Christians should find it easy to consider/acknowledge or even go as far as admit that they might be wrong - was the thought that I had this morning. Swiftly followed by the question: 'ok so why do I find it so hard then?'
I was wrong once [upon a time]...
What do I mean - well I was thinking that the most natural entry point in entering the kingdom of God is the one where we repent, or re-think how we are doing life and come to a crisis of realisation that maybe we are not doing so well - heading the wrong way down the right road as Jason described it in his talk yesterday.
Now however that has been framed in the decision making process is not really the point - the point is at some point I made a decision to follow Jesus - or to put it crudely i said ok my kingdom is pretty crap, small, crowded squalid place where i reign and i've heard/read/felt/experienced something different Jesus which seems to be your Kingdom and therefore I abdicate my throne and my kingdom and instead want to join/be part of/live in your kingdom.
I admitted i was wrong/limited/shallow/oppressed/selfish/arrogant/greedy/cruel/unkind and consumeristic and more than that i participated in a confederation of kingdoms called 'society/culture' where we shared all these things in common - we had a simple constitution which said...
We each have the right to do whatever we want that makes us happy as long as it doesn't mess too much with our individual happiness [and even then it will limited by our historical understanding of protecting my rights to health/wealth/possession]. With that caveat I won't tell you how to live your life and you don't tell me how to live yours...
Your kingdom come - but i'll take the franchise option of my will still being done!
But here is the nub, I wonder after making that initial confession that I was wrong and deciding that I needed God whether I just changed the name on the outside but fell straight back into my old practices - instead of one form of cultural acknowledgement i now had another, instead of moving into God's kingdom I set up shop on the border and took the best of God - he will look after me, sort things out for me, keep me safe, healthy, wealthy, problem free whilst continuing to have the best of my life before - it's about me and my happiness.
Yes of course this living still required pay offs, compromises and becoming fluent in two forms of language/lifestyle and if anyone asked of course i was fully in - look i bashed the minorities who christians were supposed to bash, i had made my confession, i tried to twist a few arms of people to join me but in reality it was still my kingdom, loosely affiliated to God's, mainly in name only.
In my kingdom i drifted away from that original thought that maybe i was wrong, maybe i needed to continue the process of rethinking, repenting, reconsidering and instead I became about being right in my new affiliation - I found a nice comfortable place of doing what i wanted and any challenge to that was met by the reaction: 'who the hell are you to tell me how to live my life, what I should believe and how i should live that belief!'
Over recent years experience has shown me that I have been wrong about many things - that I my own actions are so often rooted in my own insecurity and addictions, my selfish need and more than that i participate in a faith whose systems inherently reinforce that...
I have come back to the point where I started from which is that I am often as wrong about being a christian as I was as about being a secular member of society - i have made both experiences about me and my needs, about doing things that make me happy with a veneer of respectability of doing so in the name of God...
So I wonder....
... if instead of insisting on my own rightness i became open to consider that maybe i was at best only partly right? I wonder if i continued to rethink/repent in my life whether i would be open to letting it be about how i acted in my marriage, at work, who i voted for, what i wore, how i played, who i hang out with, how i care for the communities i am part of including this planet?
...whether that ongoing consideration that I have a tendency to get things wrong would help me be less insistent that MY way was the right way - whether that was my way of doing church or anything else?
...if being more humble would make me more open to advice about how to live my life, would make me more open to sharing who I am rather than who I think I should be, make me transparent as to the pain/selfishness/addiction/stress/tension/hang ups that I have and need help with but also make me more loving in reaching out to people with their own issues/stresses - to care for them as people made in God's image rather than as projects to shape into that of my own and assimilate into my kingdom [so i feel better/smugger/more righteous about being me]?
...that being wrong is an opportunity to be a work in progress rather than have to feel i am a finished article? That life is about learning, seeking, searching for God and he is about finding me in growing depth and transformation?
...that i might have not have all the answers, or even all the questions makes me wonder if rather than seeking to enforce a particular practise/way i should be more open, supportive, encouraging of people who are different to me? To what end am I right is less important to the Q is this helping someone find/connect/express their faith in Jesus in practise rather than per my own preferences/experience/choices? Is polarity - i'm right/you're wrong a concept that should be on the way out and instead maybe something that says where are you right, where can i learn from you?
...what the impact of reflecting on whether we are still being wrong would mean to our gatherings/structures/systems as a faith, how could we change them and how could they help us to be more humble, open, God seeking?
...that being open to being wrong by myself and my tendency to self determine in favour of me is not an invitation to seek to participate in a community? to encourage confession? to support accountability? To seek to make my life not so much about just me but to encourage me to open up to others, to seek to love and care for people and in return to do the same for me - so that we can challenge each other and ask the Q how are we living life? Are we living out what we believe? More are we living out the practise of life, the marks that Jesus suggests that we should? And encourage, love, support and spur another on to do so?
...any more that you can think of/would like to add for you?
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