neumatikos

Pardon me while I take this moment to preach. I’ve been working at this ministry, and I’ve been hearing a lot of talk about theology and there’s one thing I’m very tired of—I’ll call it “get to heaven” Christianity. It’s this bizarre unscriptural idea that when you get saved, or become a Christian, or however you want to put it, you get a ticket into heaven and you get to admit yourself into the fellowship of other believers, but essentially your life doesn’t really change.

I hear this phrasing all the time: “Now you’re going to heaven, and you’re saved, but just because you’re saved doesn’t mean you aren’t going to sin anymore. We’re still human, and we still fail, but God forgives us our sins. It’s not that Christians don’t sin anymore, but Christians are forgiven.” I think this displays a view of grace that is fundamentally flawed. Understand, I don’t think that when you convert you suddenly become superman, able to leap over temptation in a single bound. We are still human, and we do still sin. But God help me if after 10 years of Christianity, I’m still sinning in the same way that I was before I became a Christian.

Let me put it this way: The Olympics is going on this summer in Greece. Imagine for a moment that you turn the TV on and watch the gymnastic events. Imagine that there is some there who executes every event flawlessly. She gets a perfect 10 in every event. At the end of the competition, they hand her the gold medal, and what’s more, she’s broken every Olympic record they have. What do people say about this ? She’s very Graceful. I don’t think that’s supposed to mean that somebody else took her place when it came time to stand for the judges. It means that she has the miraculous ability to perform excellently.

The Greek word in the Bible that is translated “grace” does in fact mean a gift. The word is “charis,” from which we get the word “charity.” It is also the word used in 1 Corinthians to describe the “gifts” of the spirit: charismata. But nearly every gift mentioned in 1 Corinthians describes an ability that is not within the normal scope of human ability to perform.

What I’m trying to say is that would be impossible for salvation to be a gift merely of nomenclature. Yes, Abraham believed God, and God accounted it to him as righteousness, which is to say that God just sort of pasted the label “righteous” over him. But God also gave Abraham the ability to act like a righteous man. Yes, Abraham did still sin. And he did some doosies. But that thing where he rescued Lot and didn’t keep any of the treasure was pretty impressive.

Paul makes this classic statement in Philippians 3: “Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me.” And to hear some people talk, that means that none of us are ever going to make any major improvements. We’re just supposed to press on, I suppose, for the sake of pressing on. We’re just to demonstrate our faith by working on it, but without the hope of ever actually getting anywhere with it in this life. Paul goes on to say that anyone who is mature in Christ should think about it that way, that he should never claim to have attained it, but should always be pressing on. And then in verse 16, he says, “Only let us live up to what we have already attained.” Which communicates to me that it is possible to attain at least some level of righteousness in this life.

“The wages of sin is ,” but sin brings wages, not an annuity. You don’t get the of sin in one lump sum after you die. Instead you walk out that every day. Sin brings its own suffering. Most people know the wages of sin now, in their lives now. They carry their own hell with them. So what great threat is it to know that when they die, they’ll go to a place where life is pretty much the same as it is here, perhaps a few shades darker? And what great promise is it to know that, that if they believe on Jesus, they will go to a place whose goodness they can’t really imagine?

Let me make this clear: If righteousness were only attainable once you get to heaven, I wouldn’t want to go there. I would ask God to blot me out of his book. What good is a God who can only set you free from sin, who can only make you righteous, once He puts you in a place where sinning is not possible? What kind of weak and powerless God is that? For this Christ died for me? So that once He’s weeded out all the bad people and put all the good people in a perfect environment, then we can finally stop sinning? Let it not be so!

I don’t believe that it is so. I believe that the cross of Christ was far more powerful than we currently imagine. No, I don’t believe that we will ever attain perfection in this life. Quite honestly, I don’t know that we will ever fully attain the perfection of God even in heaven. We are finite; he is infinite. Revelation describes a scene where 24 elders are forever sitting around the throne of God, constantly saying “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God almighty.” I believe that every time those elders look up, they see a new aspect of who God is, and they fall back on their faces, crying “holy!” At that rate, it may take an infinity just to perceive the holiness of God, let alone to attain it. Nevertheless, to follow Christ is to become like Him, and I believe that He gives us the power to become like Him, even as he gives us the ability to perceive how holy He is.

And because it’s who I am, let me end with another geometry illustration. Xanga won’t let me draw much, so please forgive me while I try to describe it. In your mind, draw a line going up and a line going to the right, so that they meet in the bottom left corner. The vertical line represents some imaginary measurement of how much a person is like Jesus. The horizontal line represents your daily walk. On the right hand side, draw an arrow pointing straight up. God’s perfection is infinite, so “having attained it” is infinitely ↑ that-a-way. Hopefully you’ve seen a population curve. That’s the one that starts real close to horizontal, and gradually increases the slope so that, before long, the curve is almost pointing straight up. But the curve never actually attains to a vertical line. That’s how our walk with Christ is supposed to be. Every day is a little more vertical. No, you never quite attain to perfection. But, by God’s grace, every day is a marked improvement.

I’m getting yelled at roundly from all corners for not posting anything but once a month, so I’m going to try to be more frequent in my posting. See, the trouble is, I don’t really know what I’m doing. No, not about my writing. I can always blather something. I mean about my life. I have no clue what I’m doing.

Back that up. I have no clue who I am.

Back up again. I have no clue that I am

But I know one thing: I know that HE is, and that is enough.

I think it’s in one of John the apostle’s letters where it says, before anything else, we must first believe that HE IS. Our gut reaction in the modern world is to think that has to do with some stance against atheism. But John wasn’t talking about acknowledging that, yes, there is a God out there somewhere. He was making a reference to Jesus saying “before the world was, I AM.”

HE IS—in some sense far more fundamental than we can comprehend.

Now, I’ve never read that Descartes guy, to find out what all exactly he said, but the more I think about his famous statement—I think, therefore I am (Cogito, ergo sum)—the more I am amazed. Not at how profound that statement is, but at how profoundly stupid it is—Absolute, undeniable proof that Descartes had never encountered the living God, or even any intimation of Him.

Descartes assumed that the act of thinking about the fact that he was thinking proved that at least he was there to think about thinking. Even if his body and this worlds-realm were illusions and imaginary creations, there was at least somewhere, a mind that was thinking about these things without reference to any outside source. Descartes was right in that sense, I suppose, but where he missed it was when he thought that mind was his. We humans cannot think without some medium to think through, any more than a bell can ring in a vacuum, without the medium of air to convey the sound. Our thoughts require some mechanism, some reference through which to think. But Descartes didn’t realize this because he was too worried about whether or not he himself was thinking to wonder if Someone Else was thinking too.

It is in Him that we live, and move, and have our being. But, like Descartes, if we are too busy concerning ourselves with our own being, we will never look up to see what it is that sustains us.

That all sounds very intellectually stimulating, but it has a very real application, if I can find the human words to explain it. Yahweh IS. Yesu IS. And so far as I have a reference back to HIM, I am as well. I don’ t mean some kind of trite truism about how, if it isn’t about God, it really isn’t very important. I mean if there isn’t some kind of connection with the living God, it just doesn’t exist. We are but a vapor, or smoke, almost literally, and His is the light that defines us. Even a rebellion against God has solidity because it is a rebellion against God.

See, I missed it again.

Jean Calvin, in his Institutes of Christianity, starts at a very strange entry point. You’d think he’d start off with “The bible is true because….” or “God is real because…” But Calvin starts with a paradox. Calvin knows that there is no objective way to look at God. The only one who can be objective about anything is God, because he’s the only one with an absolute reference point. I, on the other hand, can’t perceive God, except in reference to myself. I can’t see God working through my goldfish because I am not my goldfish. The only way I could see God working through my goldfish is if my goldfish told me, and then, once again, my reference point for perceiving God would have to start (at least partially) with me. I can’t perceive the wonder of God’s work in the heavens, except to feel wonder when I stare at the heavens. But that wonder happens in me, so my reference point is still me. But the problem is, of my own volition, I don’t wonder. Since everything goes through my filter, I think my filter is reality. I end up like ole René Descartes: “The filter is real, I am the filter.” The only way to know that my filter is flawed is to perceive God. But I can only perceive God through my filter.

This is why it says in scripture that “it is God who works in you to will and to do for His good pleasure.” There is just no way for a human being to infer that something exists from its absence. You’ve heard it said about somebody who lives in a desolate environment “They just don’t know they’re poor.” That’s how it is all the time with us. We don’t know that God is waiting to rend the heavens and pour Himself upon us, because it’s never occurred to us that the heavens can be rent.

So God cheats. He reaches inside each of us, and creates an unfulfillable longing: that oft referred to “God-shaped hole.” It isn’t fair. We’d be quite content if that longing were not imposed upon us. And once that longing is in us, nothing is ever good enough, our whole lives long, until we see Him, finally, with unveiled face. He artificially inseminates us with a longing that is at odds, that s, the filter of our minds. And we are permanently, and increasingly miserable until this conflict is quelled. We must either destroy the filter, or suppress the longing.

What we don’t realize is that this complex system of perceiving God, not perceiving God, longing for that which you do not perceive, and hating and loving both the means through which you do not perceive Him, cannot exist, except in reference to the only absolute in existence. Please forgive me while I wax mathematical for a moment, but I’m going to dredge up your geometry and calculus memories. Imagine a graph. Or even draw a graph. In the middle of your graph, going up and down, is the y axis. It starts at zero in the middle and goes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 going up and -1, -2, -3, -4, -5 going down. Going left and right is the x axis, and it does the same thing. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 going to the right, and -1, -2, -3, -4, -5 to the left. Where these lines cross is “the origin”: zero on both axes. It’s the center of the graph because it’s the reference for every other point. Stick a dot in the top right corner of the graph. That, my friend, is a mathematical point. If you remember from school, a point has no measurements. It has no length, width, depth or height. The only thing it has is position. The only thing it gives it any value whatsoever, is its position in reference to the origin. That point, my friend, is you. If the origin did not exist, your point would cease to exist, because without the origin there would be no graph.

This simple relationship is what Augustine calls “the simple good.” God’s over there, I am in my place in relation to Him. Everything is good.

Now draw (or imagine) a diagonal line between your point and the origin. That is your filter. Some might say it is your sin. Now draw a random curve sticking out from the origin, going around the filter line, and running through your point heading back toward the origin, but being stopped by the filter. That’s your unfulfillable longing. Now draw a big huge black point between your point and the origin. We’ll call that Jesus. Now, on either side of your point, and just behind it, draw two little dots . The one on the left is your talking goldfish and the one on your right is the wonder of the heavens. If you connect your three dots, you should have a triangle, with one point facing straight to Jesus. That, combined with the line of unfulfillable longing should make an arrow. You know what to do. Various bizarre circumstances in your life, combined with this unfulfillable longing have pointed you straight to Jesus, whom you now understand to be the only way to get through the filter of your sin so you can once again be in right relation with God. So now you take the plunge and draw this little dotted line from your point, through Jesus, straight to the origin. Now, for extra emphasis, scratch out that stupid filter line with a great big, red, magic marker.

Now, I know that was kind of silly, but you must remember, none of that huge extravagant diagram can exist at all, except in relation to the origin of it all. And, I hope, in some geeky sort of way, it’s kind of beautiful. It’s what Augustine calls “the complex good,” and in a lot of ways, it’s actually superior to the simple good.

And after all of this, I’m brought back to my original point. The reason sometimes that it’s been difficult for me to say something, is that I want to be able to tell everybody just exactly where I am on that diagram. Sometimes, I can’t even tell if I am on that diagram. But there is one thing that I am aware of, and that’s that HE IS, and even if I can’t tell what shape exactly the complex good will take, I can always be confident of the simple good: that HE IS, and I am in relationship with Him.

In news of the mundane, I am still unemployed. This has been kind of difficult for me, just because this is the longest I have ever been without some kind of job. I expected to get something within a couple of days. That’s the way it’s always worked for me. Not to say I haven’t had a couple of leads. I had an interview just this last week. But nothing has actually solidified. As a result, I’m discovering things about myself I didn’t know before. Like the fact that, when I have a job to go to, I’m the most prompt and organized person on the block. But when I don’t have an externally imposed structure, I’m a lazy slob. I haven’t had an externally imposed structure for over a month now, and it’s really been showing. For instance, the fact that while I’m writing this, it’s 5:00 in the morning. Part of that is because I had some coffee late last night. But part of it is because I don’t have a regular bed time that I’ve been sticking to, since I didn’t have a regular schedule in the morning. I’m going to start working on it as soon as I can (that means, like, tomorrow, since um… it’s already tomorrow?)

The other really big news, I suppose, is that after careful prayer and consideration, I’m going to make another dig at seminary this fall or summer. I still need a job, no matter what. A kid’s gotta eat. But sitting around trying to live without attempting to fulfill some of the purposes God has for my life is just… wasteful. I decided that I had two options, to match the two things I want to do with my life. One of those is ministry oriented, and the other is business oriented. They both seem to require more schooling. I decided that, if I had to choose one path to go first, it’d had better be ministry. First, ministry is more important, but also, it seems like it would be more conducive to raising a family than working the probably 80+ hours to keep a new business alive. I’m still not sure I’ll end up doing pastoral work, per se. I haven’t found the church that I would feel comfortable pasturing. But then, I’m not prepared yet to be a pastor, so I wouldn’t, would I? But I see no barrier to teaching at a seminary, or working as a Christian counselor.

But by God’s grace, and a little tripping in the night (pun intended), I think I have the next step.