28 September, 2008

getting people involved or getting involved with people?

so over the past week or two, i’ve been contemplating this idea: at my community group, we have been planning some sort of outreach event (specifically a football game). the purpose, of course, to attempt to wrangle non-believers in so that we can connect with them and invite them to our community group. i feel very uncomfortable with this. earlier, i thought it was a good idea and that things like this needed to be done, but after praying and thinking about it for a while, i’ve come to the conclusion that i very much disagree with events like this.

the reason i disagree with these events is because they’re exactly what allow me to compartmentalize God. by taking time out of my “normal” day to do things like this, i can “leave it all on the field” and return to business as usual once the event is over. that’s a HUGE problem for me. when we turn our lives over to Christ, He doesn’t want us to keep living the rest of our normal lives with a little Jesus splashed on top or in the cracks. we have to give Him EVERYTHING! i don’t think we should go out of our way to make time for Jesus, i think we need to go out of our way to involve Him everything that we do.

we don’t need to put together outreach events to get people involved. we need to get involved with people. we don’t need to start bringing people to our events, we need to start going to people: to their events, their parties, their movies, their houses. i wonder what Jesus would think if He got invited to a bible study. i like to think about this picture in my head sometimes. Jesus has come back and is in disguise as a homeless man at a bus stop. two people walk up to Him: one of them is wearing a suit and tie and invites Him to a bible study, the other one is a poor man who offers Jesus dinner for the night. who does Jesus go with? i’m reminded very much of the verse that says [...'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for Me.] matthew 25:40.

and even when i think about Jesus and His own ministry. He didn’t travel around the countryside inviting people to the temple to study and worship His Father. He went to go feed, heal, give water to, and nourish. and if Jesus is our example, that’s what we should do.

i’m tired of getting people involved. i want to get involved with people. if my faith comes up, then so be it. but if not, at least someone will know they are loved at the end of the day: by me and by my Father in heaven.

15 September, 2008

hooray for dying

funny story. i had an interesting conversation with a friend of mine the other day. i thought the conversation was going well until statements like these were made… “talking to you is so frustrating. i don’t even know why i do it anymore. i don’t know what you did with lawrence, but you should bring him back because i’m tired of talking to whatever you’ve become. you don’t have any personality of your own anymore. let me know when the real lawrence comes back.”

so at this point, i’m pretty upset. i don’t know why anyone would say that to me. i feel like if anything, i’m discovering more and more who i really am.

and then i was finishing up mere christianity by c.s. lewis (which is an awesome book, by the way) and i came across this section. it’s much longer than what you’ll see below, but i figured this was sufficient. warning: lewis is known to write very… densely. follow closely. if you get lost, just re-read it. it’ll come clear eventually.

On this view the thing has happened: the new step has been taken and is being taken. Already the new men are dotted here and there all over the earth. Some, as I have admitted, are still hardly recognisable: but others can be recognised. Every now and then one meets them. Their very voices and faces are different from ours: stronger, quieter, happier, more radiant. They begin where most of us leave off. They are, I say, recognisable; but you must know what to look for. They will not be very like the idea of “religious people” which you have formed from your general reading. They do not draw attention to themselves. You tend to think that you are being kind to them when they are really being kind to you. they love you more than other men do, but they need you less… They will usually seem to have a lot of time: you will wonder where it comes from. when you have recognised one of them, you will recognise the next one much more easily. And I strongly suspect that they recognise one another immediately and infallibly, across every barrier of colour, sex, class, age, and even of creeds. In that way, to become holy is rather like joining a secret society. To put it at the very lowest, it must be fun.
But you must not imagine that the new men are, in the ordinary sense, all alike… To become new men means losing what we now call “ourselves.” Out of ourselves, into Christ we must go. His will is to become ours and we are to think His thoughts, to “have the mind of Christ” as the bible says. And if Christ is one, and if He is thus to be “in” us all, shall we not be exactly the same? It certainly sounds like it; but in fact it is not so.
It is difficult here to get a good illustration; because of course, no other two things are related to each other just as the Creator is related to one of His creatures. But I will try… Imagine a lot of people who have always lived in the dark. You come and try to describe to them what light is like. You might tell them that if they come into the light that same light would fall on them all and they would all reflect it and thus become what we call visible. Is it not quite possible that they would imagine that, since they were all recieving the same light, and all reacting to it in the same way (i.e., all reflecting it), they would all look alike? Whereas you and I know that the light will in fact bring out, or show up, how different they are…
It is something like that with Christ and us. The more we get what we now call “ourselves” out of the way and let Him take us over, the more truly ourselves we become. There is so much of Him that millions and millions of “little Christs,” all different, will still be too few to express Him fully… The more I resist Him and try to live on my own, the more I become dominated by my own heredity and upbringing and surroundings and natural desires… It is when I turn to Christ, when I give myself up to His Personality, that I first begin to have a real personality of my own.
At the beginning I said there were Personalities of God. I will go further now. There are no real personalities anywhere else. Until you have given up your self to Him you will not have a real self. Sameness is to be found among the most “natural” men, not among those who surrender to Christ. How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors have been: how gloriously different are the saints.
But there must be a real giving up of the self. You must throw it away “blindly” so to speak. Christ will indeed give you a real personality: but you must not go to Him for the sake of that. As long as your own personality is what you are bothering about, you are not going to Him at all. The very first step is to forget about the self altogether. Your real, new self (which is Christ’s and also yours, and yours just because it is His) will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for Him. Does that sound strange? The same principle holds, you know, for more everyday matters. Even in social life, you will never make a good impression on other people until you stop thinking about what sort of impression you are making. Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it. The principle runs through all life from top to bottom. Give up your self, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it… Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.

so yea. like i was saying… earlier i was kind of upset that this old friend of mine would say something like this to me, but now… i’m finding a sort of comfort in it. it means (i hope) that i’m making progress. as more and more of the old me dies, Christ is taking over more and more. and i guess in a sense, i’m becoming more fully myself than i have ever been before.

cool beans. =]

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