Therefore, as you go, disciple people in all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
International Standard Version ©2008
If I am not mistaken (or wikipedia), the word disciple is derived from a Greek work that means something close to the equivalent of learner or a learner. When I read Matthew 28:19 I do not see some great plea from the lord to go out and christianize the world, but instead to learn from the world and those who inhabit it. And maybe, just maybe the baptism that Matthew is speaking about involves us dipping or plunging ourselves into these nations rather than the reverse. I do not think it is entirely improbable to believe that by submersing ourselves into others we aren’t carrying out a kind of baptism.
Maybe it is that simple; put others before you, love them on their own terms and invest yourself in understanding and trust rather than suspicion and some sort of absolutism of what is right and good. The strength of a logical persuasion, in my opinion, has no place in god. God’s most logical persuasion, to me, is one of our least practiced actions, his unrequited love. And maybe, if we were all to understand that we really can’t understand that which is god and just let god be god, we would all be the better for it.
Unlike wikipedia, god doesn’t have answers. In fact, god can’t answer our prayers…especially when we pray with the answers already in hand; there is nowhere for god to take us. God answers prayers with questions that will lead us to amazing abstractions of faith. His goal is not to provide us with the comfort of salvation, but with the wonderment of confusion. And while there are people whose faith is much like their neatly maintained backyards, it is the weed ridden yards that allow for god’s message of hope. The hope that this world is outside of our control; the hope that our thorough mismanagement of earth can serve as a reminder that theoretical boxes where never meant to be packed or carried or stored away for later use…the hope that we cannot save ourselves.
It is not the potential glory of god that holds me; it is not the benefit of having him as a personal savior or a pathway for eternal life. All these reasons for having god in our life are just that, reasons. I would like to believe, if I am not fooling myself, that god has found his way into my life not because of a promise of more, but a realization of less. It is the lesser sides of me that allow for god’s unconditional love to become real, it is my ability to turn away from god that allows me to be one of his children. I do not find god at the apex of my strength, but in the abyss of my weakness. It is in the resignation my self that I fully realize my inherent sinfulness. I work my way down to god, not up.
Glory eyed christians, however, tend to go blind from looking toward the heavens and have a habit of amassing large congregations to assure them that their vision has not entirely failed. They seek the concrete because it is reflective of their faith. Their A + B = C theology deconstructs god into a human vernacular, a human culture and ultimately puts god on the cross for the second time, because they do not believe the first time was for everyone and they do not want to be left behind. And so, these gloried eyed Christians have deconstructed the bible into an instruction manual for building ladders that can reach the heavens.
And this too might be out of our hands; and abstraction of faith delivered by the deliverer. I figure I will just wait till the exodus for the rest of us and settle for watching an army of heels climb toward the heavens as I sink into the soil upon their daring escape.
1 response so far ↓
Philip // September 15, 2008 at 5:24 pm |
first off, how long has it been since i’ve been here? i don’t remember these last two posts in august and now its september. my regrets for not reading this sooner. the number of challenging thoughts you have seem countless somedays. and there are so many beautiful profundities here, though i’m weary of calling them truths in this space because i wonder from this view if you will allow for such things as truths?
i know i quote it a thousand times, but buechner once wrote, “God himself does not give answers. He gives himself, and into the midst of the whirlwind of his absence gives himself.” For the most part I read what you write here as working out that same argument.
However, this line of yours takes me elsewhere “His goal is not to provide us with the comfort of salvation, but with the wonderment of confusion.”
I hope I’m not reading it wrong as I object, but I would argue that instead it is at the epoch of confusion, at the climax of our lostness that salvation worked by God becomes our comfort, and consequentially it makes little sense that God’s way would to again confuse us.
As you yourself write “I would like to believe, if I am not fooling myself, that god has found his way into my life not because of a promise of more, but a realization of less.” At the end of ourselves we meet that divine Other, who is wholly unlike our-self interested selves.
The comfort is that he says “be not afraid, come near to me. And I will give you rest from this. Relax. See how much I am for you.” Not “dive head long back into the cesspool alone.”
This is no abstraction. Abstractions can only be made of concepts. And we’re not dealing with a concept, but instead a person, if you will.
It is the person of Jesus Christ (Hebrews 1:3). And that’s where Christianity is particular and should make no apology in being so (see Luke 9:26 or better yet Hazel Motes in Flannery O’Conner’s Wiseblood).
You’re precisely right in that it is not for us to build instruction manuals or foolish ladders to heaven. It was for God to come across, meet death and approach us, beckoning to us from below – from the sinking soil, from the empty tomb, so that our sinfulness — humanity’s perpetual fall, might in the end be undone. Not to anyone’s glory but his own.
Certainly I could learn a great deal from other people/nations. But I will never learn anything that is wholly other than my common sinfulness, until I glimpse (not fully comprehend, mind you) the character of God as displayed to his great pleasure in Christ Jesus.
Third times the charm. Post this one if you are gonna let it through. I need a personal editor.