H,
“The
Problem with Self”
We already know the answer
to the great question of why we must give ourselves to higher things. Don’t we?
This is the fulcrum of our faith. There is no substitute. We dress it up
because we are afraid of it. It will take too much from the things we hide
behind. In our fragility, we need to cling on to certain motifs to keep up the “feel
good factor” or the more readily available “live with myself feeling”. Not that
feeling bad and being ashamed are noble ends. It is just that the solution does
not match the problem.
In church pews everywhere
there is a growing need to feel the vacuum of present life with the titter
tatter of inferior aims. There are all these days to appear in church laced
with pseudo inventions of a curious sort of grace that is not grace at all. The
need to anoint one head over the other. The need to declare talent over
character. The need to make character equal to Holiness. The need to make human
acts holy by mere effort and not by sanctification. We all need a lot of hot
air to fill up the balloon that is vacuous life filled with empty days.
As always, God gives us a
different way. He tells us to be quiet so we can listen. He does not put burdens
on us as a means of exploitation. He does not tell us to be better from the
haughty heights of a golden throne. He came down here to show us how to live
full lives by emptying all our life to Him and that, mostly, in the way we
treat each other. He comes closer now to whisper that refrain over and over
again to willing hearts.
To live without favourites, without utter
distinction, without a head that is not Christ, without a set of routines that
keep us within the lines of our own reason and without the crucial center of
your own assumed identity is the grand adventure that Christianity presents us
with.
How do we respond?
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