Hundreds of thousands, even millions of books have been written on
the Christian walk. Each is as individual and unique as we are
ourselves. A thread of sameness runs through them: the nature of God
(Love), the weakness of Man, yet our striving to know God, the cross
and the astonishing thought that it is totally within our grasp to
stand confidently before God one day, blameless and without blemish.
Confidently, but never arrogantly. Therein lies the rub: the claims
of Jesus seem inexorably arrogant …
What follows is my own rather
naïve grasp of the facts. It is not about doctrine, but my own
‘take’ of the faith journey. Now we see through a glass darkly, one
day we shall all meet Him face to face.
I think in pictures, they seem
simpler for my childlike brain. Set A is the whole of God’s
creation: the stars, the Earth, us and each tiny creature and plant,
and the highly complex processes that cause everything to hang
together. In the beginning God created … that is the story of the
opening pages of Genesis. It is not a scientific textbook, but a
remarkably simple reflection of the fact that a Creation without a
Creator is unthinkable. If the theory of Evolution turns out to be
the ‘how’ of how God created, then I don’t have difficulty with
that. Others do.
Set B is a subset, not to
scale. Boring, but yes, I come from a mathematical background. It is
the set of all the humans ever created. All were created in the
likeness of God … with the ability to distinguish right and wrong.
God loves his whole creation, the good, the bad and the ugly.
Nothing difficult so far. Now
comes the awkward part, the supreme arrogance: not all are his
children. For to those who believe in and receive the Christ is
given the privilege to be called the children of God. Set C is the
subset of God’s adopted children, not because they are any more
special or good, but simply because they have believed in and
received Jesus. And so the hackles rise: what an arrogance, what
about the Chinese, the Muslims, what about me … ?
Indeed, it is a great
arrogance, a great difficulty and yet so simple. God has laid down a
way in which you and I can be rescued from the dominion of darkness
and brought into the Kingdom of His Son. The dilemma: in the set B
is much that is good (we are after all made in the likeness of God),
and yes we Christians have to admit that in the set C there is much
apparent darkness. There is no place for Christian arrogance. How do
we explain this conflict?
When we take the step of
committing ourselves to the kingship of Christ, when we step into
his kingdom, some things are immediately settled: our relationship
to the Father (his children), our acceptance of Jesus (his subjects,
but also his brothers and sisters!) and our membership of the Church
(individual bricks built into a great edifice that is the universal
Body of Christ, a body of which he is the Head) and the murky nature
that characterized our former membership of the dominion of darkness
(all is wiped away, the slate is clean, though our sins were like
scarlet, yet they are now white as snow).
So very simple you say, but …
Yes, there are indeed many buts. The biggest for me is that many
things remain unsettled. My understanding is that at conversion, we
firmly plant one foot in the Kingdom of Jesus, but the other foot
remains tentatively rooted in the dominion of darkness. The process
of life is about learning to shift all of our weight from the one
foot (the ‘darkness’ foot) to the other (the ‘kingdom’ foot).
Or, another way of putting it,
is that this initial response to Christ is only the beginning of
a lifelong campaign to substitute his righteousness for our own
self-righteousness. There
are times when we make great strides forward in the faith journey
but, looking back, we realize there were times when we were standing
very firmly on our ‘darkness foot’. Things we did and said, even our
thoughts. Christians are like baby flamingoes – learning to stand on
one foot! And not finding the balancing act at all easy.
While the Church Universal, the
body of Jesus, has both feet firmly planted in the Kingdom of God’s
Son, we have to admit that our individual churches (being made up of
fledgling flamingoes) have often lost their balance and sometimes
even have shifted both feet back into the dominion of darkness.
We hang our heads in shame.
There can be no arrogance. We are continually reminded by our Lord:
by their fruits you will know them. It's all about engagement with
our God. Anything less is boring religion and not worth the time or
effort.
Yet, paradoxically, our heads
are held high. We are the children of God, our sins are forgiven, we
are confident of eternity – provide we continue in our faith,
established and learning to stand firmly like adult flamingoes on
the kingdom foot. There can be no complacency; God is not to be
mocked.
So, will
you join me today in being a flamingo, both of us striving to stand
on one foot firmly planted in the Kingdom of Jesus?
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