Faith In Doubt

Too often our 'faith' is interpreted as the confidence we have in our understanding of God, or the level of conviction we feel for certain truths. Our sense of security lies in how much ‘sense’ we can make of the gospel, Christianity, or what God wants from us. In reality this is confidence in ourselves, our ability to comprehend, understand, and 'be right'. It is a humanistic perspective in the sense that it starts with us, our experience, comprehension, and ideas. This is extremely problematic, faith cannot be about trusting ourselves. When we define faith in terms of personal conviction or confidence we don’t know what to do when we experience doubt, or when we have more questions than answers. In fact, when dealing with serious questions we will wrongly think we are falling from faith. It is very discouraging that much of the church is trying to bolster this self-centered understanding.

Faith in Jesus cannot be faith in ourselves, rather faith in Jesus means to actively trust Him. Although what we think is essential and will determine our willingness to trust him, faith is not about prescribing to certain ideas about the nature or character of Jesus.

“Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.” -Proverbs 3:5-6

Faith It is about trusting a person, and we can do that even when we feel distant, uncertain, confused, or full of doubt. We trust that Jesus is at work in our hearts. Jesus entered into the darkness of our hearts and minds to shine the light of His love and to restore us to Himself. Just because we can’t understand how that is happening in our lives doesn’t mean that we can’t trust Him through the process. We trust by relating to Him, sharing our hurts, concerns, and joys even while being uncertain about how He works or what He is doing.

“Many will say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?' Then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!'” -Matthew 7:22-23

Faith is active dependence, not will powered belief. What we know to be true about Jesus is essential to our willingness to trust Him, but our trust in Him is demonstrated by our willingness to let Him know us! Faith isn’t about doing miracles, working for God, or becoming a theologian.

“You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.” -John 5:29-40

Jesus wants us to trust Him with our lives, that means He wants us to open ourselves to Him, to let Him get to know us. He wants to know all our doubts, fears, and uncertainties. He is not afraid of our darkness; He boldly entered into it in the incarnation. Our faith is trusting Jesus with our lives by actively revealing ourselves to Him. This can be done even in the face of doubt or confusion.

Jesus isn’t looking for our allegiance or our intellectual confidence; He is asking us to trust Him to be our savior and to work His will in our lives and in our hearts. Trust is most present when personal fallibility is most recognized. In other words, His power is made perfect in our weakness.

Don’t run from your questions, don’t flee from your doubt. Jesus is within you and wants you to let Him know you even in the depths of your darkness. He is faithful, He understand our humanity, and He very much loves you.

The Loving Wrath of God

I by no means have a complete handle on this… God’s wrath in some ways is still a conundrum to me, but more and more I have struggled with the Penal Substitution model of atonement. This theory revolves around the wrath of God being pleased by Jesus dying on the cross. To get started, here are a few verses on God’s wrath in the New Testament.

“The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.” -Romans 1:18-19

“Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, forbearance and patience, not realizing that God's kindness is intended to lead you to repentance? But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God's wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed.” -Romans 2:4-5

“Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him!” -Romans 5:9

“Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God's wrath remains on them.” -John 3:36

Penal Substitution

The Penal Substitution theory is understood in a couple different ways. 1)Jesus paid the penalty for our sins, taking the consequences of sin that we deserved.  That is defined a step further by saying that  2) The penalty of sin is that it turns God against us, making Him angry and needing justice through punishing us for our disobedience. In other words, the Father took it out on Jesus instead of us… so now we’re all good..hopefully!

There is no question that God’s wrath is a real thing, it is all over the bible! The issue, in my opinion, is how we understand God’s wrath. The Penal Substitution Model depicts God being angry at humankind for our unrighteousness. Since God is holy and just He can't deal with sinners until justice is met. However, this theory becomes a little obscure when we see the person of Jesus as coming to reveal the true nature and character of His father. We need to start with Jesus, and define God's wrath there, rather than taking our experience of anger and wrath and projecting it onto God. I am coming to believe that the incorrect way of viewing God’s wrath is to understand that He is personally offended, pissed off, or indignant that his people would be so stupid as to disobey him. This wrath makes sense to broken humanity and our sense of justice and shame, but it is hard to reconcile that understanding with who Jesus reveals the Father to be.

Jesus came to reveal the true nature of the Father to a world that was very very confused about who God was and what He was about. Jesus goes so far as to say that nobody knows the Father but the son, and that when we see Him we see the Father. We need to start with Jesus, and when we do I think we get a different picture about God’s wrath, and it contradicts what our shame and guilt make us think to be true about God.

When a parent sees one of their children make bad decisions that are really destructive to them… they will probably get very angry! If they are truly loving, they will not be pissed at their own child as if the child wronged them in some way, but because of their love they will have a ferocious wrath against the things that are destroying and harming them. They will be angry at the attitudes, thoughts, and beliefs their child holds. They will be angry at the negative influences, the way their choices negatively affect their lives, and the way they are choosing to live in contradiction to what their parents desire for them. This anger only makes sense from the vantage point of loving their children. It is a parent who is insecure and immature that get's personally offended by their children's behavior! A loving parent will do anything to free their beloved son or daughter from what's hurting them, and to convince them to live the life that would truly be good for them. They would want to completely eliminate any threat to their lives because they deeply care for their well being. This isn’t selfish wrath, but other centered wrath. It isn’t wrath against people, but for them! This is a huge distinction and one that I think is not only important, but revolutionary for how we understand what Jesus came to do. When we see Jesus, I think He confronts the way we project our own offense and indignation onto God. Jesus shows us that everything the Father does, including His wrath, is about His love for us.

A Different Picture of Appeasement

I do think there is a way to understand how Jesus appeases the wrath of God, without us compromising the truth of God’s loving nature. Romans 5:9 is one of the verses that gives us a strong picture that God is angry with us and that we need to be saved from him. Jesus coming to Earth, dying, and rising, is motivated by God’s loving wrath against the powers that trap and destroy His people. Jesus is the story of God coming to our aid out of His passionate purpose. His love is so strong, He is righteously angry against anything that hurts us. God’s wrath was satisfied when He accomplished what He needed to in order to reconcile us to Himself. His wrath is the driving energy and purpose to reach us in our lost state…which He did in Jesus. Therefore His wrath is now satisfied, because of what Jesus has done. He fulfilled His purpose, reached us, destroyed the powers that bound us, and reconciled us to Himself. His loving wrath was satisfied as he entered into the darkness in this world, submitting Himself to our pain and angst, He satisfied his anger by going to the greatest lengths to save us.

This doesn’t mean that He is controlling us though… He will never force anything on us. We can still not ‘repent’, not change our minds. We can still align ourselves with sin, shame, and/or pride. Doing so is really silly and unnecessary, but we don’t need to accept our redemption. If we don’t.. Then I can see how ‘God’s’ wrath will still be on us. He will still be wanting to remove all those things from us while we cling to them. We could ultimately choose our identity in our brokenness and not in Jesus, and God's wrath would painfully harass us as we turn from it.

What Happened on the Cross?

When you have the Father wrathfully beating Jesus we get a really twisted picture of love… and it separates the trinity, making Jesus and the Father opposed to one another. This is directly opposite of what Jesus is trying to convince us about when He says things like, “When you see me you see the Father”.... Or… “I and the Father are one.” Jesus isn't doing something that the Father isn't able to. Jesus hangs out with sinners, and reacts lovingly to those who make poor choices. He isn't being different then the Father, but is His exact image. If Jesus is loving, while the Father is wrathful, then we will forever live hiding behind Jesus hoping that the Father stays in a good mood. When we see that Jesus and the Father are united in their loving wrath to save us and not condemn us, it gives us assurance of our place with Him, and we can be at peace and rest knowing the grace and love that our Father has for us. He would go so far as to die for us, taking our sin, the penalty for our destructive choices, destroying our shame through forgiveness, and uniting Himself to us at our worst!

Here are some scriptures that talk about what Jesus did on the cross, none of them have to do with satisfying God’s wrath:

"He himself bore our sins" in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; "by his wounds you have been healed." -1 Peter 2:24

“And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.” -Colossians 2:15

“Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death--that is, the devil--and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.” -Hebrews 2:14-15

“For if, while we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! Not only is this so, but we also boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.” -Romans 5:10-11

“He has saved us and called us to a holy life--not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time, but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus, who has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.” - 2 Timothy 1:9-10

“The meaning of the cross is not that God punished his Son in order to avoid punishing humanity, but that in Christ God himself took responsibility for the world’s evil and absorbed its consequences into itself.” -Unknown

On the cross Jesus was completely misunderstood, rejected, beaten, and murdered. He took all our sin, confusion, and wrath into Himself. He faced down our greatest betrayal of God, looked out on us, and said, “forgive them they know not what they do.” Jesus said this along with the Father and Spirit, for they cannot be separated. He reveals the true heart of the Father as loving, He does so at the place where we would expect the opposite response. Nothing deserves retribution more than our murder of God. Yet Jesus shows He has a Father so loving He will take the full force of our sin and not get angry, He will not act in personal frustration, offense, or retribution. He submits Himself to sin unto death, thereby undoing the powers of condemnation, performance, and a skewed vision of wrath. God’s loving wrath eradicates sin by judging it at the depth of our depravity with a universal, ‘forgive them’. God was in Christ reconciling the cosmos to Himself.

We are saved by believing in Jesus. He shows us our value to the Father, forgiving us so we don’t have to live with the the burden of shame and guilt. He included us in His death so now we have confidence we will share in His resurrection! This takes away our fear of death! He brought immortality to ‘light’, so now we have confidence in eternity. He destroyed the schemes of the devil, the accuser, by proclaiming our worth when our performance was at our worst! Pretty amazing!

God’s wrath, in the penal substitution model, makes sense to our broken shame filled consciences that say..”I deserve to be punished.” But, it doesn’t seem to offer much in terms of our salvation here and now. It doesn’t fully remove our fear, insecurity, shame, or pride. Jesus comes down to Earth to reveal the Father. “I did not come to condemn the World but to save it.” …. “Therefore there is no condemnation..” For me, this isn’t a minor difference, it is huge!! Makes a big difference for how we see God, and feel confident in our relationship with him. There is no room for insecurity, shame, or pride in believing in Jesus. Believing the good Father he reveals, the forgiveness He gives us, and the grace He lavishes on us is absolutely transformational! In other words, “perfect love casts out fear.” The Penal Substitution theory plays off of fear rather than casting it out…. a serious problem.  

I would love to hear your thoughts and questions. I am still working through these things and gratefully welcome your feedback!

Deny Yourself

"Then Jesus said to his disciples, "Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me." Matthew 16:24

Life would be easier if we let go of our 'rights' and sense of entitlement. When I'm offended by someone, I am really saying, "how dare they treat ME that way." What a self-centered prideful notion. We think we deserve something better, which means we look down on others when the don't recognize us the way we think they should.

Entitlement and pride are symptoms of our desire to be validated. We want to be recognized for how we act, feel, or think. In other words we want to be recognized for our performance. This is called legalism, living by the law, or self-justification. I want to be identified by what I do. What would happen if we gave up our right to be treated a certain way? What if we stopped paying attention to how other people treat us, demanding them to treat us by some sort of 'right' we have, and instead focused on how we can treat them? Our joy would drastically increase!

When I relate out of entitlement, I will be living in a place of comparison, trying to justify myself by judging others. There is no joy there. When I die to myself, I recognize that I don't actually 'deserve' anything, and I become free from silly systems of self management and performance. Can you imagine living in a way where you no longer felt like you needed to 'prove' yourself, or to 'become' something worthy. It is such a different paradigm that it can be hard to grasp, but let me tell you that it is a life of freedom, joy, and love! It is true freedom because we don't strive to find identity in the silly performances of the world. We learn to appreciate getting respect and encouragement, but we don't demand it. It is important to be loved, but we love freely regardless of how others decide to treat us.

Jesus shows us that our value has nothing to do with our talents, our wisdom, or our performance in anyway. We are valuable because we are loved by Him. When I 'die to myself', I am actually dying to all of the expectations I have about the world around me. Dying to my expectations is absolutely liberating. You see, we also have to die to the expectations we have of ourselves. Jesus loved everyone around them without once demanding that they pay Him his due. He was humble, He didn't claim any rights, He was not entitled, he did not complain about being treated unfairly. He bled and died for us, and as we crucified Him, He said 'forgive them, they know not what they do.'

Love understands, it is patient and kind, it keeps no record of wrongs..... We have stupidly bought into a system of keeping score of rights and wrong, and in so doing we have sacrificed both love and joy. Giving people the cold shoulder, being rude back, telling a friend about how indignant we are about another person's behavior toward us, complaining...it is all foolishness. Love holds no records, it understands. "They know not what they do." This was a heart-cry that was other centered, not self-centered. He wasn't saying 'woe is me, they should treat me better.' No his pain was for their bondage and suffering, not his own. When someone treats anyone wrongly, it is because they don't understand love. It's irrelevant that I am on the receiving end of their dysfunction, they are the victims of anger, distrust, envy, and hurt, not me.

We can care that people learn to treat others with value, not because we feel so overlooked, but because overlooking the value of others is a hell all in itself. When we are wronged we can have compassion rather than indignation, we can understand rather demand, we can forgive rather than accuse. After all, our value isn't measured by our performance or by others recognizing us for our talents, no are value is as unchanging as the love of the Father. The weight of proving ourselves is gone, in it's place is burden that is easy and light. The 'cross' we bear, is the willingness to not hold people accountable for treating us unjustly. The cross we bear, is actually the beautiful practice of forgiveness, it is God's love for humanity embodied and expressed in us.

There's Something About Jesus

Sometimes there seems to be a thousand different ways to understand the Gospel, what Jesus' mission was, and what it means to be a Christian. I am often confused and frustrated by the multitudes of different opinions and ways of understanding Christianity. Sometimes it makes me doubt, while other times it is just frustrating.  Even in my own life my faith and belief has change and transformed as I have gone through different periods of life, had different experiences, faced different contradictions, and noticed greater complexity in the world around me. I often wonder if my current understanding of the Gospel is correct, both because of the ways I have changed and because of the seemingly endless supply of differing ideas around me. Yet amidst all the different ideologies, understandings, and practices, there is one common denominator across Christianity, one thing that the Christian world revolves around, Jesus.

The fact that there are so many ideas, opinions, and understandings about Jesus reveals how important He is. He has gripped our attention, and we are compelled to figure out who He is and what He is about. When I feel confused or frustrated by the theology and ideas that so many people hold, many which seem contradictory, I find great assurance in the fact that Jesus is at the center of it all. We are intrigued by Jesus and by the Gospel.  Across the undulating ideas and practices of the Christian world He remains rock solid at the center of it all. That gives me hope, that gives me peace, even through my own struggle to understand Him.  As the apostle Paul put it, Jesus is the cornerstone. It isn't our understanding that makes Him central to our lives, the fact that He is at the center evokes our desire to understand Him. We begin to realize that our existence, our life, and this world finds it's true meaning in the person of Jesus. He is our faith and our confidence, not our specific understanding in a given period of time.

Jesus alone remains the same yesterday, today, and forever. As our feelings, experiences, and understanding is shaped and molded through life, we can take confidence in Jesus relationship with the Father, and what He did for us and as us. He is our confidence, our security, and our assurance. My faith isn't that I have grasped the truth, but that the truth has grasped me. I am very thankful for Jesus in my life, otherwise I would not have a solid place to stand.

The Sinful Nature: A Way of Functioning, Not a State of Being

Over the last number of years I have really struggled to understand what Paul means when he talks about the ‘sinful nature’, or the flesh. In my mind it has always been merely an idea that gives us a reference point to understand our internal struggles. It is the ‘reason’ we turn to sin, the ‘root’ of our evil, or the deepest ‘part’ of who we are. After all, when you talk about the nature of something, we generally are talking about what it’s made out of, what defines or characterizes it.

The sinful nature has always seemed more of an idea then something that can actually be defined and pointed to in our experience. After all where is it? Is it our entire body? Is it within our spirit? What about us is bad? Is it our emotions? Our thoughts? Our actions? The deepest part of a person is where all these things stem from, but they are not necessarily the most defining aspect of our humanity.  For now, I will define the common understanding of the sinful nature as ‘our propensity to sin’.  Let’s break that down a little bit.

What causes us to sin? What causes someone to commit adultery? Well they are probably lonely, wanting to experience intimacy, love, and desiring companionship. Are these desires bad? Of course not, in fact when we look closely they are actually good, they are part of who God created us to be! What causes someone to drink in access or do drugs? Chances are they want to feel good, or to escape from their pain, hurt, or shame.  Well we aren’t created to experience those things, the desire to not have them is also good! What causes someone to lie about themselves? Deep down they have a need to be valued, to belong, and to be recognized; they do not experience that, and so try to make that happen by pretending they are someone they are not. Again these needs and desires actually point to the goodness of our design, not the depravity of our essence. All sin stems from needs or desires that we are actually created to have fulfilled, needs and desires that aren’t bad. So the sinful nature, although can be the root of why we sin, isn’t the deepest part of who we are. So why do we sin? Well, because of confusion, of blindness, of insecurity, hurt, and shame. We sin because we have deep God given needs, but we have insecurity and a conscience understanding of good and bad that causes us to strive to look for activity, thoughts, ideas, systems, substances, or relationships to answer those needs. It isn’t the need that’s the problem, it’s that whole way of functioning! We will never find fulfillment when we use our understanding of what is good and bad to live in certain ways. From this mode of functioning we will always do things that won’t satisfy, because there isn’t anything that can while we exist within that framework. The sinful nature then, is this way of functioning, it is not a state of being.

To identify what this way of functioning is, we need to go back to see where things got off track. Humanity was created to live within the perfect relationship of the Father, Son, and Spirit. To share in their joy, creativity, intimacy, and love.  We were completely naked and unashamed; no darkness, doubt, insecurity, or fear existed in our hearts. There was no need for rules to regulate our behavior, no relational advice for how to treat each other, and no moral code or guidelines. We didn’t need them, humanity was pure in heart and spirit, willing to be fully known.

Satan came and started planting doubt and insecurity in our minds. Why is God holding out on you? Don’t you know you could be so much more than you are? Doubt, fear, and uncertainty was presented to our hearts, as well as the promise of fulfilling the need to be something we never even knew we had. Then Adam and Eve ate from the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil, which God told them that if they ate of it they would die. What happened when they ate of it? Simple, humanity became consciously aware of the difference between good and bad.  We never had a conscience before, and it brings death! The knowledge of good and evil came on the foundation of doubt and insecurity. You tell me, what happens when someone feels insecure and has an understanding of what is good and bad? They will use their knowledge of good and bad to try to solve or disprove their insecurity.

And that is how the sinful nature came into existence. Good and evil playing off of the existence of shame, doubt, fear, and insecurity. What does it produce? All sorts of striving, straining, religiosity, jealousy, selfishness, pride, and sin. Again, it is a way of functioning, not a state of being. We never lost our state of being, our design, what we were created for. What happened was we became blinded and confused by our shame, and then our conscience was awakened and became the tool we used to try and overcome our insecurity. When you think about it, this way of functioning is really the cause of all personal, relational, and global suffering. It’s what turns us in towards ourselves and away from vulnerable face to face relationship.

Are we stuck with this sinful nature forever? No of course not, we just need stop functioning out of insecurity, shame, doubt, and pain; oh and we need to stop using our conscience to try and navigate our understanding of who we are. Seem impossible?  Think about it, how many of our actions, relationships, activities, thoughts, and emotions revolve around using our understanding of good and bad to climb our way out of our insecurities? How much do our insecurities shape our self-image, causing us to fall into comparison, jealousy, and deep feelings of inadequacy? How often do we justify our thoughts, emotions, and choices based on our own personal understanding of right and wrong? Do you see how that is just a hamster wheel of insecurity, striving, and self-justification?

Unfortunately this Sinful Nature, this way of processing and functioning, exists at the root of most of our relationships, jobs, activities, and even flows into the way we engage in religion. Unfortunately our understanding and construction of Christianity is often completely interpreted from this fallen way of functioning. We end up defining Jesus, salvation, heaven, hell, worship, prayer, and church from our insecurity and our obsession with good and bad. Christianity just becomes another good/bad entity in our consciences that help us try and overcome our insecurity.  We feel justified for doing certain things like ‘accepting Jesus into our hearts’, or going to church on Sunday’s. We feel good about ourselves for overcoming certain behaviors and comparing ourselves to others we judge through our conscience’s as bad. We create systems of ‘climbing’, ‘serving’, and ‘becoming’ something in God to give us a system to sate our insecurity. We forget that God never wanted us to function in that way to begin with!

I am definitely writing too long, but when we look at Jesus, we see that He is introducing a whole new reality to us, a new way of functioning. We killed Jesus because we could not recognize Him, He doesn’t make any sense to our sinful nature. Yet He came to end that for us by meeting our deepest needs and by fulfilling the requirement that our conscience demanded.  In so many different ways, believing in Jesus is our salvation from the death of our sinful way of functioning.  Thinking we are saved, ‘if we believe’, is just another idea produced out of our insecurity and systems of self-justification. 

Believing in Jesus is seeing everything differently. Instead of shame, my belief in Jesus is my belief in my innocence. Instead of feeling like I need value, I see in the person of Jesus how valued I am. Instead of feeling bad about my mistakes, I see in Jesus that they are not held against me. Instead of striving to justify myself through good living, I see Jesus showing me that it has nothing to do with my conception of good and bad.  Jesus didn’t come to change our behavior, He came to change the root of our behavior, which was our sinful nature. He came to introduce us to a whole new world, and He did so by entering into ours, submitting Himself to our angst, frustration, shame, pride, and insecurity. When we believe in Jesus we are no longer functioning from insecurity or conscience.  There is more I would like to say, and things I would like to articulate in greater depth, but this will have to do.  I will close with these verses of scripture.

“How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God (Hebrews 9:14).”

“Let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water (Hebrews 10:22).”

“Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires (Galatians 5:24).”

“For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4).”

Learning to See Christ In Me!

Expecting the bitter bite of cold, I was pleasantly surprised to find the water was very comfortable to be in. It wasn't long before I had dipped my head beneath the surface. I felt the silky water moved against my skin, and ripples moved and undulated away from me as I brushed the surface of the lake with my hand. I noticed the hint of fall colors just beginning to show themselves in the trees, and took pleasure in the rustling leaves as the wind played through the branches. The sun reflected and danced over the water, and I felt a deep pleasure well up within me; wonder bubbling to take expression in my heart and on my face.

My last couple blogs contain my theological journey into understanding that the Gospel is the good news that we are united to the Father, Son, and Spirit, not that we somehow need to make that happen. Furthermore, not only are we wrapped up into the relationship of the trinity, but Christ is actually inside of us! We aren't relating to a distant deity trying to get Him involved in our lives, we are waking up to the reality of how included and and involved He already is! I am now going to try and communicate how this truth has changed me and how I relate to God, to others, and to creation. I want to share some insight into how I experience Christ in me.

If we start relating with God from a belief of separation, my interaction with Him will need to be completely different then anything I think, feel, or experience on a normal day to day basis. If I am separate from Him, then everything that I am and everything that I experience has to be interpreted as originating primarily from myself or from this world. This means that any 'relationship' I make with God is very disconnected from everything that I know and everything that I am.

Separation is the fundamental belief that religion thrives on. Since I am separated, now I have religious/spiritual life that I need to add onto the natural/human life that I currently have. I now have to separate my life into these two categories, spiritual and natural. This dualistic way of thinking easily goes one step further and becomes Gnosticism, which has always been recognized as a heresy within the church. Since I am separate from God, anything that I currently experience, think, feel, and know is bad, while anything that is spiritual, religious, or different then my normal life is good. That is Gnosticism in a nutshell, reject the physical to pursue the spiritual. Thinking this way leads to a very disconnected life with lots of straining and striving. It creates confusion, uncertainty, shame, and pride. Our lives become a disjointed attempt to supplant our natural human experience with some sort of religious or spiritual one. This will be awkward and it won't feel natural or very human.

The underlying cause of this binary way of living, is the belief that we are separated from God. I have discovered that Jesus came to show that we aren't separate, but united to Him and to His Father! Union is the main premise of the good news, and when we start with union we interpret our thoughts, emotions, and experiences very differently. There is no separation between God and I. He is involved in my life, I don't' need to get Him involved. Now I look to see what He is doing and what He is saying. My relationship with Him starts with us already being together, it isn't something that I need to make happen. My faith is my active participation in a relationship that already exists from God's side of the equation.

In Christ He reconciled all things to Himself, and united Himself to us while we were still rejecting Him in the blindness of our sin. He is at work in our hearts and minds, leading us into His light and truth, revealing Himself in us, and showing us the life we were always created to live. If I need to make this relationship happen, then I will always be on the hamster wheel of religion, trying to make it happen and wondering if I am doing it right. This relationship isn't something that we choose, we do not invite Jesus into our lives, He has included us in His life. Now we are waking up to this great dance of relationship that we are already in, and we can actively participate as it is unveiled in our lives.

Baxter Kruger puts it so succinctly. "If it is my job to get Jesus into my heart, then I will spend my entire life trying to get Him in there, and the rest of it trying to convince myself that He is actually there." This way of thinking only leads to comparison, insecurity, introspection, self-justification, and religion! I don't believe that anymore. Jesus included us all in His life, death, and resurrection. He united Himself to the entire cosmos in our darkness, hurt, confusion, pain, and rejection of Him. From there He is sharing His life with us, and inviting us to participate in the relationship and life that He has already brought us into. I am learning to understand and interpret my experience from this union; it is so refreshing to me, and is very different from when I interpreted my life believing I was separate from God. It has been a process of repentance, of changing my mind, and it still is! Jesus has presented us with a whole different reality, and asks us that we agree with Him and re-think everything we have thought to be true. Here are some of the ways He has renewed my mind.

About a month ago I went up to my families cabin for the weekend to help close it up for the winter. My grandparents live on the lake during the summer time, but then leave for Northfield MN before the cold of winter arrives. They are getting older and so are less able to accomplish the chores and tasks that need to be done at this time of year. The opening of this blog described what took place when I went swimming after a short run.

As I gazed around me at the beauty of creation, experiencing wonder within me, I had quite a large paradigm shift. In the past when I have experienced joy or wonder in creation, I have interpreted that as seeing God's glory in the beauty of what I am seeing. I then would feel compelled to 'give God credit' in some way for the beauty before me. In a subtle almost unrecognizable way that line of reasoning is premised by the idea that God is 'out there'. This moment was different for me than others. As I swam there in the lake, I realized that I wasn't just attributing the beauty that I saw to God, but that my very wonder and appreciation for that beauty was from Him. I am united to Him, He is in me. When God created the world He said, 'It is good'. When I behold the world He is resonating His delight and enjoyment in me and I also say, 'It is good'. My delight and wonder isn't something I make up, it is actually God sharing His life and wonder in me, expressing His delight through me!

I realized something so beautiful; any love I feel, yearning for relationship, recognition of truth, compassion, or delight in beauty, only exists because I am united in Christ! The Father, Son, and Spirit are sharing their life in and through me, resonating with me their love, joy, peace, and wholeness. I can't interpret those experiences as set apart from God, but as His voice and presence within me! Relating with God, hearing His voice, and responding to Him isn't me conforming to an outside principle or reality, it is responding and recognizing the voice and presence that is already within me. As I recognize how He is already united to me, I don't live from a place of straining and striving to build a relationship with God, but instead, I live from a place of discovery and enjoyment of the relationship that already exists.

I now see God in my recognition of beauty, joy, love, and wholeness. I am learning to recognize His presence as the source of those things in my life, and am learning that I don't need to 'search for Him out there'. I now can see God within myself, how He is moving and shaping, producing His love, sensitivity, compassion, wisdom, and joy inside me. Relating with God is now very personal, very present, very real! It isn't something that is 'out there', something that I 'need to accomplish'. His presence isn't distant from my normal ordinary life but inextricably connected to it! My thanksgiving and praise is the simple acknowledgement of His voice and my active awareness of Him rather than a forced expression to a God I believe demands it or is 'other than me'.

Even my love and awareness of God is Christ in me, we don't manufacture that on our own. So much of religion is built on separation and a relationship based on the idea we need to 'build' with God. This isn't further from the truth. Christ came and united Himself to us, He is at work within us, speaking to us, leading us, and producing life in us. Our relationship with Him is actively being aware and enjoying that union, not making it happen! . It is contemplative and mystical, but very personal and real. He is with me, within me, and He is in you too.

My Grandpa loves to work, he loves to use his hands and strength to accomplish projects. He takes delight in being able to build, do chores, and fix things. I love my Grandpa very much. Because I love Him I know what he delights in and therefore I delight in participating with what he is doing. As we worked that weekend I felt his delight and satisfaction as we raked the yard and took in the dock. It wasn't work for me, but a joyful experience of relationship with my Grandpa. This is how God is teaching me to relate with Him, and I believe that's how He wants to relate with all of us. He is very passionate about life, goodness, wholeness, and love. He is the creator of harmony, relationship, and the origin of all goodness. He is sharing Himself with us, resonating His delight and love for life at the core of our being. Our relationship with Him is one of recognizing His presence in our hearts and minds, learning to love Him, and out of that love living within the things that He takes delight in.

This is the most intimate relationship we can ever experience, it is what we were created for. To experience face to face relationship with the Father, Son, and Spirit, to respond to His heart, and to live in His love as He shares it with us. This isn't about religiously conforming our lives to principles or ideas, it isn't about making something happen or about looking 'out there' for God. This is about participating in the very source of life, of realizing that we are united with Him and that there is no separation! It is about learning to recognize His voice within us and joining in the dance of God's other centered love and delight. As I realize my union, I attribute many of my emotions, experiences, and insights to His presence, and not to myself. I am learning to relate to Christ in me, and I have hope that it will only become more glorious (Colossians 1:27)!

The 'Not So Out There' Jesus

I have gone through a huge paradigm shift over the last couple years when it comes to seeing and experiencing God. This hasn't only been an intellectual overhaul, but an experiential one as well. I have always thought of God as being 'out there'. What do I mean by that? I mean that I have primarily interpreted by thoughts, emotions, and experiences as originating in myself; and therefore since I start from a place of independence, any interaction and pursuit of God has to be towards a God that is 'outside of myself'. Does that make any sense? Believing I am alone; I have prayed and worshiped and interpreted my experience from the standpoint that God is 'out there' somewhere and I want to get Him in with me and my life.

The reason I have thought that way is why we all do. First off, I often feel separate from God! We are all such natural control freaks governed by shame and anxiety, that our experience tells us that we are alone. I often feel alone, feel like everything in me and in my experience originates primarily from myself. I have a very self-centered perspective, the world must revolve around me right? Everybody is so aware of who I am and what I do. . anyone relate?

Unfortunately the feeling of being alone is validated in our lives by theology that tells us we are alone. Christian teachers affirm our 'feelings' by telling us we are excluded by God, that we are separate from Him and He from us. We are told that Jesus made a way for us to 'get' to God, and now it is up to us to put in the right amount of effort in order to do so. Get to God. . . a God that is 'out there', beyond us, and removed from my experience. Like I said in the beginning, my perspective has taken a rather large shift.

First off, I am already extremely self-centered; if I am told that God is 'out there' inviting me to include Him in my life, where am I going to start trying to do that? Through my own behavior of course! I am going to navel gaze, to fall into introspection, and try and figure out what I can do right to get God involved. My faith is going to start with me, what do I need to do in order to get Jesus into my life/heart/whatever you want to call it. As Baxter Kruger so succinctly puts it, "If I need to ask Jesus into my heart then I will spend my whole life trying to get Him in, and the rest of it trying to convince myself that He is actually there."

The idea that God is 'out there' makes a whole lot of sense to my experience; and since I am so used to anxiety and fear, it seems normal to interact with God through that lens of will power and selfishness. That is until I realized that I what I have been trying to make happen has been true all along, I have just been blind to it!

You see, Jesus united Himself to me, to you, and to the whole world. The whole point of Him coming was that we couldn't 'climb the mountain' to 'get to Him'.  Jesus, talking about when the Holy Spirit would come said, "on that day you will know, that I am in my Father, that I am in you, and that you are in me (John 14:20)." Wait, what did Jesus just say? He said that the Holy Spirit was going to reveal to us that Jesus is already inside of us! Woah! Take a look at when the apostle Paul was reflecting on encountering God, he sad, 'God was pleased to reveal His son in me.' Wait, so Jesus was already inside a man that was rampaging around killing Christians! Apparently so. Furthermore Paul's mission was to 'reveal Jesus in the Gentiles (Galatians 1:16).' God was in Christ reconciling the cosmos to Himself, Jesus universally represents us all, and included us in His life death and resurrection! I am not separate from Him, Jesus has brought me in, He is inside of me, closer than my next breath!

What does that mean for our faith, for walking out this whole Christian thing? First off, we aren't looking 'out there' for Jesus, we are looking to see Him already with us! That means we have to reinterpret all of our experiences of separation, distance, and exclusion, because they aren't true. Yes you heard me right, those experiences are not what is true in reality. Jesus has always been united to us, always been speaking to us, sharing His life with us, and guiding us. It is our shame, hurt, and pain that blinds us to it; and yet it is actually at the deepest places of our hurt that Jesus united Himself to us! He died for us while we were dead in our sins. It is there, in our hurt and pain where He is doing His redemptive work, that is where He is pouring out streams of living water.

What do we need to do? We need to ask the Holy Spirit to open the eyes of our hearts so that we can see Jesus there. We need to let go of our pretense and shame to actually get deep enough into ourselves to experience the God of life that has been sustaining us all along. We need to learn to recognize how anxiety, fear, and shame influence our perception and decision making. We aren't made to live from those! We need to fight against the lie of separation by calling it a lie. We need to speak the truth so that our minds can come into alignment with reality. I am not separated, I am in union with Jesus. Now I start coming to terms with the contradictions in my experience, the hurt that I feel, and the lies I believe. Now we ask, since Jesus is in me, how has He been at work in my heart and in my life? How is Jesus sharing His life with me in this situation, what is He speaking to me? These aren't questions that make us look outside of ourselves for the answer, but in. He is already with us, already leading and speaking to us. His way is the one of hope, truth, and love; look for how that is taking effect in your life.

We need to interpret our life from union not from separation like we normally do.  If I start with separation, the responsibility still rests on my shoulders to get to God; therefore I start from insecurity and remain self centered. If I start with inclusion and union, I learn to let-go of my efforts and to sink into a place of trusting and seeing how Jesus is already holding and sustaining me. In this way my faith starts with Him not with me.

 "Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them (John 7:37-38."