Small servants of a great God

In Christianity, the things we naturally value and prioritize are continually being upended and overturned by things we might consider weaker, lesser, or more simple. We see, for instance, that knowledge and intellectual standing, though it wins us approval and acclaim from both the church and the world, is incomplete and can even be a hindrance if not accompanied by good works of love and service. We find that power is not to be sought after, because in our weakness we learn our great need for the grace of God, humility and dependence are allowed to bear fruit, and our hearts grow near to Him. We read that

"God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty, and the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are" - 1 Corinthians 1: 27-28

So I think the chance to write, or to say, or to do something undeniably great or profound - something that will attract attention and garner respect - is often a temptation from which we ought to flee. I don't mean that we shouldn't attempt to do great things for God, or share the insights He has given us about life or from His Word, but I do mean that we should often do these things in a sort of secrecy, not letting our right hand know what our left hand is doing: saying and doing what is right, because it is right, regardless of who or how many notice or how they respond. It is often easy to do something challenging and hard when we are winning praise and admiration for our effort; it is not so easy to do the same thing when no one notices we are even trying, and gives us only scorn and discouragement when they do notice. But in the second case, we learn to rely on the strength and approval of God instead of men, and we learn to swallow our pride and our ravenous hunger for attention and recognition.

And think about it. Do we really want to be the wise and the mighty in this world? Do we want to grow so great in the eyes of our fellow men (and often ourselves) that we forget how small we are in the presence of God, or begin to avoid His presence for the precise reason of avoiding that feeling of smallness? Do we want, in the end, to be put to shame by the weak and foolish things, by the people we have despised in our own self-absorption and upward climb? Wouldn't we rather humble ourselves now, and share in the glory of God later, when we will be free of the miserable burdensome urge to claim that glory as our own? He Himself, though by nature and by right the most glorious Being in all infinity, became small and weak and despised, that by descending into the lowest parts of the earth He might raise up us all to be with Him in glory. If we long to know Him more and to become more like Him, then it only makes sense that we too ought to descend into humility and lowliness, to serve when service is hard and inglorious, that we might be like our Lord and Savior. And as He who descended is also He who ascended into all the heavens, so only when we descend with Him into suffering and death - the death of our own pride and self-centeredness - can we truly ascend into liberty, beauty, and glory.

He Regards the Lowly

One of the things that interferes with our relationship with God is our own pride. Pride is what makes us resist or resent God's grace (or our need for that grace) and makes it difficult for us to accept God's love for us - we dislike the necessary admission of our weakness, imperfection and sin that accompanies grace, or we believe that our sin is too great for even His love and forgiveness to cover. Either we exalt ourselves or we make God less, when we walk the path of pride. And because we very much do need God's grace, because His forgiveness is far more than sufficient to cover our sins, and because His love is unfailing and unconditional, our pride puts us out of sync with reality. Eventually, keeping our heads and hearts in a dream world will result in colliding with something in the real world that we didn't see because it didn't exist in our delusions. That is, if we base our lives on perceptions and principles that don't align with reality, the disconnect and the tension will in the end lead us to pain and despair. After all, wherever God is not, despair takes root - and a proud heart has pushed God out.

For we have a great God who works in very different ways than a great king would. A great ruler in this world will usually seek out or allow into his presence those who have some special distinction or merit. A championship sports team, for instance, or the winners of a scholastic competition, or other heads of state or their ambassadors, might be allowed to meet the President. An average soccer mom from the Midwest would most likely be laughed at by the security guards if she tried to visit him at the White House! The greater the power and glory of the ruler, the less likely it is that the poor, normal, lowly people of his country will actually be allowed into his presence. It is an honor, after all, to see and meet someone so highly respected, and it is natural to expect that one ought to earn that kind of honor. And then, afterwards, one has every right to be proud of the achievement that merited the reward. But in the Psalms we read that,

"Though the Lord is on high,
Yet He regards the lowly;
But the proud He knows from afar." - Psalm 138:6

God is far greater than any earthly ruler, and yet He doesn't demand that we earn our way into His presence. He doesn't accept only those who have done great things or have some special distinction or notoriety to capture His attention. In fact, He does almost exactly the opposite! He gives grace to the humble, and lifts up those who do not exalt themselves. When He became a man, He lived among the poor and the oppressed, and rejected those who were mighty in this world. His desire for us is not that we should strive to win His favor by our own merits - first, it is impossible, and second, it centers our minds firmly on ourselves: we must always be thinking about what we are doing and how we are doing and whether or not we are good enough. He wants us to let go of our pride, of our need to earn His approval and make ourselves good enough, so that we can once more sing in tune with reality, and come to know Him deeply and genuinely in humility.

Walking in our faith

Sometimes I think we over-intellectualize our faith. Instead of learning from and applying the basic, simple, understandable meanings of the scriptures we read, we try to probe ever more deeply into the text - to see new insights that maybe no one else in our circle had seen before, or to build up theories and systems of doctrine. And sometimes it is good to search more deeply into the passages, to gain a fuller understanding of the words, their context, and their application: to use our minds to seek after the knowledge of God through His word. I think, however, that it is not always beneficial. C.S. Lewis once wrote about the dangers of theoretically and intellectually understanding a passage without equivalent practical and personal understanding - of having one's head filled with knowledge and ideas, but not having trained one's hands and feet and heart in the disciplines of obedience, service, and love. It can make us think we are farther along in our growth in the faith than we truly are, and it can begin to plant in us the seeds of spiritual pride. As Paul writes,

"Knowledge puffs up, but love edifies. And if anyone thinks that he knows anything, he knows nothing  yet as he ought to know. But if anyone loves God, this one is known by Him." - 1 Corinthians 8:1-3

It can be easy for certain types of people to acquire knowledge of the Bible and appear wise and mature in their faith, while in their heart drifting away from the foundational truths of the gospel, and in their life still needing to learn how to live out of the love and grace of God. I speak as one of these people, honestly. Acquisition of knowledge, in any sphere of my life, comes easily and is enjoyable, so it makes sense that I would delight in that part of the Christian life and begin to neglect other aspects of the faith! But God has redeemed and desires to transform our entire being, not just our minds. He wants to change our hearts, that they might learn compassion, mercy, forgiveness, and empathy. He wants to change our mouths, that they might learn to speak with truth and grace, to encourage and uplift and edify, to forego biting scorn and sarcasm. He wants to change our hands, that they might learn to give from love (of God and of others) rather than from duty, that they might labor not for our own good, but for the glory of God and in service (however menial or unpleasant) to others. He wants to change our feet, that they might not carry us to places of pleasure, comfort, and entertainment, but to places where the darkness of sin is powerful and the need and suffering of our fellow human beings is great. He wants to change our will, that it should no longer be bound by our stomachs, or our sexual desires, or any of our natural sinful tendencies, but instead be freely following Him. God wants us to grow in our knowledge - there is no doubt or argument about that - but this growth of knowledge should be informed by our love of God and of others, and it is only a part of the growth and change that He desires of us.

So as we read, let us also seek to apply - not in the typical Bible study meaning of that word, that rarely leads to true and lasting change, but in the sense of honestly striving to live in obedience to the commands of God, by His grace, and from a foundation of love. When we read, let us first seek to know and understand God more, and then seek to discover how we ought to be living with and for Him in our faith! And if we find that a certain path we have chosen does not honor Him, or if we find that we have been ignoring or neglecting certain aspects of our faith, then we should immediately step off that path or begin to cultivate those aspects of our faith. Our reading and studying should be for the purpose of following God more closely, not for the sake of being the one with the most knowledge and the deepest insights. The Christian faith is profoundly this-wordly, to use Bonhoeffer's language; it calls us to live completely in the world, even though we are not of the world - to genuinely love, to sacrificially serve, and to wholeheartedly obey - to walk in the truths of the gospel, not merely to know them in our minds.

Finding love

From Sherry Turkle, the author of the book Alone Together, about the effects of the rise of personal technology on human society and relationships (I found the quote at the Futurisms blog at New Atlantis, but the whole interview with Turkle at IASC is also worth reading):

"People are so vulnerable and so willing to accept substitutes for human companionship in very intimate ways. I hadn't seen that coming, and it really concerns me that we're willing to give up something that I think defines our humanness: our ability to empathize and be with each other and talk to each other and understand each other. And I report to you with great sadness that the more I continued to interview people about this, the more I realized the extent to which people are willing to put machines in this role. People feel that they are not being heard, that no one is listening. They have a fantasy that finally, in a machine, they will have a nonjudgmental companion."

Isn't that truly what people want? We want someone who will love us unconditionally, regardless of what we say or do - someone who will be there when we need a friend, listen when we need to talk, and make us feel as though we have some value and worth. In the hidden depths of our hearts, we're terrified of reaching the end of our lives only to realize that we have accomplished nothing meaningful and are going to die alone and unloved. If we can have some kind of affirmation and companionship as we go through life, it helps to assuage those fears, and if we look to some non-human source for that affirmation and companionship, whether it be animals or robots, we can satisfy our emotional needs (or at least dull their ache) without having to endure the risks, pains, and fears of human relationships and meaningful work.

Ultimately, of course, pursuing intimacy and meaning in that way is bankrupt; it may give us comfort for a time, but it stifles our emotional growth and prevents the deepening and maturing of our hearts, and in the end we are left unfulfilled and despairing. But as my brother wrote (in an unpublished document; you can read more of his writing here):

"We are a world devoid of love, a shadow land, hiding itself from the true light, and so we must cast open the windows - no, tear down the very roof. Love is the great irony, the caustic force that banishes the dark and drives out the meaningless. [...] The answer must be to love and love only. The answer must be to live from love, for all action to emanate from love."

What I see in the desperate terrified longing of so many people in our society, in the deep desire for intimacy coupled with the intense fear of pain and worthlessness, is an open invitation to live out the love of Christ in our world - to be the human being who listens to the sorrows and worries of our neighbors, who stands with them through their joys and their troubles, and who loves them unconditionally and without condemnation. In a world where everyone is withdrawing to the comfort and convenience of computer-mediated relationships and robotic companions, we can change lives and bring the gospel into our communities simply by loving, always loving, in all that we do, with genuine, face-to-face love.

Apologies and One Thought :)

I apologize for writing so infrequently these past two weeks! I have most certainly had thoughts and ideas, so that can't be my excuse this time; I have also had plenty of time, especially this past weekend, so business isn't a suitable reason for my absence either. But my thoughts have been the type that end up written in the margins of my Bible - short (only a sentence or two at most) and centered around a specific verse, and thus requiring much expansion before becoming suitable for the blog. And my time has been spent with people, in large part, and creating things with my hands for the other smaller part. In essence, I've been more immersed in the real world around me, more connected to the people in my life and more in touch with the physical realities and rhythms of the created order - and I think this is a good thing, although I still think I should have spent a bit more time writing down some of my thoughts for the blog!

Anyway, here is one slightly longer thought that has been slowly taking form in my mind. It seems to me that one of the dangers inherent in Christianity is losing one's balance spiritually - prioritizing the spiritual and intellectual aspects of the faith over the physical, or vice versa. For someone like me, raised in very Bible-centered churches, and naturally intellectual, it can be easy to neglect or forget about the more physical qualities of my life and faith: to think, imagine, theorize, read, and meditate, without serving, giving, loving, and shaping the world around me. We have spirits and minds, to be sure, and we must use them to the best of our ability for God, but we also have bodies, and we have an equal duty to use them in service to and worship of God. If we think otherwise, and consider those bodies a mere hindrance and source of evil, we have left the path of Christianity and taken up Gnostic doctrine! God created matter and gave us physical bodies - hands and eyes, dexterity and strength - and He desires us to make good use of those bodies: to use the talents and skills within them to shape and tend and labor, as Adam and Eve were intended to do in the garden. So it is not a waste of time to make things that are beautiful and useful and good, even though that making might not in itself necessarily seem to be very important in terms of faith. It is not a waste of time to love one's family in a very physical way, by doing their laundry, keeping the house clean, and making good food for them to eat. It is not a waste of time to build or sew or craft, as God has given you time and skill, if the work is done as a labor of love, to make something beautiful for a good end (where good does not necessarily equal grand or noteworthy, but is very often simple and small though filled with virtue, purity, and loveliness, as in Phil. 4:8).

The Pursuit of Happiness

God wants us to be happy. As the psalmist says,

"in Your presence is fullness of joy; at Your right hand are pleasures forevermore."

And again,

"be glad in the Lord and rejoice, you righteous; and shout for joy, all you upright in heart!" 

 He provides for us here on earth:

"You crown the year with Your goodness, and Your paths drip with abundance. They drop on the pastures of the wilderness, and the little hills rejoice on every side. The pastures are clothed with flocks; the valleys also are covered with grain; they shout for joy, they also sing."

And He has given us incredible spiritual blessings - His grace, His love, forgiveness of sins, knowledge of Himself, the promise of glory, and so on:

"Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits: who forgives all your iniquities, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from destruction, who crowns you with lovingkindness and tender mercies, who satisfies your mouth with good things, so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's."

But the happiness He has intended for us, and which He desires and delights to give us, is not the same happiness that we want for ourselves or that our culture values - the hedonistic self-centered happiness of pursuing and obtaining one's own wishes in this world, or the proud self-righteous happiness of succeeding or making a difference in this life by one's own merit. To paraphrase Lewis (since I don't have the book at hand, nor would I be able to find the passage quickly if I did), God has intended us for infinite and eternal happiness, centered in Himself - the strong and beautiful spring of all true happiness and joy - and if we so desire we can begin to prepare ourselves for that happiness right now, by learning to trust and know God more. If we have to sacrifice some of our more readily obtained and plainly visible happinesses along the way, if we must suffer and be miserable for times in this life, I believe it is worth it, if those sacrifices and sufferings are God's tools for making us into being capable of truly knowing Him and delighting in the great happinesses and indescribable pleasures He has treasured up for us in Him.

Worldliness

"...the most insidious temptations to 'worldliness' today do not necessarily come in the form of enticements to sexual dissipation, or even to complicity in socio-political oppression, but rather in the form of the suggestion that it is possible - and indeed 'normal' and expedient - to go about our daily business in the world without giving much thought to God." - Craig M. Gay, The Way of the (Modern) World: Or, Why It's Tempting to Live As If God Doesn't Exist

This quote makes me want to read the whole book! I might need to make a special trip to the Phoenix Seminary Library to find it, but I think it would be worth it. However, the quote on its own holds a lot of truth and provides much to think about. Rather than defining worldliness (the state of being of the world as well as in the world, to borrow from the famous Scriptural passage) by a set of actions or some behavioral standard, the author defines it in terms of the attitude and perspective of our hearts and minds - and since those things are what inform and motivate our actions, I think they provide a good foundation for an understanding of what exactly worldliness is.

As I've been reading through some of Paul's letters, I've noticed this perspective on the meaning of worldliness as well. While he does give the churches practical lists of actions that reflect godliness, he also lays heavy emphasis on the importance of having our hearts and minds set on other-worldly things, on matters of eternal consequence and origin. As he wrote to the Colossians,

"Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth." - Col. 3:2

In the entire previous chapter, Paul had warned the Colossian church to be vigilant lest the traditions and philosophies of the world affect their faith and walk with God - to make sure that the basic beliefs and patterns of thinking common to the world (that is, to sinful man in himself) were not allowed to crowd out the truth of the gospel and the entirely different perspective that must accompany it. How were they to stand guard and do battle with those influences? By setting their minds on things above - by focusing their thoughts and the meditations of their hearts on the things of God, on eternal and heavenly matters, by gazing on Him and seeking to know Him. And if they did not? Well, in Philippians, we are given an illustration of what it means to choose to set our minds on things on the earth, instead of striving toward God:

"For there are many who walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ: whose end is destruction, whose god is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame - who set their minds on earthly things." - Phil. 3:18-19

To become of the world - to let our thoughts and fears and aspirations be centered around earthly things - is to become an enemy of the cross of Christ. He died that we might die to the world in Him; He was raised that we might be raised with Him to new life, to a citizenship in heaven, to an inheritance imperishable. When we choose to go through life not thinking about God, not living by the principles of the gospel, not concerned about how our new life and new identity ought to affect us here and now, we are choosing to ally ourselves with the world, and to set ourselves up in opposition to Christ. And if that is the posture of our heart towards God, then it ultimately doesn't matter whether or not we follow His moral standards flawlessly or work tirelessly for the creation of a better world. We will still have chosen this world - temporal, created things, that fail and pass away - over the uncreated, timeless Lord who gave His life that we might know Him and dwell with Him in glory and love for all eternity.

Pursuing Christ, and letting righteousness follow

In Philippians 3, Paul writes of the surpassing greatness of the knowledge of Christ - how to know Christ is so much better than anything else that all those other things can be considered rubbish or even loss in comparison. What seems incredible to me is that knowing Christ is this much better even than being righteous. God wants us to be righteous (indeed, He commands us to be), and we have to be righteous to be in His presence with joy and love instead of terror and condemnation, but ultimately righteousness is not the highest goal. That distinction goes to knowing Christ. And it is so much more important and more wonderful to know Christ that all the labor and time we have invested into becoming righteous through the efforts of our flesh in submission to the law, even if it has made us as near perfect as humans can be, is loss.

What God desires is for us to know Him as He knows us, and becoming righteous is a part of that process. But sometimes I think we mistake the ends and the means, and we treat knowing God as a means to becoming righteous - we make our own perfection the goal we seek, and use our relationship with God as a tool in our labors toward that end. I know I sometimes think and act this way, anyways. Unfortunately, it doesn't work. God doesn't allow Himself to be used as a means to any other end (at least not for very long), because He is the only end in which we will find joy and fulfillment, and He wants us, if we will, to find the true happiness and meaning for which we were created. So in the end, if we have not sought to know Him first and wholeheartedly, we will lose all that we thought we had gained instead of Him. The castles of righteousness we had built so proudly on our own will come crashing down, because they were built on the foundation of our sinful nature rather than on the foundation of Christ. But if we seek Him - if we press forward toward that goal, the goal of knowing Christ, with all our heart and mind and strength - then we will find that we have not only found Christ and come to know Him, but have attained to righteousness as well: the righteousness which is from God by faith. And this righteousness obtained in this way is the only righteousness that will not someday be a loss to us, that will be in the end of any worth.

Waiting in unknowing inaction

Sometimes beauty and peace come from waiting, from hidden times of refining and maturing, from taking the long road through desolate places - from passing through the darkness and the pain instead of skirting around it. On the other side, one finds that there has grown within him a new depth and strength of character, a patience and endurance he never had before, and with that endurance new reserves of hope and faith.

We never want to wait. The months of engagement before a wedding, though full of joy and excitement, can be almost tortuous at times because of the heights of anticipation, the constant pushing forward as though by sheer will power the days can be made to go past more quickly. When we have had an interview for a job or a school or a scholarship, the time spent waiting to know what the decision will be is charged with impatience and anxiety - as we say, we can't wait to hear back. Whether we want something or fear something, the time before we obtain our desire or before the dreaded moment arrives seems unendurable. Even if it ends with bad news, we want it to be over, so we don't have to wait any longer, so we don't have to wrestle with worries and dreams, hopes and fears: so we can know what is to be, and act accordingly.

Waiting feels like inaction. Passivity, helplessness, lack of control, inefficiency - all these words describe how it feels to be forced to sit back and wait. There is no more preparation to be done, no more actions to take; all that is left is to wait. And so we wait fitfully and uncomfortably, even angrily, chafing at the bit. But maybe waiting can be a blessing and a gift, despite its unwelcome appearance. Because waiting demands inaction, a cessation of all our frantic planning and activity, it offers us a chance to rest. Because it holds us captive in a state of unknowing, it gives us an opportunity to learn to trust the God who does know what the future holds. We can choose to wear ourselves down with worry, or we can choose to wait with patience, to endure the pain of not knowing and not being able to do anything about it, and in so waiting to deepen our trust and strengthen our character and our faith.

Secondhand Lions

I've decided that it's much harder for me to write when I'm feeling sick. My mind gets foggy, and complete and coherent sentences run circles around my feebly grasping mind, making the formation of understandable thoughts and arguments considerably more difficult. Also, my spare time tends to be spent sleeping instead of thinking, so there are fewer thoughts to write about in the first place. However, one thing I do manage to accomplish with great regularity when sick is to watch Secondhand Lions. It's by no means what I would classify as a great movie, but it is definitely a good one, and its unique and innocent blend of reality and fantasy is perfect for those days when I want a relatively peaceful fun movie to occupy the time not spent in sleep.

One aspect of the movie, though, has always bothered me (if you haven't watched the movie, don't read further; I don't want to accidentally give anything away). At the relational climax of the movie, one of the older men tells his nephew, the main character, that things like goodness, justice, honesty and love are worth everything, while power and money are worth nothing. So far so good, right? But then he goes on to say that a man should believe in those good things, and believe that they are worth more than power and money, even if it isn't true, and that bothers me! Those things are worth believing in because they are true, because they come from the God of truth; their value is not independent of their truth status. So every time I come to that part of the movie I cringe a little, and wish they had written that part of the script differently.

Tonight as I watched the movie, however, I realized something. The uncle is wrong when he says that truth doesn't matter, but there is a grain of truth in his error, and it shows in how his advice is applied in the movie. The nephew is faced with a situation in which two opposing stories have been presented to him about his uncles: the story that they told him about their past, in which they lived with courage, justice, and love; and the story that several other characters throughout the movie have suggested, in which the uncles were thieves and ultimately cowards. The nephew has no way to determine which of these stories is true, but he is forced into a position where he has to make a choice. In that situation, would it be better for him to believe in the goodness and honesty of these two men (since their purported deceit and criminal actions have not been proven), or to believe that they lived for the pursuit of power and money (since, after all, they have quite a lot of money from some unknown source)? More generally, is it better to believe that a person acted with good intentions and can respond to a given situation with justice, honesty, and compassion, or is it better to believe that they acted with the intention to hurt and would respond to confrontation or rebuke with deceit, malice, and self-centeredness?

Let's look at the question from another perspective. When you or I make a mistake, say something that unintentionally hurts someone else, or do something sinful, do we automatically assume that we are full of spite and that our every action and word is deliberately hurtful or malicious? Do we assume that the worst possibility is, in fact, the reality about ourselves? Usually, unless we know without a doubt that the worst possibility is truly the reality (and sometimes even then), we do not. We give ourselves the benefit of the doubt, so to speak, because we want to believe that our actions are motivated by goodness and integrity even when they may not appear that way. And why do we want to believe this, when the evidence could be taken in a negative direction as easily as a positive? Simply, it is because we love ourselves. Because we love ourselves, we don't want to believe that we are as bad and nasty and small as we appear, and we want to become better.

Well, we are commanded to love each other as ourselves. If in loving ourselves we find ourselves wanting to believe in our own courage, justice, and honesty whenever reasonable evidence arises, then we should be doing the same for other people. We shouldn't desire to discover that their actions are motivated by malice, or interpret their words in a way that portrays them in the worst possible light. Instead of assuming that someone is intending to hurt or offend, when that is not the only plausible assumption, we should assume that they misunderstood, or didn't hear, or some other explanation of a more innocent sort.

One advantage of looking at other people in this way is that it encourages those good things in our own souls. When we are actively looking for goodness, love, honesty, and justice in other people, it motivates us to cultivate them in ourselves, and helps us to mentally dwell on those positive and praiseworthy qualities. Another advantage is that it helps keep us from unjust anger towards others, because we are not assuming that they intended to hurt us, and are thus far less tempted to bitterness, grudge-holding, and revenge-seeking. So while it is sometimes very necessary to acknowledge the sinfulness of another person's intentions, it is in most circumstances much more helpful to assume, when such an assumption is possible, that they are not so evil and miserable as they might seem - to believe, even though you cannot know that it is true, that they are acting with justice, goodness, and honesty.

Alright, hopefully that made some sense :P Like I said, I'm sick and I'm having a lot of trouble putting thoughts and words together. If I said anything that seems totally wrong, please allow me to claim the mental fog of sickness as my excuse :)

Living out the Christ-life

Recently, I've been listening to a recording of Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis in the car and occasionally at work (I think I listened to it three or four times this past week, because my iPod is set to begin a playlist over again once it completes it so I just kept listening to the book over again), and a lot of different things have caught my attention, made me think, and challenged my actions and attitudes. One in particular is Lewis's argument that Christian morality (as opposed to other systems of morality) is not in its essence about following a list of rules and laws, but is rather about becoming like a specific person - namely, Christ. Therefore, when one is attempting to discern whether a particular course of action is moral, the best question to ask is not "is this action right or wrong?" but "is this action something that Christ would do?" Obviously moral laws and standards are a great help to this: if something is clearly forbidden by the standards in the Bible, then it isn't going to be something Christ would do, and doing it isn't going to help us emulate Christ and become more like Him.

But this different perspective goes both deeper and higher than the moral laws. There are many things (small, everyday, trivial things) that are not strictly wrong but that are not in the spirit of Jesus Christ, and choosing to do them, though it may not bother our consciences at all, will not help us grow into the Christ-life (to borrow one of my favorite Lewisian words) God is giving us. So this desire to emulate Christ pushes us higher than the moral law does on its own. In addition, in seeking to be like Christ we find that it is not enough to change our actions: we must also change our attitudes and thoughts; no, we must go further still - we must change the very essence of who we are. So we are cut far deeper by this need to become like Christ than we ever were by the moral law alone (and it can cut quite deep!).

However, I also find it incredibly encouraging. To become like Christ in character as well as in outward action, I must become a better person than I ever guessed just from studying the laws and standards that attempt to define righteous behavior, and I continually found myself falling short of those laws alone. And here I see my whole self falling short of being like Him, knowing that no matter how much I perfect my actions, words, and behaviors there will still be sinful thoughts and uncontrolled emotions in the depth of my being that I will never be able to eradicate. You might ask, at this point, why I say I find this encouraging! It is simply this: when I see that the law (which I can delude myself into thinking I am able to obey, if I try hard enough) is only a shallow and superficial veneer over the whole depth and glorious height of perfection to which we are called in being like Christ, my pride has to fall back and I am free to rest upon the grace of my Lord. Do you see how it works? Only when we realize that we are unable to reach the heights to which we are called will we begin to rely on God's grace, and it is only when we begin to rely on His grace that we begin to experience the great freedom and power of being His child. He has made us for glory, and He will lead us there in Christ, by making us like Christ, by drawing us deeper into the knowledge of Christ.

Sharing happiness

Last night, the church in whose kids' program I volunteer had a pine car derby race for the kids - they buy kits a few weeks in advance and get to carve and paint the cars, and everyone has a great time. Anyway, I was watching one of the first-graders who happened to be sitting near me, who had a decently fast car. When his car sped down the track for a win, he would burst with happiness - fist in the air, big grin, etc. - and his brother would congratulate him and his mom would cheer. It was really sweet! But what really struck me was that a little later, when the older kids raced and his brother's car won a race, he responded with the same incredible expression of happiness. There was no difference; whether the joy of the win belonged to him or to his brother, he exploded with excitement and delight. His brother and mom were the same way, cheering with equal enthusiasm no matter who in their family happened to be racing and doing well.

And as I watched them I thought, this is how we're supposed to be. As members of the family of God, this is how we're supposed to act and feel towards one another: to be genuinely happy and delighted when someone else does well and is excited, just as we are happy when we ourselves do well. We don't need to quench our joy at our own successes - we need to expand and increase our joy at the successes of our brothers (and sisters!) in Christ, so that whenever one of them finds victory or success or answered prayer, we can burst with the shared happiness on their behalf.