I want to consider our supplemental Jesus. Most of our writing and talking is supplemental in nature. We get so excited with and carried away by the next new idea, the next new leader, the next new book, the next new method. But there is really nothing truly new about it all. They are accruals upon the past. They are installments on a faulty loan. They are renovations on a condemned building. It is our attempt to stretch an already stretched old wineskin. We customize what we already have. Like an old car that has been condemned to the scrap heap… it doesn’t work! We add new parts and detail it, but it still doesn’t work! We need a new vehicle. Or no vehicle at all in fact. For the past 12 years I have been deeply suspicious of any new method that comes down the pike, any new book that has the next best strategy. I always feel like a rabbit in Watership Down: I’m being baited with fresher carrots, that’s all! Anyone with any common sense should be able to tell when they are being swindled. We all should be able to tell when we are being bamboozled.
No more strategies. No more visions. No more methods. No more renovations, customizations, and tweak jobs. Please! Jesus is not a supplement to boost my quality of life. He promises me death. And the life he does promise is not an enhanced life but a resurrected one, which is something totally other and probably beyond the domain of sensual experience. And this is what I’m holding out for.
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David Hayward is an artist trapped in a pastor's body, stripping to the essential.
I hear you. This is a recurring theme and I am trying to ingest it and grapple it. My question is, given that when I accept this Jesus I will be changed, how can I live as differently, as other, as you suggest, given my constraints of physicality in this present dimension?
Surely when I meet Jesus there must be some change in me to reflect the enormity of the meeting – over time obviously? It seems that I can only change incrementally as I meet daily with Jesus and begin to be transformed by the renewing of my mind. the real step change won’t come till later. But is this incremental change devalued by your
view of tinkering around the edges?
I think this is a fascinating subject. Thanks David.
Kim
This is exactly it.
Sas
Love the Watership Down reference – it’s one of my favorite books.
Interesting comparison to the strange rabbits who adopt all kinds of odd habits in order to distract them from the one big, scary problem they don’t know how to deal with.
Hang in there, David,
It is there to be had. I have a good share of it, so it is obtainable for anyone.
fishon
The natural man doe not understand the things of the Spirit. You are following the wrong man.
David,
You have hit the nail on the head. “It is finished.” (now die)
…but we will not.
Hey! Let’s read another book about how all this stuff works instead…
“We get so excited with and carried away by the next new idea, the next new leader, the next new book, the next new method….No more strategies. No more visions. No more methods. No more renovations, customizations, and tweak jobs. Please! Jesus is not a supplement to boost my quality of life…”
Yep. I’m finished with all that and it will not bother me if I never attend another conference! I’ve also given up the hunt for the magic strategy or formula or the program that the Church is needing. And I used to fret so much about having the most carefully worked out, flawless doctrine with every t crossed and every i dotted. I’m finished with all that too.
What I’m after now iis what’s authentic, true, real, and to be living my faith in the world. The people i come into contact with every day aren’t ever very likely to read Calvin’s “Institutes” but they’re reading me all the time. I want to be the love of God with skin on.
In defense of reading books… lol… I have never had all this spelled out for me in a way I better grasp, that in Becoming a True Spiritual Community. The last couple of chapters I read were all about this. Becoming mystics, rather than managers. Living out of Christ… he raised some great questions like “Does our desire to worship elbow out our desire for self?” “Does our desire to obey nudge out our desire to do something right?”
I’ve heard much of this my whole life… but only now am beginning to understand.
Jonathan Puddle,
“Does our desire to worship elbow out our desire for self?†“Does our desire to obey nudge out our desire to do something right?â€
Interesting questions. I pondered them for a moment and then got the answer as I looked into a mirror.
Nothing elbows out our desire for self, and doing something right IS obeying. We won’t do that either.
That’s why He came. He knows He’s a problem for us. We have a sickness unto death.
But He is the Great Physician. He heals all our diseases. He has done it. Peace be upon you!
– Steve
There is no importance placed on the art of discernment today and that is quite possibly by design. When there are so many out to swindle the masses, why would they want to mention the possibility to think much less discern.
Beware – lack of discernment is dangerous to your health, happiness, physical and spiritual well being.