2024-08-14 A Meditation on What’s Out There
“16 Now while Paul was waiting for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him as he saw that the city was full of idols. 17 So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons, and in the marketplace every day with those who happened to be there. 18 Some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers also conversed with him. And some said, “What does this babbler wish to say?” Others said, “He seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities”—because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection. 19 And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? 20 For you bring some strange things to our ears. We wish to know therefore what these things mean.” 21 Now all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new.” (Acts 17:16-21 ESV)
The question of what’s “out there” is met with the Christian’s boldness nonetheless—we have imperfect knowledge—the personal decisions as they are made in Christ, are our contract and relationship with the unknown. Christ is wisdom. Christ is habit. Christ is perfectibility. Christ is personal conviction met with outward compassion, kindness, goodness.
To the training, then, because it is our personal sphere where we can effect change. To the disciplines, then, because it is our harrowing overall framework that can be readied: readied for an Encounter that may come off like a long lost Reunion, or may sparkle with all the Newness of a new Name, Christ-Like, Christ-Follower, Christian. We indeed Today have this power within ourselves, to make the right response to the Unknown simply by the personal decision to believe.
To grow into our Christ-Like, Christ-Follower, Christian habits and digs, uniforms and emblems, is to be that punchy spirit of radical truth claim. It is to be that Tomorrow-Dwelling emblem of certain wars being already won and others, larger battles, ours Today to dwell upon. In mind. In spirit. In truthfulness and honesty around all temptations, adulteries, horrifying intrusions.
We are intruded upon no longer, because we went grand rather than peculiar. We went All-In on the Confession of Sin and the Problem Therein, rather than eeking out a living as some sort of perfect specimen. We got messy. We got nasty about the untrained Demon. We got furious about the robbery and theft underway. We acknowledged the absolute Fascination with certain stripes of unconscious association and desired-upon discourse: more on that, please! It is addictive, the little rewards promised, the exhibitionary lure of the Pied Piper, yet too the cleaner Brand of Soul whose words also titillate while touching upon the Unspoken and the Illicit, no longer threat to our composure, as we silence the stranger voices and know ourselves to be in a womb, hemmed up as in healed, no fearmongering, no fear of the unspoken, no compulsion to seek out those images of another Brand of Divinity. Yet, too, we remain Humble: ours is a world mad on sin and theft, mad on false pretenses of on the one hand the one who presumes upon a potency and perch, and the other who fails to Rise Up to what perch and posture and potency is awarded. These may need each other, or if not literally each other then an appreciation for Type and Spirit, all working together for this brand or category of Man, of Woman, meeting that brand or category. Together we become the Same Spirit, one of Submission and Duty, outward-facing, sticking up for the teammates, and ignoring those unmalleable Otherness Spirits out there.