil, how much more God, who is truly good 21 . Then, when we find rest and are able to give up anxiety, the things we see as important change. Because we are secure, we no longer fret about money. Because we are loved, we no longer fret about fame. Thus, rest enables us to give much of ourselves, and to sacrifice much of what was important. Moreover, because of His love and wisdom, our trust and rest enable us to give up what may see good to us because we trust that He has seen further and deeper when He calls it bad.
Sacrifice can be a gift of life when God asks us to trust Him for provision and give up something destructive. As a small, although difficult, example, He may ask someone to trust Him for strength to face pain instead of trusting in alcohol.
Thus the goal is not for us to sacrifice for the sake of sacrifice, either to prove our authenticity or to provide for His need. (how foolish), Rather, the goal is for us to find rest in Him.
Repentance?
Call to live deeply. Now is hope, later is fullness.
Promises?
Made fully alive. Restored.
End of suffering and evil.
Promises and beauty shows up the ugliness of ourselves and the world.
What shall we do about this?
For ourselves there is repentance, a gift to live more in the promises.
For the world there is lament and action (intimacy)
Now let us turn our attention to repentance. Is the goal of our salvation that we repent? Certainly there is a call to repent, but why? Is repentance itself valuable? No! Surely He did not die for us so that we may be continuously turning in circles!
Rather He calls us to live deeply. Now this is hope, later this will be swallowed up in the call to live and be intimate and trust. He calls us to remember forwards, to look forward to and rely on His promises.
What are those promises? They are that we will be made fully alive free from the taint of death (sin) in ourselves. His promise is, as we discussed earlier, life, intimacy and rest.
Furthermore His promise is an end to all sufferings, coming justice and a renewed creation. A creation where we work in harmony with Him and each other to bring out great flourishing and beauty.
But as we rely on these promises and look forward to them we become keenly aware of ourselves and the world around us. I do not love as want to, I am more drawn to selfishness and self destruction that I care to admit and the world around me is full of abuse, oppression and pain. If I’m honest I take part in these things, or at least don’t oppose them as I would like.
In this God gives us two gifts founded on hope. Regarding this world around us: lament. He cried real tears and suffered greatly. So we can share His tears and anguish over this world. Yet our lament does not turn to despair for we have sure promises. We know it will indeed be alright and that He has acted to save. So we can fully share His lament knowing that it is real but finite (even if huge).
The second gift, founded on hope, is repentance. When we see our shortcomings and lament He invites us to bring the things we see to Him, to call them what they are: bad, and to turn away from them, with the promises of forgiveness, rescue and change. Thus we do not have to find a way to be content with our failings, and yet we may live now with peace and acceptance. He lets us acknowledge them even while holding us securely and promising our heart’s desire: better things and a better us.
Thus repentance, out of hope and in trust, becomes liberating. Our disappointments, regrets and perceived (or real) failings can be acknowledged and defeated without any loss of safety or love.
Moreover, if repentance or lament start in hope, and are walked though in trust they are inclined to yield in us greater intimacy, trust, joy and a surer, keener, hope.
So repentance as a goal is crushing. Rather the goal is to remember and trust forward, to hope. From here both repentance and lament are liberating boons helping us face ourselves and this world and leading to compassion and joy.
Not systems, but people.
Did Christ come that we may have perfect theology? Or a perfect church structure?
No Christ came for us! Nothing less.
He cares for you, me, us.
He cares for individuals and communities.
Care: I am unique, valuable and desired.
Care: structures.
knowledge of Him: love, trust
Hierarchy: support, efficiency, clarity.
Are structures necessary? No!
But structures can enrich our lives.
Now about systems. The constant system I was subjected to was theology. You must have a full and detailed knowledge of theology. A second was hierarchy. You must do the things the right was as prescribed by some organisation. Other themes include evangelism (you must “save souls”) and spiritual experience (you must speak in tongues and hear the “Spirit’s promptings.)
But surely it is immediately evident that none of these things can be the goal of our salvation? Surely Christ did not endure the shame and suffering of the cross so that we might know some detailed structure of an ancient text!
Rather the goal is people. Christ dies to save sinners. He died to save me, personally, and us corporately. He cares a great deal, indeed fully, for each of us, and us together.
Christ does not care how the church is structured, or about our theology. He cares about us, and calls us to find rest in Him. He cares for you. He came for you. His thoughts towards you are more numerous than the sand on the sea shore and more precious (i.e good) than gold and honey22. This also applies to us as communities.
One outflow of this individual care is it helps and validates our individual and personal uniqueness. God planned for me to be unique in such and such a way, He planned for my family and our community to be unique in this or that way. So much so that if we loose our uniqueness and emulate someone else too fully there is loss: there is less of God’s intended diversity showing up who He is, His “image” is cheapened.
How glorious this is! How much comfort we may derive from this and how liberating to embrace being ourselves and delight in each other and God’s creation!
Once we have found that He cares about us we can again return to structures and systems and find them sweet. For systems serve people. Lets start with an example: leaders help get things done and keep them done well. A good hierarchy helps people know who is responsible for what so that we can operate well together. A hierarchy can enable us to be more as a community (and individuals) than if we pretended not to have leaders.
Or as another example consider theology. Once we are loved by God and are beginning to love back, theology can help enrich this love. Theology serves us be expanding our knowledge of God’s love for us, teaching us His character (quick to mercy, and slow to anger,) gives us abundant case studies of His faithfulness and allows us to better see His vision of the future: Him loving us and us loving each other and His world perfectly so that there is no need and great abundance. Theology also shows us how God is working now, and theology provides structure for important moments in life: marriage, birth, death, coming to Jesus, suffering and joy.
Are these structures and systems necessary for a deep intimacy with God and a full life? No! But they can help. So systems, especially theology, are gifts given to serve us.
But the goal is not the systems or to abide by the systems, the goal is people. Individuals and communities. God loves people. He provides systems to help us.
Glory of God.
Vague: arbitrary, egotistical.
Concrete
Glory in Jesus
Look back at the goals: good things. (Cite: Isaiah blessings not curses)
Character of Christ:
Excellent (cite Wisdom and stature)
Gave it all to bring us back. Restoring. Greater things.
bring us back: Beloved
power and excellence serving and supporting to love and bring life.
Small lament: All achievement is a shadow.
considering this grand plan/mission:
God invites us to take part.
Not only as people saved so showing His mercy
Participants, like Jesus, expanding Glory.
An intimate call, founded in rest and hope.
Now this brings us at last to the Glory of God. It has been said that all things are for the glory of God. How when we leave glory vague and undefined this indeed seems arbitrary or even egotistical on the part of God.
But “He was pleased to have His glory shine thought Jesus” 23. So to see the glory of God we need look no father than Jesus. We have been discussing what He wants from us, and it is wonderful. Good promises of life and love. But who is He? What is the character of Christ? He is the one who came and was excellent, yet gave it all up to bring us back into the grand vision of God: working closely with Him to bring forth winder and plenty in all creation, starting with restoring what was broken. First by restoring us, then by letting us work with Him at restoring all things, and then on to greater heights that no eye has seen no ear has heard and no mind has yet conceived!24
So we see that the substance of the character of Jesus, the glory of God, is power and excellence serving and supporting us to bring life. God is fundamentally humble, He faithfully supports us. He is wise and has a beautiful vision. It is into this character and this vision that God invites us to take part.
Oh how poor a job I have done at extolling the muchness, the substance, the beauty of the glory of God. But the little I know, I know to be the best and grandest of all causes. For within the glory of God are all achievements and grandeur, (like getting to the moon or building a giant telescope), all achievements of justice (the obliteration of poverty and oppression and the cultivation of a flourishing society) and all the achievements of art (the great music and theatre and wonderful imitation of flowers, mountains and sea.) The glory of God encompasses all these grand achievements through the simple means of a beautiful character in each person working together in love and joy. Thus the grand is achieved thought the simple solid day to day.
It is to this cause and this way that God invites us to take part when He says: glorify Me. For when I begin to understand some of the substance of this glory it becomes for me a privilege to be allowed to take part in something so grand, like being invited to pilot the rocket to the moon or play in the orchestra for the queen’s coronation.
So it is no so much that we must live for the glory of God, but rather it is the grand invitation that we may live for the glory of God. What a high call! And yet how gentle!
How shall we live?
Responding in intimacy
Resting in him
looking forward and seeing the present
act icing in the ways given to us
rejoicing out of love, and rest and into hope.
How shall we live for the glory of God? By daily deciding to live fully by responding in intimacy to Him, resting in Him through hope as ourselves and in community. We do each day as He has given us to do it, in the ordinary ways radically founded on Him and we rejoice!
This is the Christian life, the grand infused ordinary. Not bazaar practices or complex rituals, but ordinary life infused with love, peace and hope, welling up in joy and community.
This is what I have found reflecting on Jesus. Once I escaped the paradoxes and oddities I found, like so many before me, that it is indeed wonderful to be a Christian. I have been praying that you may find that too. Perhaps thought this writing a little, but also in your own ways with your own treasures to find. I look forward to shearing these with you one day.
1 Peter 1:15-16↩︎
Hebrew 6:4↩︎
John 13:14↩︎
Mark 1:15, Acts 3:19, 17:30↩︎
Matthew 4:17↩︎
2 Timothy 2:2↩︎
John 10:10↩︎
Galatians 5:1↩︎
John 15:5↩︎
Galatians 5:22-23↩︎
Psalm 104:4, Hebrews 1:7↩︎
Ephesians 5:25-27, Isaiah 62:5, Revelation 21:2-4↩︎
Genesis 3:8↩︎
Hebrews 1:2, Colossians 1:16↩︎
Hebrews 1:3, John 5:17↩︎
John 13:2-8, Mark 14:22-25↩︎
Ephesians 2:10↩︎
Matthew 6:31↩︎
Hebrews 4:9↩︎
Matthew 11:28-30↩︎
Matthew 7:9-12↩︎
Psalm 139 esp 139:17-18, Psalm 19 esp 19:10↩︎
Colossians 1:19-20, Hebrews 1:2↩︎
1 Corinthians 2:9↩︎