To esteem or to sin

C.S. Lewis in The Abolition of Man comments that:

"Until quite modern times all teachers and even all men believed the universe to be such that certain emotional reactions on our part could be either congruous or incongruous to it--believed, in fact, that objects did not merely receive, but could merit, our approval or disapproval, our reverence or our contempt."

Lewis here is fighting the tendency to regard all emotions as subjective by modern thinkers. If I see a waterfall as big as Niagara cascading down a cliff with a thundrous roar that makes my own thoughts seem unable to voice their praise to its majesty, any thing I say about the cataract by modern esteem is labeled as subjective. There is no objective reaction to a merely "materialistic" waterfall. It is merely the process of gravity working on water, albeit on a larger scale. The "thing in itself", i.e. the naked physics of waterfalls, do not have anything to do with emotional responses in the creatures, those are provided only by the creature.

Lewis' view is that a waterfall that impressive "merits" our esteem. To not be moved by the roaring conduit of water is to sin against being human. It is a mark of sanity to be moved by what is moving, to love what is lovely, and to hate what is abhorrent. The "thing in itself" is not naked physics, but a panorama of God's creative glory on display. It has a being bigger than mere physics can expound, and for a person to not see the glory of God dancing on the water as it cascades over the spillway is to blind our eyes to what is our rightful response: worship not of waterfalls, but of God.

I think, though Lewis would disagree with many of their implications, this view is in complete accordance with the Puritans. They believed certain things merited the utmost love just by their own "being-ness". They believed Christianity was a religion of heightened affections over the glory of God revealed in nature and in Scripture, and to fail to let one's affections be raised by it would be tantamount to blasphemy, or profaning the glory of God by holding it as trifling and flimsy.

"For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived...For although they [men] knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened."

To not properly love what is lovely ruins mankind on many levels. Henry Scougal says, "love must needs be miserable, and full of trouble and disquietude, when there is not worth and excellency enough in the object to answer the vastness of its capacity."

To illustrate, if I refuse to pin my awe on that massive waterfall, and instead try to be fascinated by a mud puddle, I make for myself a level of misery as great as the waterfall is above the mud puddle. For whatever lesser object I set my approval on, I transgress against my created nature to behold that which is great. I don't choose whether or not to "esteem" the waterfall, I respond to its being by either praising or sinning. I do not grant God a measure of worship, I either worship with all my heart or sin with the level of my heart that does not rise up in praise.

Not where the wheeling systems darken,
And our benumbed conceiving soars!—
The drift of pinions, would we hearken,
Beats at our own clay-shuttered doors.

The angels keep their ancient places;—
Turn but a stone, and start a wing!
‘Tis ye, ‘tis your estrangèd faces,
That miss the many-splendoured thing.

Francis Thompson "The Kingdom of God"

The dead lay still in the cold earth

I am reading C.S. Lewis' "Ransom Trilogy", which are stories that encapsulate the writings in his book The Abolition of Man. He deals here with the de-humanization of Western culture by modernization.
We have become even more dehumanized since he was alive, having continued this trend. And we see it everywhere. Abortion is a procedure that doesn't even take into account in its description its implication for human life. We talk about disasters and famines in respect to their geo-political ramifications and in numbers. We don't believe anything unless there is a statistic behind it. We have become moral adding machines...and moral is about to fall off the title.
Lewis believes the problem with this tendency to dehumanize and scientifically explain or justify all of our experiences is the abolition of what makes us human. He believes emotion and sympathy are too vital to the human soul to always be validated by our rational side. This is not how we learn or live, merely calculating and weighing all things objectively as they fit towards everything else.
He gives an example of military units. Many units have a flag, or a standard, or an emblem that they use to promote a sense of identity and pride. During the heat of battle, Lewis knew that all the rational information in the world would not keep a soldier in the trenches during hours of bombing. (He fought in WWI). What kept soldiers there, fighting, was not rational; it was something far deeper and more simple. "Don't let the flag fall boys, forward! forward!" No scientist can explain why an emblem could stir such fortitude and emotion in the human soul to endure the savage nature of war for a mere flag, but it worked.
No equation can explain how emotion and inanimate objects bleed together and we feel love for a simple spot of ground just because our dead loved ones lay there for a while. But it is utterly human to experience these illogical draining of ration and intellect and emotion and passion into one another's tanks. Pure, cold, hard logic; humanity cannot stomach it. It has produced the vile dictatorships of the 20th century, it has neutered our poetry into a study of semantic domains and linguistic influences rather than just experience the image for what it is worth.
I'm afraid our culture does not even know how to live without someone pounding us over the head with our own soulish nakedness. We deconstruct our literature, we shackle our businesses with rate of returns, and we sacrifice our marriages for efficiency. Morality is the chief victim of this exchange. We no longer even know why good is better, we go by pragmatism.
Despite all of my criticism, I am all slice and no stitch tonight. I will have to think on this more until I even can think of how we could possibly change it on a societal level. We are too entertainment sodden. It starves a boys soul to be brought up on a Wii rather than on Lord of the Rings. A boy needs dragons to kill in his imagination, not a button to press to defeat pixels. I am unsure our music can even carry themes strong enough to change culture anymore, it is produced to maximize profit rather than to be prophetic. I think we are done for. We've burned the very lifeboats culture had built in to save us.

Can prayer move mountains?

This is a preview of what I am going to speak on this upcoming week at my friend's BCM service. When Jesus says in Matt 21:21 that if we have faith we can move mountains, we can't make a blanket statement across all of our prayer requests and say, "If I have faith it will happen." As a kid I had my heart crushed several times because certain prayer requests weren't answered although I believed beyond a shadow of a doubt that God would answer them. I didn't receive swords, pet dragons, a brother, or anything of the sort despite my impeccable record for having faith as small as a mustard seed.
We have to take verse 21 and see the context of chapter 21 in Jesus' ministry. Jesus entered Jerusalem triumphantly in verses 1-11. In verses 12-17 he cleanses the temple of the money-changers and the salesmen proclaiming that it is a house of prayer, not of thieves. In verses 18-22 he curses a fig tree and teaches on prayer as a kind of afterthought (this afterthought is my main text). From verses 23 and onward to the end, most crucial to understanding what is going on, we see Jesus and the religious leaders arguing over who has the authority to do what. Jesus pronounces a parable on them that builds until verse 43 with the statement "the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits."
That statement is the most important for understanding the passage on prayer, because we see the teaching on prayer hanging on the end of an incident where Jesus curses a fig tree because there is no fruit. In the scheme of chapter 21, the fig tree becomes an enacted parable where Jesus, seeing the fruitlessness of Israel symbolized in the fruitlessness of the fig tree, curses it as a sign that Israel will soon be cursed and withered, and as he teaches later the "vineyard" or Kingdom of God will be given to another nation.
So the teaching on prayer is right on the heels of this enacted parable. The context of chapter 21 is that Israel is rejecting Jesus' authority, and thereby showing the root of the fruitlessness; rebellion to God. This rebellion will not thwart the kingdom, because it will be given to another nation who will bear fruit unto God. So no sane person in this context would think God is teaching me how to ask and believe in order to get a big mansion or a nice car. This isn't a teaching on "Santa" God.
What it means for the church is that if there is a mountain between you and the fulfillment of Jesus' mission on earth (to bring all nations into Him), then that mountain will be traversed or moved for the sake of Christ. If a mountain of opposition comes against your mission to spread the name of Christ throughout the world, God's inexhaustible power will meet and defeat that mountain in order that Christ's name will be spread.
It doesn't mean I can get what I want from God for no reason except that I asked in faith, it means my requests must be in line with Gospel ends in order for it to apply.
An army is in my way? No big deal, God moves mountains. I don't speak the language? No big deal, God can teach it if I need it now or He can allow me to learn it. A stubborn, fruitless church has possession of all the money to send out missionaries and they are sitting on it? No big deal, God can shake it out of them.

A taste of Christ

The only reasonable ammunition against sin is a clear and strong perception of the glories of Christ through His word and His Spirit. One who is held firmly by this excellence, perceived and enjoyed, will not darken the palette of his or her mind with the lesser pleasures of the flesh as long as the strong and clear fragrance of Christ is present. The temptation to sin many times will not even gravitate the desires of such a person, being mortified to an extent that the pursuits of the world may call, but like water off a ducks back they will roll right off the mind of such a person. If this perception can be maintained through discipline and regular spiritual exercises, the battle against sin is won. The battle is lost when we smudge the glory of Christ on the mirror of our mind with things that do not reflect Him properly. It never happens quickly, but slowly inch by inch the flesh takes back as the affections cool for Christ.
A Christian never runs straight to a "big" sin from this mindset; it is always a little negligence that pulls us away from Christ. Like Peter, we notice the waves, and then we begin to sink. Pride comes before the downfall. The affections cool before sin ensares. Here's where I'm pulling from:

"But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death."

James 1:14-15

There are three steps to any sin given in these verses: First we have a desire. Then we are tempted and lured by it. Then we sin.

So here's what I'm thinking, If we fight the battle against sin in the desire phase...we can win more easily. There is nothing to lure us and entice us, there is nothing to tempt us. A man living in a house full of half-naked posters of women is not able to purify his desires. His desires have gasoline poured on them at every occasion. Desire must be guarded, and purified. It usually accomadates what it spends the most time around. What you plant in the mind, blooms in the heart. Guard the heart, for it is the wellspring of life.

Death and Dying and the Grace to bear it

Every new encounter in life leads to new possibilities and new forks that appear in well-worn paths. Like a new spring on an old field, life continues to march on as death undoes all we love.

My grandfather passed away nearly three weeks ago. The family had been expecting it, anticipating it at times, and dreading it at others. He had a long, slow bout with an illness that made the past 26 years of his life (on the day I was born he was in surgery) move at a pace that almost would drive him into despair at times. He stayed around for many more years than any doctor expected him to with his heart working at an alarmingly low rate. In the end, the weakening of this heart, and the progress of cancer allowed my grandfather to go home sooner than we wanted, but thankfully later than we expected.

In his last days he was on large amounts of pain medication and he drifted in and out of lucidity. Synapses would fire during an ordinary conversation and he would end up talking about an event or experience years ago that he remembered. Watching the numbing of his mind was a trial, yet in his clear moments my family saw a man face death without flinching and rejoice that he would soon be in his new home.

On Thursday, October 11 2007 I walked over to my grandmother's house to say bye before running out for the afternoon and walked in on one of the greatest moments I have ever witnessed. There lay my grandfather, lips blue, eyes closed, face proud and unstrained by death. He was still warm. My grandmother cried on his neck, assuring herself that he was no longer suffering, no longer in pain, at home with Jesus and his mother and father. She left the room and this gave me opportunity to be alone with a shell; a dignified shell looking like a statue. No longer contorted, restless, and asleep in an induced medicinal haze, but his body was relaxed and calm and proud. Proud to have encased a man for 80 years who lived such. Proud to cool and decompose and lie until that day when it will be reanimated incorruptible. All I could say to this shell, to this man now at home, was "Thank You."

I am grateful for many things in life that have aided me, and there are other things I wish I could have done without. But in a convoluted sense, here hurt meets grace and leaves me nothing but thankful. I am thankful for a father that left me, so that I could learn from my grandfather something I would never have learned from my father had he been there: something taught to me by a man with a weak heart for as long as I'd known him. I cannot define it with words but I see it in every field, on every tree; it is something that has seeped into my bones. I have learned how to live from watching a man die. Death is a great teacher of things eternal, through grace. I have seen Christ conquer yet again, and turn the agony of loss into the prize of gain. I am thankful, just thankful. Hurt? Yes. Despairing? No. We rejoice for the memories of my grandfather and await that Day, when he will work to the glory of God again. From now on, a grave in the defunct farming community of Union, Florida has a special place in my heart. There lies the reminder of human weakness, and through grace the reminder of godly strength. There Christ has redeemed a soul, and will one day redeem a body, and has already through my grandfather's life and death redeemed something in me.

Titus and Elders

I have a Bible-reading plan that my Associate Pastor fondly refers to as the A.D.D. Bible-reading plan. Most of our church is going straight through the Bible, about 4 chapters a day. The plan I'm on gives you a gospel reading, an epistle reading, a history reading, and a prophet/wisdom reading. You are in four different places each day. Needless to say, some people's brains could not take this kind of randomness, mine thrives off of it, I can actually remember what I read.

Anyhow, the book of Titus deals with an interesting issue in the leadership of the church, eldership.

Titus was left in Crete to appoint elders in every church, who could lead and teach by example and doctrine. The reason was this: "There are many (church members) who are insubordinate, empty talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision party. They must be silenced, since they are upsetting whole families by teaching for shameful gain what they ought not to teach...Therefore rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith."

Now this is said to Titus in context of elders (1:5-9 is on elders, 1:10-16 on dealing with false teachers). The reason given for elders is found in 1:9, "He must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it." Meaning, what Paul was just talking about above, about rebuking people who upset the faith of many, will be done by elders in the body. Working with churches where I live, we see a lot of unspiritual people ruining congregations by their own manipulations and designs, and a lot of churches are torn apart because the deacons allow this to go on right under their noses. At the church I attend, the elders have silenced enough useless criticism to preserve a greater deal of unity than I have witnessed in a church before. Spiritual men leading the church is the greatest defense against divisive people that there is.

Now if SBC churches would just realize it is their heritage and go back to it, we'd have maybe that illusive "revival" we are always chasing after...

Need everywhere

My job allows me to travel quite a bit. I was traveling last weekend through a very interesting region. It is the southern region of a presently volatile country, there is a lot of internal squabbling going on right now, though it has yet to turn widely violent. I was driving down the road, headed to a very rural area to attend a church where the pastor recently has come under persecution for its orthodox beliefs by local religious authorities.
Along the rural, agricultural farmland the winding road took me by several fertilizer polluted holding ponds. Many of the local residents, wearing old clothes and looking quite haggard, were trying to catch fish out of those ponds. Poor housing, some in ruins with clothes still hanging out in the weather, dotted the landscape. In the cemeteries, many graves were adorned with the flags of the last rebel seperatist group to claim the area, still holding loyalty to that group rather than the present government. The area has been under intense drought over the past decade, worsening year by year, and many farmers have been driven out of business by bad weather, and government intervention. There are a lot of places in this world that need the Gospel.

The Holy Spirit, Ch 3

In Luke's view of the coming of the Spirit, we see it arriving in broad daylight with a crowd of people looking on. The Spirit enables miraculous gifts to be used to evangelize these crowds who are from different locations of the Mediterranean. The power of the Spirit is shown as Peter preaches and the crowd is convicted, and 3000 are added to the Christian community in a day. The ushering in of a new era is accompanied by the sound of a rushing wind, tongues of fire, and the Spirit comes down as they are all together praying. This coming of the Spirit is seen to pass on the Messianic empowering onto the believing community.
In John, we see a different event altogether when he breathes on the disciples and says, "Receive the Spirit". John's Gospel seems to be speaking of an indwelling sense of the Spirit purchased by Christ's death. Jesus may breathe on the disciples paralleling God breathing the first breath of life into Adam. It may emphasize us being in union with Christ in life now through faith rather than in union with the world.

Luke emphasizes a functional and ministerial aspect of the Spirit's coming, John focuses on the inner and relational function of the Spirit. Luke can be seen as the horizontal, and radical effect of the Holy Spirit on ministry as John gives us the vertical view of access and union with Christ through the Spirit that leads to this ministry.

The Holy Spirit, Ch 2

The Holy Spirit can be called "the Spirit of Christ". We see that Holy Spirit was involved from before the cradle until after the grave in Jesus' life. The Holy Spirit overshadowed Mary, much like the Spirit hovered over the waters in creation, and Jesus was conceived. The sanctifying effect of this is deep yet summed up in this: Jesus was fully man from His birth by a human mother, yet his origins are holy and undefiled by the conception.
Second, the Spirit empowered Jesus at His baptism and drove Him into the wilderness to be tempted. By the Spirit His ministry was one of power and authority. The Spirit that had forged the created order was redeeming it in the Person of Christ. Jesus offered Himself up in the Spirit on the cross as Hebrews tells. The Spirit also "declared" Jesus to be the Son of God in His resurrection from the dead via Romans 1:4. At all points, Jesus was empowered by the Spirit in all aspects of His mission. Now He has ascended, the Spirit testifies concerning Him and empowers His servants to speak the gospel by the Spirit to a lost world.
At all points it is the Spirit of Christ. God is three, and the three are one. This unity within diversity is clearly seen and understood by this interrelation of Christ and the Spirit in His life and ministry and resurrection.

Book Review, The Holy Spirit, Ch 1

I am having to re-read Sinclair Ferguson's "The Holy Spirit" for an upcoming seminary course, so I'm going to condense each chapter into a small review in order to help myself remember it, and be able to refer to it later for the class.

Chapter 1 deals with the Holy Spirit and His history in the ongoing process of biblical revelation. The Spirit is present from creation in revelation, and frequents the OT by empowering prophets, and judges, and working in situations to cause God's intended ends. But in the OT we don't find a strong and distinct "other person" aspect of the Spirit. Many have thought as to whether or not the Spirit could be distinctly a person, or merely a quality of God (i.e. the arm of the Lord).

Since "ruach", the Hebrew word for wind or spirit has at its basis an animation or energy, it is considerably vague as to whether this is mere action of God, or personality at times. There are hints in the OT as to the belief that the Spirit has a "hypostasis", or being, apart from the Father. David prays for God to not take His Spirit away, and speaks of it in a personal, relational sense. While it is vague at times, the OT does speak of God's Spirit in a way associating divine activity, personal activity, and hypostatically distinct (less though). The NT, however, fully articulates all three persons of the Trinity. The Spirit, the Son, and even the Father (John 1:18) are not fully revealed until the revelation of Christ.

So the Spirit is, from the OT, associated with the Divine covenant redemption of God to His people. In the NT the Spirit is revealed distinctly as a person, yet is still as fully integrated in God's covenant of redemption as before.

A blast from the past

Ah my dear angry Lord,
Since thou dost Love, yet strike
Cast down, yet help afford
Sure I will do the like

I will complain, yet praise
I will bewail, approve
And all my sour-sweet days
I will lament, and love

George Herbert "Bittersweet" 1633

All joy...

James 1:2-6 has taken on a special significance for me in the past few months. I find myself coming back to the verse again and again as my view of circumstances changes. Like a buoy cut loose on the rough sea, I find myself driven again and again into the rocks by certain moods and emotions. As the cliff faces cut at me and lacerate all workings of grace, I have to remember "Count is all joy when you fall into various trials". The greek verb "count" (hegesasthe) means to do some mental work in your view....adjust your perception of the situation. Trick yourself? No...just see "trials" in light of verse 4. Trials are working patience, so that you may be complete. Now if you value your peace more than your spiritual maturity, this will not be good news. But after you've fought that battle you are ready to move to verse 5...ask for wisdom to see the trial in this way, and don't doubt that God can give it. If you doubt, you will continue to see the trial as against your faith, and not for your faith...so do not doubt...don't be tossed about.

We know biblical wisdom is not man's wisdom. Man would not say to count trials as a joy. We don't value trials, nor patience, nor completeness.

A Dark Providence

Our experience, unfortunately, all to often interprets for us the attributes of God. The old expression "God is good all the time" takes new meaning during a time of trials. Suddenly it becomes easy to drag His name through our dirt when we aren't happy. God is not good because our experiences are all rosy. Even when it is dismal, God is good because of His essence, not because of our circumstances. Our circumstances must be interpreted by the good, immutable character of God, instead of by our emotion-laden circumstances.

Job

I have been reading through the book of Job lately and it has confronted me with a few issues:

1) Job thoroughly expresses the darkest possible human emotions from a completely spiritual viewpoint. In college it was always tough for me to express the negatives of life because of belief that those down times were colored by a lack of faith rather than hope in God. While unbridled pessimism is a lack of faith, complete and utter honesty shown by Job's laments are as spiritual as the exalted praise towards the end of the book. Job didn't start being "spiritual" in chapter 38, he is spiritual from chapter 1. We shouldn't be afraid to honestly pour our hearts out before God in prayer during those times when we are laid low in the dust before God....but this brings up

2) Job was very righteous. Therein lies the conflict, when I "bellyache and complain" before God, I cannot stand on my integrity the way Job does. Does that mean the book of Job is something alien to Christian experience, and therefore unusable in life? No, and for two reasons. I. Job is a picture of Christ righteously suffering the wrath of God at the behest of the enemy in complete submission and obedience. Christ is the fulfillment that Job is pointing towards. There is suffering not linked to sin, yet it is still from God's hand. God works with good and evil, yet always for our good as Romans 8:28-30 assures us. II. Through Christ, though we bear the consequences of our sinful actions, we are not condemned by our sinful state. There is a sense in which Job's laments, through Christ, can become our laments. We may bear the pain of our own sins, yet as Job longed for God to deal with Him fairly due to his integrity, we can plead for God on the basis of Christ's integrity.

3) The book confronts us with the angst Job experiences because there is no mediator between God and himself. In his mind, there is no one who may take his claim before God. Job is alienated from God and His blessing in his mind, yet he is very comfortable with his integrity; whereas a Christian is communing with God, yet our righteousness seems so alien. Our pole of relation is completely the opposite of Job's it would seem. He knows his righteousness, he is at odds of his God. We know our God, we are at odds with our righteousness. Here's where Christ comes in, He knows God, He knows His righteousness. The one who suffers wrongly, suffers only in line with what Christ has suffered. The one who is blessed undeservedly, is blessed in line with what Christ has suffered. All suffering, and all blessing, passes through nail-scarred hands to the saints of God. He is the mediator for all events, the filter as it were, through which all events become encased in grace: whether they are ill or fair, they are for our eternal good because of Christ, who purchased these things for us by His death.

Couldn't make it home on my own steam

I hit a patch of ice "whilst" traveling a few years ago. I was just walking along, minding my own business, being a typical overzealous college Christian when I ran into the Southern Baptist Convention in a big way. I had been raised SBC, so I'd heard the usual push for evangelistic fervor. I had always been quasi-Baptist for various reasons, until I got accepted on staff at M-Fuge. It is a Lifeway run camp, put on by the Southern Baptist Convention to get youth groups involved in mission work in some pretty scary areas. My assignment was to work in inner-city Jacksonville doing PCY (construction, painting, landscaping) with Habitat for Humanity in Jacksonville (Habijax). Going to training for the first two weeks with Fuge was amazing. You felt like you'd finally arrived at some spiritual plateau of leadership. You were going to be the role model for over 2000 kids by the end of the summer, and 200 of those would be in your group by summer's end. You could personally affect thousands of people by the time the ripple ended....

Needless to say, we got ready for camp. We slept too few hours, prayed too few (except for people to get saved), you forgot about yourself and your own temptations, and you just whisked through the summer at breakneck speed, trying to pour yourself into your students. By the time it was all said and done, I was exhausted. But I knew what I'd do, I'd go back to college for my senior year, and finally quit messing around on God, I'd give all of myself to win the lost and serve Christ.

When you are that revved up, you feel more like a Jedi Knight than a Christian. You are on some errand where you feel you are expendable in health, yet not in zeal. So what if you are stressed and angry and on edge, those virtues are expendable. But one thing is not: zeal for souls! If you lose that for an inkling of a second, somehow God's plan is over for you. If you let down on your passion for missions and the lost, you will blast outward like a supernova headlong into uselessness. It wasn't, for me, about connecting with God, as much as connecting with God's desire for people to be saved. I learned it from the SBC, and I learned it well. I still have not forgotten their ways fully. You don't care for the people either, their lives, their jobs, their houses, their defunct relationships, because all you care about is their soul, which is in your mind completely isolated from said circumstances....

I would wear myself out trying to maintain this "level" of zeal. My emotions would wear so thin that I'd be physically ill, but I'd try to witness, try to engineer conversations, try to share. I could connect with nobody for fear of not sharing...
"I may only have one conversation with this person..." and so all else seemed a bit irrelevant. Needless to say one cannot keep this level of activity up and remain alive. Within months after M-Fuge was over, I found myself afloat in a sea of lust and despair which did not abate for nearly 9 months. A deep discontentment with Christians, and evangelistic "strategies" began to emerge. I was in "the NET" training, and quit in the middle. I heard people talk about witnessing and I just thought, "You are into it now, wait a few months until you are stuck in your sins and see how zealous you are." But what was weird is that I did not lose my zeal fully, nor my desires to serve God. Quiet times ceased, but I was unsure of how they really added up with what I'd been taught about being a witness anyways. So many things happened, I caught pneumonia, graduated college, and got re-accepted to work M-Fuge in Philadelphia.

The summer started out with difficulty. I didn't like the camp pastor, I didn't feel joyful or zealous like before, somehow I felt I was being honest, yet not being zealous felt like being ministerially naked. I wanted people around me in my groups to experience something...I just wasn't sure what it was. I knew it was Christ, but not what I had wanted them to "pray" or "confess" the summer before.

The camp pastor and I had a talk one night, about how immense and glorious God was. I had believed and anchored myself on that many times in my life, but I had never been "taught" to base anything on that. All that theological speculation was not evangelism, and I was pretty sure that just evangelism was what was important. That summer, I spent many hours in front of an open Bible, reading of God's self-disclosure in Psalms 93, 97, and 99, and Isaiah 40-60, and wept at times before the manifold majesty of God contained therein. Waves of remorse for my own lack of conformity, joy unspeakable at His goodness, and every pang of grace in that free disclosure caused me to bend until I broke. God could have remained hidden, and we would have never pried deep enough to find Him. All those attributes seemed as pure gold hidden in the pages, and I treasured their discovery and disclosure to me by those authors. I found out the more I thought on them, the easier it was to disentangle the clutches of sin in my life. The more I valued those attributes, the more I wanted the world to hear. The more I beheld Christ's example, the more I wanted to serve my brothers and sisters. The less I sought the result actions taught to me by the SBC, the more God became a greater cause for them.

My Christianity was shot before I left for Philadelphia. I had been different since. I have not walked in it perfectly, but I feel as if I have been walking nonetheless. I don't know if I can call it walking before that. Since being humbled by God during that year, my resultant limp has covered more ground than my sprint the years before. I believe all Christians can benefit in practice and in piety, but uncovering that God has designed Himself to be the motivator for all resultant Christian virtues. "And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit." 2 Co 3:18