2022-11-27 A Meditation on Our Own Genuineness

“Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted,” (2 Ti 3:12 ESV)

Wise counsel bears with its giver the warning: you will be misunderstood. You will be loved, but then hated. You will bear blame. You are putting yourself out there, to give this kind of counsel. Life has a tendency to mediocrity, and rebels against any clarion vision or counsel. Life doesn’t “like” the challenge to its own addictions and habitual thought processes.

Addictions, widely spelt, include many things: this is by no means a diminishment of that kind of addiction that bears itself out in punishing and abusive ways towards those near to the addict, but still it is a salute to the understanding of those ways we emotionally step on others, that we spiritually stay with the pack, mediocre, questioning, doubting. So we each of us have a call to be familiar with life experience taught us, prior to our own engagement with said puzzle of life: we are taught that each of us will have to foot a spiritual bill; each of us is in debt to the one who brought us; each of us has a calling and a fashion of work or service in the world.

That work brings some back from the “front” eyes wide and astonished at the cruelty of man towards man, or more than that, the internal self that gives pause: the decrepitude, misshapen, internal self each of us possesses. The internal “addiction” that brings us to familiarity with total submission, or total allegiance, to a “Higher Power”: “I am in myself unable to overcome the emotional woundedness” (which echoes, “I am in myself unable to stop this problem drinking/drug”); “I am in need of external aid, a Higher Power”.

In this clarion light, we have reached rock bottom of our own selfishness. We become strangely lovable, especially by those who knew us before: we are now negotiable, that is, our affections and passions are things we have stared at squarely, and can now speak lightly of them, in contrition, in teamwork, with others. So we are not hated to have “converted”, but loved all the more: still, the grand patterns of life, make that some people are naturally affectionate to one brand of person, and others to another. Each of us post-conversion is aiming for a higher coming together, a broader reach of mutual respect and admiration. We long to “fix” that dislike or the innate judgment towards people different from us. That in itself is a mediocrity and flood-water, and our mission is to plead to one another: “the day is too short for hatred; come, let us reason together”.

For we know this, that the respect we bear towards those coming back from the “front” is a respect for our own lacking life experience; we learnt the gospel in a cradle of love, of similitude, from one different: from one who learnt it in a battle zone. Our internal lashing out, our misunderstanding manner, is a tempest in a teapot: it is our own re-experienced battle zone; we need that “end of the rope” passion and angst; we need, in some sense, to have experienced utter, begging, all-invested need, from a Higher Power. All this, to say, that His burden is easy and His yoke light, for the rare gem of a person out there, who has shouldered too much burden, and who is trained, brought up loving and wisely, to understand all must find their proper work, and be in the business of healing, of friendship, of affection, of commiseration; all have love to share, and love to hold high, even whilst those addictions of the heart, that internal band of selfishness, attack and diminish the healthsome new tendencies we have.