2024-05-15 A Meditation on End Purposes

“7 Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith. 8 Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. 9 Do not be led away by diverse and strange teachings, for it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by foods, which have not benefited those devoted to them. 10 We have an altar from which those who serve the tent have no right to eat.” (Heb 13:7-10 ESV)

The courage to write is a courage first to question, vastly competing principles, a philosopher, engineer, and thinker all hazarding to hold on for dear life while in public all seems inchoate, impossible, wild-eyed, and frantic. For, the best in our midst may in fact be occupied. The absolute question for the poor Christian reformed thinker, then, is, “What is it all about, after all?” What guides us? What should our philosophy and engine room and thought-space all work in service to?

As a Christian, it is in service to a plain day called Tomorrow, where we speak truth to our neighbor and alight upon plain colors flown, thoughts debated, comforts of community and of academy, of workplace and of firm, all peacefully cleansed of hushed up strategizing. The hushed up panicky response to a society teetering on adoption of technologies new, is a response to bear witness, witness to plain-as-day Love, to Fellowship and strange wandering spirits, out and about in the community whilst rehearsing not the theocracy nor the ideology but the pastoral vibe, the pastoral final intent, the pastoral shepherd’s might.

And as Soldiers, too, a resolve or strange business called Adoption or called Infiltration or called Subsistence, to bear in our flesh the same wounds borne by Christ. We are called to have faith, the outer craziness is a call to inner calm. We are called and equipped strangely to find leaders in the midst of the pack, and inspiration in the everyman’s tale. We are called and equipped strangely to see in plain Gospel Christianity an answering point unto questions of what it’s all about. And as plain Gospel Christian members of the battalion, we are each of us possessed of a final rite that stuns the devil and upbuilds the believer, to hear that one Church Service sublime, that promise of a tomorrow dare met and whisked along in superlative guile.

Therefore to man the turrets is to remain utterly inspired by a solution most sublime, yet most ultimate and decisive, that God is for us; that we do well to be plainspoken and eager rather than debating empty end purposes. Our debate is regarding knowing the Lord, for whom all is a basic call unto existential Forgiveness: do you know yourself a sinner? All is a basic call unto existential Adoption: do you know yourself a Son, a Daughter? All is a basic call unto no nonsense busy-ness around not your parents’ boring faith platform, but a zeitgeist, an invasion of all unholy fascinations, a restoration of so much fledgling vision seen in youth then lost in the wearying gears and climes of growing up. All those things, too, are His. All those things, too, are the church’s weirdly wonderful fascinating yet forgiven fascination. We are somehow the more reliable as church-folk, if only we are able to find ourselves forgiven the pretense and the pride. If only we are able to find ourselves remade and innocently adopted… too much to ask? Then allow the Spirit to humble, allow the Spirit to modify, to reshape, to pray patiently over each one. That they be a curious asset to the community, not a self-righteous outpost. That they man the battlements but not delight in war but rather in its useful submission unto the Commander in Chief who reigns on high. To work wonders unto a peaceful new day, not a boring day but a wondrous rain of blessed curiosities indulged and fraternal ties remade, of romance and mystery, of distant future hope and present-day sublimity, joy for the seeker for whom it is no apologia to be found a bit wandering, a bit gregarious about friends’ time together, a bit awestruck and certain in at least some things: that God is for us; that our depressive alternate conclusions regarding no end in sight, meet a Good End in sight, Christ’s return to life to inspire and with patience to upbuild, to pray fervently through the wounds as they slow our speech and make thoughtful any and all words, words earned through Death, His Death, that our own be not cause for alarm.