2022-11-13 A Meditation on Certainty
“And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.” (1 Co 15:14 ESV)
Top notch certainty means the disciple entertains wild notions of godliness, expert experiences with saintliness, much dabbling with heaven-sent manna. Certainty is no egoistic band-aid, no suture to woundedness, but rather it is God’s Plan for us. It is His reminder that, yes of course; we know: we are sinners. But whilst we wrestle with this fact, a deeper war is being fought as to whether we know the Cross: Man was evil beyond measure, not just to sinners, but in particular to One free of sin. If He is loved, then so are we.
Therefore we who exercise spiritual heft do so in the stark plea that none approach with old hangups and residual Religiosity. Those hang ups are precisely where today we want boldness: boldness from the quarters of those especially who self-doubt, who are meek, who are humble, who may sit in the pew in contrition and take a knee irregardless of how glad happy and accustomed to being there, their neighbor in the pew may be.
Top notch certainty is the way we first begin to design upon the heart a salvific omen. A salvific unction. A salvific response to the meanness and intimidation of a world gone mad. There, not in personally-designed visions; there, not in one’s own produce; there, is found a courage greater than the weights of sin and of the day. Each day burdens us, and we begin halfheartedly at times, to adopt the sins of our past, over and against those sins far beyond our own we are called to shoulder; and lest we forget, we know ourselves to languish apart from high octane and pedal-to-the-metal prospects of Mercy and of Cross.
Divine prospects of humanly-understood language: this day, forget what lies behind, and strive forward for the upward call of God in Christ Jesus (Phil 3:13). Such call cannot brook anything less than complete acceptance, complete miracle, complete inspiration, complete Purpose. We are Purposefully dwelling in the Already-But-Not-Yet. We are to cast off all that impugns and hinders. We are today to speak a new language, not forgetting reasons to love each other, but forgetful of so-called “facts” that are as-of-yet unclothed by the Gospel. We are to forget, that we might better remember. We are to ask anew. We are to get our money’s worth for what Jesus did for us, for you and for me, on that Cross so many years ago. It is our possession, one called an opiate in recent generations, yet we are not drugged; one called a crutch in scientifically-idolatrous circles, yet we are not limping; one called a fantasy in pragmatic atheism, yet we have tried that narrative (for it is a narrative), and found no time: we race to the Cross, and there turn outwards to love and to bless because, as for us, we are no longer in doubt; we are those saved, entered upon salvific knowledge, higher things, top notch certainty.
The atheist throughout history has made joke of Jesus’ own brand of distrust and disbelief: He stared down the temple authorities; He redeemed language around things like prayer to the Father; He reclaimed Healing purposes; He knew complete failure, and failure of those whom we naturally make some un-thought-out brand of submission unto: the religious authorities. So the nervously embedded now in the pew, kneeling, saying their personal prayers, is also to enter in upon the Inheritance, and to stand tall.
Somewhere in there is a living exchange, a purchase, and a narrative most salient. Somewhere, you and I find ourselves mesmerized unto first acquaintances, reacquaintances, second chances of which we scarcely even mention what things lie now in the past.
Somewhere, the tokens of unity and the duties of the religiously-employed, are safeguarded, in order that amidst a deeply-flawed world, we might still have some license to believe, as fools, as misunderstood, as boldly claiming the Good News today.