Jesus taught, first, that a man’s business is to do the will of God; second, that God takes upon himself the care of that man; third, therefore, that a man must never be afraid of anything; and so, fourth, be left free to love God with all his heart, and his neighbor as himself.
~George Macdonald (1824-1905)
For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. Look: I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you. I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law. You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace. For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love.
~ paul, The Least of The Apostles in Galatians 5
There is beloved, a thin veneer of goodness to the world we inhabit. And even though the coating is cracked and inconsistent, it is what seemingly keeps the world from devolving into chaos. We have developed a broad series of overlapping laws and social norms and contracts that enable fallen man to inhabit similar space without killing each other.
Civilization.
And their is within us a deeply-seated desire to make civilization work. For when we first bit into the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, we suddenly became profoundly aware of our shortcomings apart from our Creator. Instantly, we hid from Him. We covered ourselves with some foolish costume, and began to fear both our surroundings and our future.
This fear was well-founded. For in abandoning our fear of our Maker, we took on a responsibility we could not possibly bear. We began to try to live life on our own, and to control our own destiny. And history’s epic tales all have one common thread to their endings.
Fear of everything else.
Failure.
Destruction.
Bondage.
Bitterness.
Isolation.
Pain.
Sickness.
Death.
Yet, on we go. We have continued to build structures of money and power and politics and education and religion and architecture. And some of this has looked pretty good. There have been short seasons in some cultures where things have gone fairly well. The paint over the top of the corroded substrate looked like it might actually hold. People have, from time-to-time, been relatively well off in education, career, physical health and in financial and political stability.
And this seeming stability creates an illusion that even more civilization is the answer; that if we just do more of the same with education and politics and careers and stuff, everything will get better. Yet, history has shown that this never works. Some may debate this, but the record is clear. And the decline of the West, and the growing corruption of the East are but normal rhythms of the ebbs and flows of the fallen world we inhabit – all of it hurtling towards hell apart from Jesus.
Can we see it? Jesus did not come to give us some genteel and civilized world. He did not come so we could put our world in order. Jesus came to destroy the world and set up a Kingdom that actually works. Jesus came to set us free. Jesus came to crush our concepts that any of the elements of civilization (in and of themselves) could ever save us in the first place. Jesus said it very clearly: I AM The Way, I AM The Truth, I AM The Life.
So, in our lives, now Lived in Him – we have to come to a profoundly different viewpoint about the world in which we live. Laws and rules and societal structures are not usually any kind of enemy to us, but they are useless in bringing forth the Kingdom our King pronounced before, during and after His death and resurrection. They are useless because Jesus has pronounced a weapon infinitely more powerful at maintaining good than any other we can concoct (or even imagine) in all creation.
Love.
Love is a wild, untamed force.
Love is a relentless and profound concern for the well-being of others without any concern whether we get loved in return.
Love smashes barriers across any frontier, whether they be racial, gender, financial, geographic, political or religious.
Love covers a multitude of sins. It does not just paint over them with some thin veneer of care or congeniality or collegiality.
Love casts out fear. It does not just act as some sort of law-based repellent for evil.
Love is stronger than death. It does not just forestall the inevitable.
Love dies that others might completely and utterly live.
Love brings the freedom we have sought (and never found) through our own meager efforts.
Love is most-definitely not civilized.
Beloved, you are free. Love like you know it.
And there is, burning within this fool of a writer, a deep flame that simply knows that if we did, everything would be different. Naught but a million of us would pour the Love and righteousness and peace and joy we have been given, out on all mankind.
Anyone for some post-civilization Love?
Beyond A Civilized Existence
It is enough for the disciple that he be as his Master.” At first sight this looks like an enormous honor: to be “as his Master” is marvelous glory—is it? Look at Jesus as he was when he was here, it was anything but glory. He was easily ignorable, saving to those who knew him intimately; to the majority of men he was “as a root out of a dry ground.” For thirty years he was obscure, then for three years he went through popularity, scandal, and hatred; he succeeded in gathering a handful of fishermen as disciples, one of whom betrayed him, one denied him, and all forsook him; and he says, “It is enough for you to be like that.” The idea of evangelical success, church prosperity, civilized manifestation, does not come into it at all.
~Oswald Chambers (1874-1917)
