diacrisis

I'm constantly amazed at the pervasive idea that we can never be good enough for God, because He's so pure and we're not. Um, hello, McFly?

There's a place for Christian humility and there's a place for Christian pride--not in one's own power, but in the glory of God manifested in us. A pastor I know likes to relate: "people say to me, 'what, you think you're better than me?' and I reply, 'of course I'm better than you--I'm a King's Kid!'".

This issue is insidious, because we use words like "godliness" and "holiness" and expect people know what we mean by them. They don't. People do not understand that godliness is more about what you add to your life than about what you cut out. Holiness (being "set apart") is effected in action, not inaction. You can stop cursing and drinking and carousing, sure, fine, great. That's in answer to Jesus' call to "repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." But when Paul talks about training in 1 Tim 4, he doesn't say, "train yourself to remove sin from your life by meditation"; quite the opposite--the passage is against those who "forbid marriage and demand abstinence...". Nothing is to be rejected, for it is sanctified by God's word. When he tells Timothy to "put these things into practice," he doesn't mean "pull back; slow down; stop sinning," but "do MORE--more public reading of scripture, more encouragement, more teaching, use your gift more."

Americans, especially those raised in religious homes, seem to have a lot of guilt. Our churches are dying because of it--we are so fixated on removing our individual impurities that we never work on increasing our acts of love. We're so focused on the skeletons in our closet that we never build that needed second story. C'mon folks--Christ already paid the price for those skeletons. There is no more punishment for them. This is the spiritual judo of Christianity--no longer being slaves to sin we are free to do good. You have 24 hours every day--it's not enough to take the time you used to spend in sin and replace it with a prison of inactive meditation on your guilt, or with paralytic bouts of self-discipline. You ONLY become godly by practicing acts of love; you are free to do so now that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

I keep hearing the phrase, "spiritual formation" and "spiritual growth" as if they were static processes that never change, never end. Baloney. All things change, all things come to an end: prophecy, tongues, knowledge. But not love. The spiritual child, the newly-born-again, believes that the Word is primarily for himself and that his new life is eternal and unchanging. The spiritual juvenile has grown, has seen changes in himself, and strives to reach that point of adulthood at which he can say, "I have fixed myself and am now complete." The spiritual adult switches from input to output, from responsibility for self to responsibility for others. It is our modern fascination with fixing, measuring, and therapizing the abnormal that keeps us perpetually juvenile. Stop analyzing your faults and start doing good.

Is there an analog for "spiritual senescece"? Where your spirit has grown so much, learned so much, that the nuances overwhelm and paralyze? Or is Paul saying in 1 Cor 13:10-11 that we cannot even be spiritual adults until Christ returns? I tend to think not. I reject the pervasive idea that God calls us again and again to be like Christ but denies us the ability. He wants brothers and sisters, grown to be fully like him, not eternal babies, or worse, sophomoric punks dedicated to entertainment and self-loathing.

A good friend of mine wouldn't allow the verse to be sung in his church that runs, "brokenness is what I long for..." saying, "brokenness?! NO, God heals us, wants us to be whole and complete." He was right--you must die to leave the kingdom of the world and enter the kingdom of heaven, your old self must be broken--but when he makes you a new creation, you are truly new, unbroken. It's childish to do wrong after you've learned what's right. It's juvenile to want to be imperfect because everyone else is. Be an adult.