I love reading. I know you know that. I know you probably don’t know that if you don’t know me, but if you get me, you’ll know that I love reading. I think I read quite a lot. I’m not a better person because I read a lot, I’m a better person by the grace of God and growing and knowing more about Him in the issues of life.
There is the question of what I do when I’ve finished reading. I know a bit better for what I’ve read, I’m better informed, certain emotions and feelings are satiated and enhanced by what I’ve read. The big deal, though, is whether I’m persuaded to change in the light of what I’ve read.
I’ve just finished reading Pagan Christianity which I’ve referred to recently. The challenges in the book are far reaching. The implications would radically affect someone’s whole approach to the Christian faith. That is some serious stuff. For me, for whom the faith has shaped the majority of my life, that is some real deep serious stuff to consider.
Yet this hasn’t come without warning. It hasn’t come out of the blue. If you noted the journey that I’ve made to this point everything is up for grabs. Only certain essential foundations remain in my approach to my faith. Everything else has gone up in the air. What was the norm for me and acceptable, what I took for granted, what was like a second skin to me for so long is no longer in the assumed position it was.
For example, why should I accept church the way it was taught to me? Why should I accept the way to read the bible the way that my church taught me? Why should I accept the practices and the ways of doing things that have been the way that church has behaved since I’ve been there? Why should I accept the worldview in which I’ve been raised as if it is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but?
Especially as I look at things from a different perspectives and see that for what we say our actions are far removed. For what we preach the lifestyles remain ever failing. For who we believe, our worship seems to go elsewhere as reflected in time, character development and the treasures we value most. I’m still baffled by how a faith based on communal relationships vertical and horizontal can invest so much time and effort, money and hassle in buildings and lifeless structures, programs, procedures, services and systems that reinforce lots of things but never leads to communal development and people emerging in the character of Christ. It baffles me, yet we keep on with it. Why?
Why for all the communication developments are we actually less effective in real communications across the generational and cultural divides? Why is this amazing love of God failing to help parents with children, workers in the workplace, individuals with financial and relational issues and people getting along with each other in the love that sent His Son to die and rose Him from the dead? Yet I know this is not the amazing love of God at work at all – but something else. It is definitely about the absence of this love of God.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not looking for utopia or perfection on earth. I just read stuff and want to believe it’s true. I in them, you in me, may they be brought to complete unity, so the world will know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. The ethos and focus of that is about connections n the relational level that has an impact for what the world sees. The world doesn’t have to like it. The world doesn’t have to accept it. The world is in fact against it because that kind of life worships the true and living God who they have already rejected.
So the change after reading, especially a book like that is more of a determination to look for another way. Not rejecting the other way out of hand as having nothing to say. Not making any judgements on people who pursue what they view to be right. What it is about is seeing the risen Christ expressed in His Body the way He’s already laid down, without a lot of the humanistic traditional trappings that I know we’ve got caught up in. Keeping up with the Joneses business wise, strategic wise, philosophy wise and culture wise. I am pursuing this as vigorously and as carefully as I can for His Name’s Sake.
When you’ve read of the Risen Saviour and know Him to be far greater that how what you have seen would suggest what else can you do?
Just wondering.
For His Name’s Sake
Shalom
dmcd
Life With CD 