growing up christian (part uno)

wow, it's been a while. i miss the blogosphere community that once was, and hope that it hasn't forgotten about me!

lately i have been thinking a lot about my life and the events/systems of thinking that have shaped the way i interact with God, people and nature. this current stream of thoughts has led me to remember the stumbling blocks that once stood in the way of embracing the Father of my Rabbi. i remembered the first of many questions that would jump start my inevitable crisis of faith, and recalled my inability to embrace the teaching that Jesus lived and died to forgive me of my sins and that his death opened up the pathway to go to heaven. i had some sense that these beliefs were a part of what Jesus was about, but was it everything?

this came during a time that i remember hearing the notion that if i were the only person on earth, Jesus would still have died for my sins. i remember being appalled by the ridiculousness of that thought, never mind the fact that it made absolutely no sense!

on top of that, i began to find that the promise of an after-life (which i could only attain by believing in Jesus) was not fulfilling in my pursuit of truth. it was no longer a comfort to me, and it didn't seem to have any impact on folks that i was having conversations with. they wanted peace now, not later. it just seemed to me that focusing on what happens after we live on earth was distracting us from living a life that mattered for something here and now. i just couldn't believe that God would create me as a human just to make me some ethereal being once i had expired.

what about people who never heard about Jesus? what happens to them?

i began to think about the people who are starving all over the world, watching helplessly as their children die from a lack of food or clean drinking water, while i was living free and easy with Jesus on my side. did God not care for them the way he did for me?

nothing of my experience and scripture reading seemed to be jiving with what i had been taught. as a result, the glaring issues with my individualistic version of the gospel of salvation from sin came tumbling down as quickly and easily as it was built up in my mind as a child in sunday school. what was most alarming to me was that it was the bible itself that seemed to be scraping away at the picture i had once held to be infallible truth. more specifically, it was in a random reading of the sermon on the mount that shattered all of my previously held notions of who God was and what it meant to be "saved".

i discovered the upside-down kingdom of God that Jesus came proclaiming. in this Kingdom the poor are blessed, the mourners are made happy, the beaten down are patched up and the weak are our superiors.

i found out that Jesus was about much more than forgiving us and giving us a free ticket to heaven if we just believe. it is most certainly true that he forgave us in his death, but i believe he was and is about showing us that the Kingdom is for the people we believe to be cursed. he taught us that our sin has created a world in which the powerful and the rich live as though they are in heaven now, that that there are those who have and those who never will, and that we will never know the Father until we see the world through the eyes of those who have not.

this set me on a journey that i continue to this day. i am learning more and more about the Way of our Master, and the truth that it is through painting a picture with the colors of the Kingdom of God that we will be set free here and now.

i am learning that, oftentimes, it is our neatly constructed theological systems that keep us from experiencing life in the Kingdom. i came out of this not throwing the belief in forgiveness and heaven out the window, but realizing that the gospel covers more than my sin and my ticket to heaven.

the gospel is good news to the poor. the captives are set free, and we no longer have to live in pursuit of the world. the Kingdom of God is among us!

have we been forgiven? yes. thank God.
is there heaven to gain? yes.
so what? what now?

i pray that we will not rest in our forgiveness and keep it to ourselves, but be ambassadors of the grace we have received. and may we not simply eat what is given to us, but first ask what the ingredients are that went into the meal.



-dave-