"All that mankind has done, thought, gained or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books."
-Thomas Carlyle

by Daniel Morgan

I've had a little doubting Thomas in me as of late. It's not the deity of Christ or the veracity of the Bible or any such thing like that. But there's been a nagging disillusionment towards those corollaries of doctrines: Christians. Namely, myself.

There's a lot we claim and aspire to and pretend to live out, and most of it sounds better than par when you're compared to the general culture. I suppose that's one way of seeing how Scripture could call Lot a righteous man. But when we compare out lives to Scripture, assuming we ever would, what do we find? How do we match up? Are our prayers answered? Are we fulfilling its commands? Looking like Jesus? Seeing signs and wonders? In short, holiness.

Probably not. Probably we'd like to presuppose some of those criteria under the rug, pretending miracles were only for the apostles or that Jesus was unique and human perfectionism this side of heaven is a heterodox concept. Suffice to say on miracles, it is a case of our own limited American experience having the first and last word determining how we heed the sure word of Scripture and testimony of Christians worldwide. But to prove here to my Thomist brothers the accounts of people being raised from the dead in India is not my concern at present. And the issue of perfectionism aside, for that is not what I am addressing in our complacency over the status quo, there is still much we must own up to.

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It's like the U2 song that's befuddled Christians for years "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For." Bono speaks of believing Christ "broke the bonds / . . . loosed the chains / Carried the cross / Of my shame," but still hasn't found what he is looking for. No matter the authenticity of Bono's faith or whether he referred to the final consummation of glory, this message resonates if for no other reasons but that the promises in the Bible are so grandiose. We've been blessed with every spiritual blessing in Christ Jesus? Have all that we need for godliness? Receive all that we ask in His name? Can be led into all truth, have life and life abundantly, with a joy that is full? ad nauseum.

Come on now. Who can testify to that? The Christians I know are hypocritical, unable to control their anger, self-intentioned, take things personally, or worse, get hyper-spiritual. Not all of them, of course. I know a pastor or two that really excel. But that is not the point. Were we to compare ourselves to a Paul or Luther, we think of them miles ahead of us spiritually and wonder at their being some special Christians, a unique species gifted with a larger measure of faith. But are the promises to them alone or to all believers world without end? (We may ignore for now that Paul called himself the chief of sinners and Luther's favorite image of himself was a worm.)

Surely, if we compare ourselves only to other heroes of the faith, let alone Christ our perfect model, we fall short, and are hard-pressed to point to one church-planting missionary journey throughout Asia Minor, or one language we've translated the Scriptures into, launching a Christological revolution across Europe. But we must look at how we compare ourselves so. It is rather easy to look at accomplishments or the size of congregations and figure we could never "catch up" to such forerunners. I posit a better gauge is whether we are on the same road as they are. If we're just stumbling in the brush, it doesn't matter if we're doing the right "religious" things and heading in the right compass direction, it will still take longer trudging through the mire and frustrate us to no end laboring through needless prickly obstructions. The thing to do is to get back to the king's highway, to get into the main current of the river, and let it do the work of carrying us along.

But how does one get into the main and what does that look like? Here's where my dissatisfaction, what some would charitably call a "holy dissatisfaction," ceases to help. I am tired of the defeat I know. I am even aware of the unbiblical man-centered theology and spectator, program church models that are prevalent today. But my life is still not lived on the strait and narrow and I don't know of a healthy church-planting church around with solid theology. I see the hole; I'm just not sure how to fill it.

Well, let me let my education show and I can talk around it some (i.e., stall like an empty plane). This business about getting into the current is only another way of expressing what Andrew Murray called "practicing His presence." Something "the man who is often and long alone with God" does. Watchman Nee called it "the normal Christian life." In Galatians 2 and Romans 6 especially, the apostle Paul spoke of "walking in the Spirit" as one who is crucified (really, truly dead, not just possuming) with Christ to sin and the law, so that it is not him but Christ who lives within him. Jesus speaks of "abiding in Me and I in you" in John 15, using the botanical imagery of the vinedresser. Of course, it is expressed a myriad of other ways in terms of eating His flesh, loving Him and others, etc.

I've been trying to wrap my mind around some of those verses. Somehow, the Christian life, the normal, standard, all promises lived out, Christian life is supposed to be a completely passive, yielding, getting off the heavy yoke type of surrendered, waterbed obedience. At the same time, it's beating your body to win the prize and working out your salvation with fear and trembling . . . for it's Christ who works in you both to will and to do according to His good pleasure. See there. No matter how hard you try, there's a passive to every active, a rest to every exhortation, and vice versa. "But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me did not prove vain; but I labored even more than all of them, yet not I, but the grace of God in me," Paul confesses with a perfectly straight face.

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When I tried to write my first poem for a class in college (back before I knew about meter and all), I wondered what to write on. First comes the subject, and then I can tinker with how to say it. I decided to go for something everybody (they were mostly Christians) would immediately identify with. I talked about the woes of repeated sin and returning back to our folly. And it's a great poem, with some neat imagery of the deluge and what not (despite lacking meter, which technically means it's not one) — even as one of my favorite songs, "Worlds Apart" by Jars of Clay, expresses the same idea. (You'll have to listen to them, 'cause I haven't revised the poem yet.)

The point being, I don't think there's anything more important to address and I don't think there's any danger here in preaching to the choir. Consider then how we look to outsiders. Our image to them is one of the nice guy . . . who smiles . . . occasionally offers to pray for you . . . says "God loves you" and other platitudes with as much meaning as "Gesundheit" after each sneeze. All the while knowing, as Scripture says, they are enemies of God, spiritually dead, storing up wrath for themselves in the Day of Judgment. All the while knowing our puny, good-intentioned Potempkin scenes out of the flesh ought to be continual testimonies that astound them. We ought to be characterized by boldness in restaurants, market places, city halls, by joyful, radical obedience and alien holiness in the midst of a compromising world, by the very power that raised Christ from the dead as we rush into the deepest dens of darkness to shine forth the light and transforming communities of every last people group into worshippers of the only God worthy to be called God. Look it up in Ephesians, Acts, etc. I'm not making this stuff up.

Are you dissatisfied with yourself yet? Good. Now I think it's a matter of rolling up our sleeves, asking God for the strength, and dealing ruthlessly with sin in godly sorrow that leads to true repentance, making no provision for our unruly desires, to see His hand again. And working on what Mr. Murray advised for sowing amply into quiet times, which is merely "abiding" in another expression. That's what I make of it all right now; like Dawson Trotman said, "If you can't see very far ahead, go as far ahead as you can see." It's the going that is yet to be seen. (Good thing there's plenty of passives involved: Philippians 1:6) Then might lost men confess with us the awe of Thomas, "My Lord and my God!"

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