We Need a Gospel, Not a Theology

So, in the power of the Lord Jesus Christ preach the everlasting gospel, that by his power the sick may be healed, the leprous cleansed, the dead raised, the blind eyes opened, and the devils cast out.
– George Fox, Epistle 114 (1656), in Works, v. 7, p. 114.

We Friends need a theology, some say: perhaps something more modern than the Apology Robert Barclay gave us in the 1670s, when the world was thought to be only thousands of years old and Moses’ history of it accurate. I agree! It would be priceless to have good information about God. For what can we understand about our own condition if we know nothing about the One responsible for our being? Only that we’re walking around in deep ignorance. Is God heartless, cruel, capricious? Then why is there suffering? Does God have a will, or care about human morality? Is there any way for creatures to know their Creator? Why do different scriptures and philosophies disagree about what God wants from us?

But information alone could not cure our ignorance, or our clearly evident bondage to sin and death. And the most perfect theological teaching could not save us from this unhappy exile from the immediately experienced presence of the Source of All Good. “Behold, I go forward, but he is not there; and backward, but I cannot perceive him” (Job 23:8).

Much more than good information, therefore, do we need good news: words that heal us when they say “be healed,” words that save us when they say “be saved,” words that reveal God when they say “behold your God.” That’s what a gospel does, or is expected to do. A gospel, unlike a mere theology, is a manifestation of divine power. If it doesn’t mend the broken, raise up the fallen, destroy the works of the devil and set free the captive, it’s not a gospel worthy of the name.

“The gospel of Christ,” wrote Paul (Romans 1:16), “is the power of God unto salvation.” The gospel of Christ was but an unfulfilled prophecy in Isaiah 61 until Jesus read it aloud in the Nazareth synagogue (Luke 4:16-21), then proceeded to do deeds that showed the world He was fulfilling it. What is a gospel? A gospel would not only show me something of the glory and goodness of God, it would allow me to find a Savior and say, “Behold, I’m a corrupt tree that produces only corrupt fruit; make me into a good tree, and I’ll glorify you by producing only good fruit” – and my Savior would do it.

Every human heart yearns for a gospel, a great truth that makes possible a happy ending to our small and disappointing existences, because that’s what the heart seems to have been made to do: but most of us don’t expect such good tidings of great joy in our own time or in our own lives. But why not? Have we forgotten how to imagine the very good, or are we afraid to risk disappointment? Or are we afraid of what a Pearl of Great Price might cost us? Do we want the miracles of Jesus to exist only in a book about long ago and far away? Shall we dismiss His promise to be with us always, even to the end of the world, as something He never really said, or didn’t mean literally, because it can’t be true?

Looking into my own heart for the answer, or everyone’s heart, I find that we’re mostly content with things as they are, and don’t like leaving our comfort zone. Only when we find ourselves tormented by life, and bereft of faith in the fantasy that attacking someone else will relieve the torment, do we become like the disabled and desperate people of long ago that sought out Jesus of Nazareth for healing. Otherwise – why leave the comfort zone?

I find two other things, besides torment, that push us out of our comfort zone: one is love, which makes the torment of others as intolerable as torment to ourselves. The other is the realization that our comfort zone is maintained by illusions and lies, chief among which is that its comfort will last indefinitely. It never does. And then something – torment, love, or disillusionment – makes us feel our crying need for a gospel. One is there waiting for us.

Grant us, Lord, not merely the transforming and awakening power of Your gospel, but the faith and courage to receive it. Have we resistances? We welcome Your sweeping them away.

Spiritual Loneliness

For three years I’ve been attending the meeting that my partner belongs to. It’s a small meeting, about 20 at worship. It’s a big change from the urban meeting I’m a member of, which routinely has 100 people gathered together for unprogrammed worship.

At first I thought I was having trouble shifting from that large, urban meeting, which I found so powerful and where there were often deeply silent meetings, to the small, quiet one in the suburbs. But I’m coming to understand that there is more to my trouble than adjusting to a shift in numbers.

Don’t mistake me. It’s a friendly meeting! I like the people there. Lots of strong individuals who’ve led and are leading interesting lives.  I’m making social friendships. I’ve been warmly welcomed. Community is strong. And there is a real desire in the meeting to make the world a better place, with actions that match that desire. More than a few folks, in a spirit of hospitality, have asked me when I’m transferring my membership out of the city and joining with them officially.

I can’t do it.

This week I was given more insight into why. Even though I’m not a member I’ve been serving on a committee. Over the weekend, we were putting the final touches, via e-mail, on a list of basic books about Quakerism to be ordered from FGC. There were maybe eight or so titles on the list–new stuff from FGC that I haven’t caught up with yet. But there were two classics that I didn’t see on the list: Friends for 350 Years and A Testament of Devotion.

I suggested them.

I was shaken by the e-mails I got back. Several Friends said they had always found Kelly’s language too opaque and daunting. What they could grasp of Kelly didn’t speak to their condition. And Brinton (although one Friend said she personally loved the book) was deemed “not suitable for newcomers.” As one member put it, she found that Brinton told her “more about Quakerism than [she] wanted to know.”

These book-ordering e-mails have proved extremely painful to me. They’ve gone deep. They’ve revealed to me, in an actual way, that these good, caring people and I are not speaking the same language.

This Sunday, I will sit down with them in the meeting room. There will be a lovely fire in the fireplace that the benches are arranged around. In the silence . . . In worship . . . Where are our places of communion? I am filled with a sense of spiritual loneliness. What is it calling me to?

Some New Year’s foolishness

Sixty-one times eleven times three
Is the year that it’s going to be.

(I was planning to say
Nothing more on this day
Till this limerick happened to me.)

A Morning Prayer: To be Preserved from Walking in Darkness

This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth: But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.
- 1 John 1:5-7 (AV)

Lord, preserve me from walking in darkness, and to the extent that I do, seal my lips against claiming to walk in the light.  Let fear and its children – anger, greed, lust, cowardice – not infect my thoughts, nor spoil my grateful enjoyment of the bounty You bestow on me continually as I walk though this beautiful but shadowed world of impermanence, uncertainty, mutual separation, and human folly, selfishness and cruelty.  Let my every act be wrought in Christ, animated and made fruitful by Christ, and redounding to the glory of Christ.

Of the behavior of others let me be always forgiving, so that both I and they might quickly experience Your wonderful and healing forgiveness of our own sins.  Give me also an understanding heart, so that I might better discern how and when to answer the others You have given me to love, depend on, learn from, teach, and pray for.

Within the community of Your faithful, where our common allegiance to God, however named, gives us rights to exhort, rebuke and correct one another, let me be eager to hear whatever others may tell me for my own good, and uninhibited by self-protectiveness when You give me a mouth, and wisdom, to speak to them for their good.

Grant me, Lord, and all who ask for it, the gift of prayer without ceasing.  In the name of Christ Jesus I ask all this; Amen.

The Spiritual Cannot Do Carnal Things

John Edminster: The Martyrdom of Ignatius, after an Orthodox icon, 12/21/2012

Bishop Ignatius of Antioch (d. 108 C.E.?), being escorted to Rome to be eaten by lions in the Coliseum, was allowed to receive visitors and write letters to the Churches of Asia Minor before taking ship for Italy.

In his Epistle to the Ephesians I read: “Those that are carnal cannot do spiritual things; neither can those that are spiritual do carnal things, just as faith cannot do the works of faithlessness, nor faithlessness the works of faith. But even the things that ye do at the prompting of the flesh are spiritual, for ye do all things in Jesus Christ.”

I’ve been wanting to post statements of my own on this blog for some time, but not had the freedom nor the energy. But this beautiful statement of Ignatius’s so far outshines anything I might write that I’m taking a break from my job to put it out there for all of you that have asked for the new life in Christ and felt His acceptance of you. Ask yourselves whether or not this message sounds like your Shepherd’s voice, and if it does, rejoice with me, give thanks, and relax; He will not let you lose it unless you willfully break away. And why would you?

When the System Breaks Down

An excerpt from my personal ”Day of Discernment” report to Friends United Meeting to mark the end of FUM’s Forty Days of Prayer, 10/10 – 11/18/2012

Query 3.  As you consider all of the needs/opportunities for ministry in the world, where and how do you sense God is calling FUM to be most involved?

A.  During our Forty Days of Prayer, a hurricane ravaged the lands of Jamaica and Cuba Yearly Meetings, then moved north to attack the territory of New York Yearly Meeting; and as the Day of Discernment neared, escalating acts of war between Palestine and Israel put our Ramallah Friends School in danger’s path.  The world’s in trouble and I think that the Lord would not have FUM Friends fancy themselves untouched by it.  What I’ve seen of this trouble necessarily colors my answer:

I anticipate a broad spectrum of needs and opportunities for preaching, witnessing and service to arise soon, as social institutions worldwide prove unequal to the challenges presented by depletion of fossil fuel, potable water, forests, fisheries and arable soil; by global warming and resultant ecological imbalances and weather catastrophes, some compounded by power and telecommunication grid failures; by famines, floods, plagues, wars and mass migrations arising from these; and perhaps by a widespread collapse of trust in media and government as sources of reliable information or even of truthful intent.  And surely, for all our vigilance and sophisticated technology of forecasting, at least some of these challenges will come on us suddenly and surprise us.

I anticipate shock and suffering, but I can’t predict where, except that I’d expect the poor and powerless to be harder hit than the privileged: Haiti to have it worse than Canada, our inner-city dwellers than our suburbanites.  Inevitably, terror, despair and feelings of aloneness and abandonment will sweep the earth.  How people of faith and their religious institutions will respond to these crises remains to be seen.  May the Lord inspire people of all faith traditions to respond gloriously!  But I feel a call to warn against certain weak spots in contemporary Christian faith that I hope FUM Friends can help protect the undefended against:

1.  Disbelief in continuing revelation: Many faith communities hold that God spoke in times past, but now, having given humankind the Bible (or Qur’an, Book of Mormon, etc.), God has fallen silent.  (I sometimes call this “the theory that God is sulking.”)  Such doctrine may discourage believers from receiving new revelations, warnings and reassurances that God wants them to hear.  It’s important that Friends get the word out: be prepared – God will talk to you directly, as you need it!  Early Friends knew where to find the scriptural reassurances that such “continuing revelation” was not some new Quaker conceit but a clear Gospel promise delivered by Jesus and the Apostles.  Do we, today, have those scriptures at our fingertips?  And are we ready to share the stories of our own personal theophanies?

2.  Susceptibility to false prophecies:  The other day I was approached by a co-worker who expects the world to end at the coming solstice, presumably on the basis of the current urban legend about the Mayan Calendar.   Is it possible?  I’m not inclined to credit it, but neither can I share NASA’s cheerful certainty that the world won’t end in 2012 (http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/2012.html).  For that matter, the Jehovah’s Witnesses are taught that the End Times began on 10/1/1914; others may quibble about the starting date, but take it as given that we’re in them now.  Are we?  My Inward Guide does not confirm it; therefore I assume either that we’re not in a phase rightly called the End Times, or else that the Lord thinks it unnecessary for me to know it.  In either case, such knowledge would not affect my obligation to be faithful, vigilant, and loving to all at all times.

But as extraordinary world events continue to dazzle us with their grim, dramatic Judgment-Day appearances, we may find it hard to read about the extinction of sea life in Revelation 8:8-9 without wondering whether what’s happening now is a result of the “burning mountain” of fossil fuel poisoning the ocean with excess carbon dioxide, or whether the star called Wormwood (Rev. 8: 10-11) is the atomic bomb.  Readers of the popular Left Behind books and viewers of the latest apocalyptic thriller-films may be particularly sensitized to supposed “signs” that the Rapture is at hand, and fall prey to the temptation to look on the apocalyptic parts of the Bible as literal timetables to be decoded. (A recent United States President publically expressed beliefs that the End Times were upon us.  What then?  Shall we find wizards to tell us the day and the hour to sneak into our secret bunker?  Shall we ask the CIA to identify Gog and Magog so that we can send drone strikes?)

All this is temptation: it feeds on fear and increases it, driving out love; it tempts us to pray to false prophets for the truth, to scapegoat souls we’re commanded to love, and to cherish evil fantasies of being among the “saved” ones who get to gloat from mid-air over the fate of the “unsaved” as their driverless cars collide. 

Does it make a difference when and how the Lord sees fit to let the world end?  We who understand that it’s OK for us not to know must model our trust in God for those who “run to and fro to seek the word of the Lord” (Amos 8:12) in any time of darkness and fear.  God has given notice that He wishes all persons to be saved, us to love our enemies, and the good news spread – what else is important for us to know?

3.  Secularization of the Gospel:  I carry a concern that some of our social activists may stray from their grounding in the Inward Christ when they assume a need to use pressure-group techniques and exclusively secular language in order to be “effective” in the world.  I see this as a temptation that can undermine faith. 

We all need to re-examine our notions about causality: “Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it” (Psalm 127:1) tells me that prayer to the Almighty to correct social evils must always prove more fruitful than appeals to Caesar not assented to or commissioned by the Almighty.  To which one, Caesar or God, do we attribute “the kingdom, and the power, and the glory?”  If we hear that 10,000 signatures on a petition swayed the governor’s heart, wasn’t it God who swayed the governor’s heart, and didn’t the 10,000 signatures serve merely as the signers’ prayer-offering? 

I sometimes remind Friends that we are not called to be effective but to be faithful.  Occasionally this may mean stepping back from what would seem to be an avenue to effectiveness, as when a Friend declines to vote because she considers the ballot box a carnal weapon, which conveys the voter’s mandate to wield a carnal sword on her behalf.  Another Friend may get himself dismissed from jury duty for telling the judge that he doesn’t trust the criminal justice system to do justice, nor the correctional system to correct.  Faithfulness may lead two Friends to do seemingly opposite things, as when one resists paying taxes for war and another scrupulously pays every last cent so that her letters to Washington won’t lack moral force: the dollars may cancel each other out, but faithfulness can’t cancel out faithfulness.

We need to ask ourselves where our primary citizenship (or “walk”) lies: in the Kingdom of God or in a kingdom of this world.  There are consequences: when we walk in the Kingdom of God, we “may come to walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in every man,” to use the words of George Fox.  When we answer that of God in the officeholder, we don’t simply threaten him with worldly consequences, like common bullies – “stop the fracking or we’ll vote you out of office” – but speak to his soul: “Don’t do what must be hateful to your conscience.  Do what you know is right and God will uphold you.  We know this from personal experience.”

When we speak like that, of course, we run the risk that the officeholder’s conscience may direct him to do the opposite of what we want; but in that case we must admit that we’re happier to have an officeholder trying to follow conscience than ignoring it.  If we’ve begun our day by telling the Lord “Thy will be done,” we can now ask Him to oversee whatever damage-control is called for by the officeholder’s bad decision.  A better thing has happened than if we’d twisted the officeholder’s arm.

I encourage other Friends to consider stepping back from what may be a habitually secular mind-set and see what prayer shows them about their right role in the world.

4. Individualism:  Both democracy and capitalism train us to see ourselves as individual actors with a responsibility to promote our own interests; the mainstream culture of the United States does less well at training us to self-identify as stewards of the common good whose individual well-being is inextricable from the well-being of the larger social body.  Certain strains of Protestantism, too, have stressed the need for individual salvation at the neglect of the larger edifice of lively stones (1 Peter 2:5), which always calls for our help in its maintenance.  We mid-life converts typically enter the meeting house more interested in “what’s in it for me?” than “does this community need my riches of spirit?”  But the new life in Christ brings us into conscious membership in a larger body, and we learn that we have no life as branches without the Vine; and so the Vine becomes our life, and our hearts grow tender.

But “every man for himself!”  Imagine hundred-pound hailstones falling everywhere (Revelation 16:21). Fear seizes us, and we forget everything but our own skin – to hell with the others!  Or imagine the San Francisco quake of 1906, with ruptured gas mains roaring out flames and the ruptured water mains leaving the firefighters helpless.  Where’s our connection with Christ the Vine now?  He may be faithful, but we’ve lost it altogether.  We rush for the exit.  We’re an inch away from trampling a disabled person sprawled in our path.  Suddenly, without knowing how, we find ourselves carrying her to safety instead, with strength we didn’t know we had.

Have we each asked Jesus Christ to act through us in any emergency that might otherwise bring out the worst in us?

The United States – a Failed State?

What It Means that Both Candidates Were Silent

[The following text, written last night, was distributed by me today as a one-page flyer at a demonstration in New York City's Times Square called by 350.org, which describes itself (see www.350.org) as "a global movement to solve the climate crisis."  It takes its name from 350 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which scientists claim is a threshold level that must not be exceeded if global warming and ocean acidification are to be contained.  The atmosphere currently stands at 392 parts per million.  The demonstration, which I fully supported, consisted of the unrolling and display of a parachute that displayed the message: END CLIMATE SILENCE.  It was timed to take place just before Hurricane Sandy struck New York City.  This flyer of mine was not approved, endorsed, nor anticipated by 350.org or any of its members, and expresses only my personal opinion.]

The Constitution of the United States was established “to… insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” Humanity’s economic activity is now known to cause climate changes that are turning disastrous to domestic tranquility and the general welfare, but neither our sitting President nor his Republican challenger, during this current campaign, has uttered a word about their need to provide for the common defense against the death of forest and wetland, the acidification of the sea, the desertification of arable and pasture, and the greatest mass extinction of species since the Chicxulub Meteor ended the dinosaurs. As the world grows hotter, the sea rises and the weather gets wilder, the fossil fuel industries, ever eager to make fast bucks from fracking or pipelines or blasting away mountain tops, do their best to buy both candidates’ silence on the problem. And the candidates, aware that what will get them elected are credible promises of economic growth, not a prudently austere plan of greening the world economy, tell the voters what they think their corporate bankrollers will tolerate and voters will want to hear. But the common good is ill served by this, as everyone must realize when at last the Gulf States are uninhabitable in summer and the Ross Ice Shelf topples into the sea. What will the schoolchildren of the twenty-third century be told about our generation? That we tolerated a state that failed us? That we were sent prophets that told us the truth, but we preferred to put our trust in lies?

But the answer is not to attack the government, the candidates, or the propagandists for industry. The answer is not to treat anyone as an adversary, not to hate or hurt or humiliate anyone whose actions we see as aggravating the problem. They may be fools and bunglers, even complicit toadies for open evildoers, but so have we been, as each of us knows in our own heart. They are souls as dear to God as we are, and as we would wish our own repentance, forgiveness, enlightenment and salvation, so must we wish for theirs. To look to attack as a way to make anything better is to perpetuate a system and a world-view that have brought the human race to this present impasse. It means to harden our heart – which always makes us morally stupider. The spiritual condition that allowed us to start cooking the planet with our greenhouse gases in the first place was hardness of heart. “Private vices, public benefits,” wrote one of capitalism’s first apologists, as the triangular slave-trade and the genocide of Native American peoples were moving into high gear, and three centuries later we still cheer self-serving behavior in the marketplace as the engine that drives our well-being, as if predatory selfishness could bear any other fruit than more predatory selfishness, or an economy dominated by war industries could bring about world peace. No, if life is better now than it was then, it can only be because neighborly compassion has also grown and extended, that mutual tenderness which Aristotle, long ago, called “political love.” Rescue from today’s troubles will not come from attacking anyone, but only as a by-product of unremitting and sustained effort to extend love to everyone. At a minimum, this means resisting all temptations to harm others, or to tell them untruths, no matter how desirable the goal seems. Good ends don’t make means good. Only a pure conscience makes for right action.

The greatest teacher of this universal love was Jesus of Nazareth, whom both Christians and Muslims hail as the promised Messiah, and many of other faith traditions also recognize as a true spokesman for God. My own experience has taught me that He lives now, and that through membership in Him I and others have direct access to the Creator of the universe and Source of all good, in Whom alone we enjoy unlimited being, consciousness and bliss, though this eternal life is largely veiled from us now. Jesus Christ is my ever-present Guide, who shows me the path to walk in and warns me against errors. Only my faithful living in Jesus Christ, and He in me, allows me to do the works of Love and Truth that I’m now able to carry out. If you approve of what I think and what I’m trying to do, please pray for me that I not stumble. If you disapprove, please pray for my gentle correction. If you hear Truth in these words, seek me out and talk to me.

Days 9 and 10: Laying Down Our Life

Lord, make me ready to lay down my life for You, or for any of the brethren or sisters, for sinners, fools, enemies, for anyone at all, for love of You and of them; and if my life, then how much more readily should I lay down my night’s sleep, the contents of my wallet, my health and comfort, my resentments, my book collection, my job and liberty, my ambitions and my insistence on winning, my desire to impress, charm and control people, my desire for the love, favor and good opinion of others, my inertia and love of ease. Lay down my lukewarmness! Lay down my fear! Lay down my attachment to these vain things that charm me most, which are no more than the stuff of dreams! Lord, seize my heart and make it like Your own, ablaze with universal and unstinting love! Amen, amen, in Jesus’ name, Amen!

Days 6 through 8: No Greater Joy

I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth. – 3 John 4 (AV)

I’m continuing to follow, gratefully, the daily devotionals of Friends United Meeting’s 40 Days of Prayer (see http://www.fum.org), and I hope to keep posting reflections related to them, as time and the motions of the Spirit permit, if – but only if – these prove helpful to others in their devotions.

The theme for Day 6 was about following Christ.  How happy would we be, I think, if we might all follow Christ perfectly and wholeheartedly!  And then my next thought is, Would we really?  Look in a Bible concordance under the word “follow” and check out the contexts in which Jesus spoke about what it means to follow Him:  take up your cross daily.  Sell all you have, and give it to the poor.  The Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.  – Will you really lay down your life for my sake? The cock will not crow till you have denied me three times. Knowing my own weakness and my disinclination to make myself uncomfortable, I can only beg for God’s help to make me and keep me a faithful follower of Christ. But I have to trust that God will.

The theme for Day 7 is “Gathered in Christ as One Who Knows The Truth.”  Oh, dear.  I don’t know the Truth.  If I did, would I feel any need for reference books?  If I did, would my past be so full of errors?  If I did, would I so often feel uncertainty about  how to move forward?  If I did, would I not see God before my face at all times?  But experience has taught me that there is Something within me that does know the Truth, and that I should trust It. 

I looked up the Hebrew emeth and amunah,  the two Biblical words most often rendered as ”truth” in our translations (both related to our familiar “amen”), and found that their root meaning seems to be not “existence” or “reality” in any philosophical sense (“what is reality and how can we know it?”) but rather ”reliability” or “faithfulness,” something any child can understand: when I ask my father for an egg he will not give me a scorpion.

To walk in the Truth, to speak Truth, to do the works of Truth, means, at minimum, abstention from lying and those grey kinds of lying we call exaggeration, distortion, sugar-coating, b.s.ing, and keeping silent when truth is called for.  A wise Friend recently mentioned that she does not allow herself the use of sarcasm.  Another recently asserted that telling the truth with hurtful intent is bearing false witness.  I’m still digesting that one: it tells me that dealing in Truth requires not only clear eyes and a fair mind but also a pure heart that wishes no one ill.

But even then, we fallen creatures are prone to see a rope in the grass and think “snake.”  We seem to see as through a glass, darkly, for as long as we wear mortal flesh.  Plato likened us to men chained in a cave, able only to see the shadows cast by firelight behind our heads.  Kant concluded that the thing behind the perceptible surface, the Ding an sich, was unknowable; Patanjali, that it was knowable only through feats of sustained, one-pointed yogic concentration.  And I – I want to know my loved ones’ hearts perfectly and have them know mine also – but so often we hurt one another through misunderstanding!

The Bhagavad Gita which, like Parmenides and Plato in the West, teaches that this apparent world of time and change is but seeming,  illusion, māyā, makes a distinction (Bh.G. 18:19 ff.) between three types of knowing, based on the character of the knower.  When the character of the knower is “clarity” (sattva), one sees in all beings one unchanging existence. When one’s character is “passion” (rajas) or “darkness” (tamas), one sees only separateness, and either a war of all against all, or, denying the existence of a great part of reality, one asserts that only a certain part is real.  This reminds me of Jesus’ saying that a good tree can only produce good fruit, and a corrupt tree, evil fruit.  God deliver us all from the all the inner passion, darkness and corruption that keep us unable to know the Truth!

But Jesus has promised us the Spirit of Truth (John 14:17, 16:13), which does, reliably, lead us out of illusion into all Truth, and allows us to hear one another when we speak Truth (1 John 4:6).  By It  we recognize our Shepherd’s voice; by It alone we know to call Jesus Lord; by It we know how to pray rightly.

It happens that I hurt Elizabeth as I was leaving for work this morning, with a reproach that she identified as guilt-provoking.  With my mind’s eye on the relentless clock, I frantically queried my own motives while asking forgiveness and trying to say what I could to comfort my beloved sweetheart.  “Thee had better get to work,” she said at last with the beginning of a smile. “Thee’s  trying to rush out the door and at the same time randomly stick band-aids on me, hoping that one will land on the right spot.”  I laughed.  She laughed.  It was such a brilliant and funny description of what I was doing that we were both cheered up by it: a perfectly placed band-aid over each of our hearts!  I think that even that may have been an intervention by the Spirit of Truth. 

The theme for Day 8 is forgiveness.  How grateful I am for God’s forgiveness!  I take to heart Paul’s advice to consider myself the chief of sinners not merely because Paul advised it, but because I’m daily reminded of things I’ve said and done that I could easily damn myself for and go fleeing into the outer darkness.  But amazingly, God does not damn me.  Once when I was obsessing over some misdeed of long ago during a meeting for worship, I heard His voice call out, “That sin is forgiven. Put it away!”  That experience is enough to make me want to spend the rest of my life advertising God’s mercy wherever I go.

Days Two and Three: Abiding and Obeying

Abiding in Christ the Vine, and obeying Christ our Shepherd, seem such obviously good ideas that I had to ask myself, this morning, why we don’t always, all of us, obey and abide.  Looking into my own heart, as I rode the bus to work,  I saw a number of contrary tendencies that I’ve learned to call laziness, and fear, and resentment, and desire, all swimming around in a dark pool of ignorance. 

The ignorance, it seems, we humans mostly can’t help, but there are some bits of ancient wisdom that suggest that we often choose to make ourselves more ignorant than we already were, driving out the possibility of faith.  My memories of my youth as a teen-aged shoplifter, poseur and chronic liar tend to support them.  Bad moral choices dumb us down; or, ask for darkness to cover your selfish misdeeds and you’ll get darkness.  The Yoga Sutras (2:34) warn that sins such as harming others “bear fruit in endless suffering and ignorance“ (emphasis mine – je). Jesus teaches Nicodemus that “men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.  For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.” (John 3:19-20.)  Paul writes of God’s creatures turning away from their primordial knowledge of God “because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God… but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.” (Romans 1:21-22.)  The Bhagavad-Gita (18:22) speaks of people whose nature is “darkness” (tamas) as clinging obstinately to a false knowledge that takes the part to be the whole, denying the rest of reality.  The literature of modern psychology is full of observations about repression, denial, and the many ways we protect ourselves from the truth.  I find myself wondering whether it’s my addictive delight in having a will independent of God’s – my sinfulness, some would call it – that keeps me from the delight of unbroken and infinite knowledge of God that I know I was made for.  “I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with Thy likeness.” (Psalm 17:15.)

This ignorance (avidya), the Yoga Sutras assert (2:3-4), provides the “field” for all the other afflictions that taint consciousness: self-regard, attachment, aversion, and clinging to the mortal body.  Here are the “laziness, and fear, and resentment, and desire” that I found on my morning bus ride, the things that would pull me away from Christ my Guide.

I watched an episode on “The Simpsons” some years ago, in which the foolish Homer Simpson “got religion” and kept praying, as he followed his own impulses, “if this is Your will, Lord, send no sign.”  How we dread getting a “sign” that would send us on a mission that risks pain and death!  (As if we could avoid them.)  And yet my experience has shown me, time after time, that when the Lord requires me to do something, He always provides the courage, or patience, or wisdom, or whatever I need, to get it done!  Why fear pain when He will give me the strength to bear it?