We Have A Problem

So now, little children, remain in Him, so that when He appears we may have boldness and not be ashamed before Him at His coming. – 1 John 2:28

In one of Gagdad Bob’s posts last week he made the statement: The local ego is "exteriority" as such. When you think about it, it's the only thing that is "outside" the cosmos. It is merely a kind of Darwinian adaptation to external circumstances, and is therefore largely a mirror of the environment. It is more or less exiled from spirit, and in need of deliverance, or salvation.

Abiding in Christ or remaining in Him is the way of deliverance from this hellish isolation. Back in the ‘70’s sometime I read a book called Marooned about astronauts in an Apollo space capsule that lost power and became stranded in earth orbit. If I remember correctly, the book and a movie based on it preceded the Apollo 13 near-disaster. The difference was that the fictional astronauts lacked the backup systems of the lunar module that Apollo 13 was able to deploy. In the book the danger was that the astronauts would run out of oxygen before a rescue mission could be launched by NASA or the old USSR. If no action were taken to bring the men down, they would soon asphyxiate then continue to circle the planet in a slowly decaying obit until they eventually entered the atmosphere and burned.

It is a good spiritual allegory. We often think of ourselves as part of this group, that family, the masses of humanity, a citizen of this country or that state. The truth is, though, that all of those associations are sort of illusory, and they are certainly temporal. Apart from Christ, our permanent state is one of isolation. We might as well be stranded in a powerless spaceship. If we really consider where we are, we will realize that every breath draws us closer to our last breath. Our orbit is spiraling down to destruction. The end may be near or not but it is inevitable. But it need not be so. Jesus has provided a way of escape. He offers us a free ride home. We just have to enter His ship and remain with Him.

Another way to look at this Scripture is to consider the importance of the words “boldness” and “ashamed”. Remember that prior to the Fall, the man and the woman were naked but they were not ashamed before God. There was no ego, so there was no place to step outside and look back in. Adam was what he was and he thought nothing of it. We may talk more about this as we go along in First John.

We are moving toward that Christ-like state where we think nothing of self, where we are pure. Meanwhile, as long as we are in Christ, we are covered. To take away Adam’s shame, God killed an animal and clothed the man and woman with the skins. Our shame is removed when we put on Christ and are clothed with Him. The unredeemed ego remains naked and exposed. This is not obvious as long as it is cloaked in darkness – which explains why the saint is not all that welcome by everyone. But even if the outsiders can keep us at bay, some day Christ is going to appear to them. The light will come on, exposing them, and making them ashamed.

This shame is not the function of any particular sin or set of sins but of the very nature of self, of the self-consciousness that differentiates self from being, if you will. It seems to me sometimes that if I could stop thinking I could stop sinning, and I’m pretty sure that if I could stop self from stepping away and looking back, I could definitely be free of sin.

I can lose self and remain in Christ, or I can cling to self and remain marooned.