2023-08-03 A Meditation on From Thought to Heart
“9 “Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations for my name’s sake. 10 And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another. 11 And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. 12 And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold. 13 But the one who endures to the end will be saved. 14 And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.” (Mt 24:9–14 ESV)
One’s peculiar adventure is the Gospel. Theological ideas find the capable and deft handling of the sinner. Not of the thinker. Not of the theorist. But of the one putting brick to mortar, to foundation. Behold I stand at the door and knock, etc.
Stylized to be meaning and momentum, direction and sway, the ideas are in fact experience and discovery. We self-discover. We do our theology by way of honoring a fascinating endeavor, a fascinating movement, a fascinating relationship. The soldier knows appraisal that is pat, somehow tuned in to a Divine Channel wherein who knows but that for a few brief all-inclusive moments the meaning is coming from oneself. One finds oneself a right regular prophet of the Christ, of that Jesus each of us is capable of being towards a neighbor or friend.
Life is careening in and out of cogency, structured and meaningful ideas all of a sudden questioned and victim of a landslide of confusion, yet here the crucial idea insists on taking root: that God is found in one experience, one principle held aloft, one Spirit who assures. We don’t need to have the full dissertation written on the matter. We go forth light of baggage, in joy that the Christ has invited us and sent us forth to bear witness. Yes, and each of us is that Witness, all life seen through a new lens. Together, we will learn and accomplish.
Seen anew is all our tales of man’s suffering: if Adam was to work the land by the sweat of his brow, we say “Not the Gospel!”. The Gospel is to understand that this pastoral reminder (for how many do slave over hard labors?) has been replaced in our generation by a Kingdom Now theology. Machiavelli later quoth that it is only better to be feared than to be loved; “Not the Gospel!”. To study these fascinating movements of the human spirit, is to be for each other a Gospel correction. To correct and Believe, though all life is tempted and all thoughts reminded of cynical disposition. We somehow can overcome the prevalent ideas of the age: evolutionary necessity and efficiency, so “obviously true”, yet today met with Intelligent Design, or some better endeavor: Man and Woman are today to find their special place, and give this over to a God who was hip to the ideas of His age.
Hip to the ideas, we emerge from a bout of theologizing to ponder anew the Call always and actually to be Christian. Something simple is called for, some basic act of worship or prayer. All our pent up edifice of words gives way to the Call truly to believe. All manner of thought is replanted with simple and necessary seeds of the Gospel. Today, if we hear His voice. Today, in a religiosity not boring nor half-hearted, but rather full of all that is wonderful and lovely, full of breath of fresh air and all-encompassing relevance, particularity, needful pleading after our own hearts, for our hearts are Sought, and our hearts are Found.
Yes, the banal, the poverty-stricken, original notions of Faith meet a robust theology that in all hours as critical hours goes the distance, making hay of all the weird and wonderful ideas and visions we accumulate. God is not asking us to sit back. He asks us to know that frustrating sense of an incomplete religion, and to Encounter fully today’s faith: God is in the highways and the byways. God is wonderful beyond expectation, we radically heal when peace and hope is the message rather than a checklist of appropriateness. Yes, and these ideas will get us thrown out of churches. But we have discovered a personal sanctity wherein we can live alongside the Holy and the Celibate laborers of divine proportions. For the heart post-evolved, post-evolutionary-ambition, post-breeding and post-spreading-far-and-wide does spread far and wide a Seed that is heir and circumstance to each of us, as missionaries.