Lately, I've woken early in the morning, like 2 a.m. with a sense of restlessness and lack of peace. Last night was yet another night of tossing and turning, desperate thinking, and sweating. I pulled out my notebook to attempt to write down some of the thoughts running around...I wrote these lines in the pitch dark with some of the lines overlapping like the doodles of a small child.
I don't want the tension between who I am and who I could be, between how it is and how it should be--I don't want to be part of the dissension between the 'sects' beneath the umbrella of Christianity. I'm so weary of seeing the Calvinists squabble with the Armenians, the Catholics and Protestants fight over who is 'right' and so on. Every group claims to be 'more right' than the others, they claim to hold the correct interpretation of the Bible and they will defend this 'rightness' to the end because we are taught that compromise is a kin to betrayal--which is understandable. But how can we claim to the lost that we know the way to eternal life when we ourselves cannot be of one mind? How are they to know that there is a definite 'right' and 'wrong' when so often each version of Christianity offers different standards of morality and a different view of God? Is not this all relativism in personal interpretation? So should they just follow what is most common with the hopes that it is different than the usual scenario where the blind leads the lied to?
"Come all you lost, come to our puppet Jesus who will save you from your sins as long as you are righteous according to our standards, come taste of our judgments and slanders of the other denominations, come taste of our hatred, disrespect, and biased interpretations."
None of us seem to hold the complete Truth, either that or we know it but don't practice it. Instead we bite and devour ourselves and the ones we brand 'secular' or 'worldly' so we can have the satisfaction of having the last word. How can the Truth be within us if we cannot love the God we claim to serve enough to love our neighbor and to show grace to the fallen? As C.S. Lewis said, "to be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you."
And through all of this disgust of such discord comes both an idealist and a cynic. The idealist insists that there is hope for those who endure to the end, but the cynic proclaims in it's monotone voice that the line to heaven keeps ringing and there doesn't appear to be an answering machine, people are still dying of preventable diseases and violence--and don't forget,
not all who cry out "Lord, Lord" or even do miraculous works in His name are necessarily saved from hell.
1 comment:
"None of us seem to hold the complete Truth, either that or we know it but don't practice it."
I think this is the critical point. I find it hard to believe that the Truth is so difficult to find and hold onto that no-one has it. The problem arises because so few who know the Truth (and I believe many know it) are willing to really live completely according to it. Yet those of us who are not willing to wholly submit to the Truth still want the authority, the respect, and the honour that the Truth commands. Thus, we cling to the part of the Truth that we can live with (ignoring the fact that Truth is utter and complete or not at all), and then use "our truth" to claim superiority over others, because they don't see it...all the while, everyone else does the same thing with "their truth".
To the idealist, I say: it is true -- there is hope for those who endure to the end -- "buy the Truth and sell it not." Sacrifice all you have and are for the Truth, for it is of far greater value, and is, in the end, the only thing that lasts.
To the cynic, I say: what good is it to keep calling heaven, if you're not willing to check your own answering machine? You can let it ring as long as you like, call him every day ("Lord, Lord?"), but it's only when you listen to His message and do what He said that you'll get through to heaven.
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