Monday, March 29, 2004
i'm back. :o)
maybe its the emergence of spring, but i really feel like i've finally crawled back into my own skin after the last few months of extended blah. there were moments of glimmer even during that time, but i just felt like i was walking around with this dark cloud over me. the dark cloud of situations and circumstanced caused me to turn inward and slowly become self-protective. if temptation leads to sin, and sin leads to death, the self-protection leads to selfishiness, and selfishness leads to a whole lot of sin.
God's timing is truly impeccable. after a week of a lot yuck, i really felt like God used the seminar this past saturday to put me in front of the mirror of His word and shine His light on me... revealing the point i've known in my mind but have been missing in my life. He showed me that the dark cloud over me was, ironically, that sense of self-preservation turned selfishness -- something what this saturday seminar called "me-ology."
western evangelicalism, the speaker claimed, is plagued with the disease of "cat theology" -- the idea that since "you feed me, you shelter me, you love me... i must be God." poignant. we chuckle uncomfortably. regardless of how much we'd like to deny this, our human nature causes us to live "christian humanism" at best and "pratical atheism" at worse. its very easy to focus on "the doing." its practical. its tangible. even though the living isn't easy to perfect, what needs to be "done" is easy to grasp. so easy, sometimes that we can get lost in the "whats" and "hows" of living the Christian life that it runs automatic. the problem with this is that it can easily become drudgery if you miss the point of the why.
for me... the why somehow creeped in the back door. the "why" for me became the desire to be loved. the "why" for me became the pursuit of happiness through love regardless. i realized that God not allowing me to find it my way, frustrating as it was, is definitely a blessing. the "world's" equation that i had somehow bought into didn't work for me. it was frustrating because though i seem to have been doing everything right, the results didn't logically follow. and one wonders why i'm so fatalistic. that was the unfortunate "dark cloud" -- that it felt like nothing i did really mattered and no matter how hard i try, i couldn't get what i had wanted.
i'm reading this really cool book that elaborated on a concept in which the nuance really fascinated me. there is nothing new under the sun, so the truth isn't new, but the articulation of it made me think. the woman, writing that our society always wants and wants (and usually something that is unattainable). this feeling of "lack" isn't necessarily a bad thing, she writes. the problem, it seems, is that our idea of freedom is "freedom from lack" rather than even a satisfaction for the lack.
huh?
if "lack" is a God shaped void that points and drives us to be satisfied in Him, or society has so clouded it, that we try to fill it with other things. these "other things" never satisfy. this isn't new. what's interesting is that we're always trying to find new ways to be free from lack... but it is an impossible desire. we want to be freed from...
(to be continued...)
maybe its the emergence of spring, but i really feel like i've finally crawled back into my own skin after the last few months of extended blah. there were moments of glimmer even during that time, but i just felt like i was walking around with this dark cloud over me. the dark cloud of situations and circumstanced caused me to turn inward and slowly become self-protective. if temptation leads to sin, and sin leads to death, the self-protection leads to selfishiness, and selfishness leads to a whole lot of sin.
God's timing is truly impeccable. after a week of a lot yuck, i really felt like God used the seminar this past saturday to put me in front of the mirror of His word and shine His light on me... revealing the point i've known in my mind but have been missing in my life. He showed me that the dark cloud over me was, ironically, that sense of self-preservation turned selfishness -- something what this saturday seminar called "me-ology."
western evangelicalism, the speaker claimed, is plagued with the disease of "cat theology" -- the idea that since "you feed me, you shelter me, you love me... i must be God." poignant. we chuckle uncomfortably. regardless of how much we'd like to deny this, our human nature causes us to live "christian humanism" at best and "pratical atheism" at worse. its very easy to focus on "the doing." its practical. its tangible. even though the living isn't easy to perfect, what needs to be "done" is easy to grasp. so easy, sometimes that we can get lost in the "whats" and "hows" of living the Christian life that it runs automatic. the problem with this is that it can easily become drudgery if you miss the point of the why.
for me... the why somehow creeped in the back door. the "why" for me became the desire to be loved. the "why" for me became the pursuit of happiness through love regardless. i realized that God not allowing me to find it my way, frustrating as it was, is definitely a blessing. the "world's" equation that i had somehow bought into didn't work for me. it was frustrating because though i seem to have been doing everything right, the results didn't logically follow. and one wonders why i'm so fatalistic. that was the unfortunate "dark cloud" -- that it felt like nothing i did really mattered and no matter how hard i try, i couldn't get what i had wanted.
i'm reading this really cool book that elaborated on a concept in which the nuance really fascinated me. there is nothing new under the sun, so the truth isn't new, but the articulation of it made me think. the woman, writing that our society always wants and wants (and usually something that is unattainable). this feeling of "lack" isn't necessarily a bad thing, she writes. the problem, it seems, is that our idea of freedom is "freedom from lack" rather than even a satisfaction for the lack.
huh?
if "lack" is a God shaped void that points and drives us to be satisfied in Him, or society has so clouded it, that we try to fill it with other things. these "other things" never satisfy. this isn't new. what's interesting is that we're always trying to find new ways to be free from lack... but it is an impossible desire. we want to be freed from...
(to be continued...)
Comments:
Post a Comment
