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.

Acting Right

Moses and Aaron went from the assembly to the entrance to the Tent of Meeting and fell facedown, and the glory of the LORD appeared to them. The LORD said to Moses, “Take the staff, and you and your brother Aaron gather the assembly together. Speak to that rock before their eyes and it will pour out water. You will bring water out of the rock for the community so they and their livestock can drink.”

So Moses took the staff from the LORD’s presence, just as he commanded him. He and Aaron gathered the assembly together in front of the rock and Moses said to them, “Listen, you rebels, must we bring you water out of this rock?” Then Moses raised his arm and struck the rock twice with his staff. Water gushed out, and the community and their livestock drank.

But the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, “Because you did not trust in me enough to honor me as holy in the sight of the Israelites, you will not bring this community into the land I have given them.” -- Numbers 20:6-12

Just once I’d like to meet an alien menace that wasn’t immune to bullets. (The Brigadier – “Dr. Who”)

Or, in terms of Gagdad Bob’s ongoing ruminations on Balthasar, could we cut the drama? Why can’t we just, once in a while, address an issue with human power and employ our own efforts to get things done? It seems so much simpler, or at least more straightforward. You know, like instead of wandering around out here in the desert getting water from rocks and eating whatever this manna stuff is, we go in and kill off some tribe that has a river and some land.

It’s not so much that we want to do away with the drama as we’d like to use our own script, be the director, or at least ad lib a little. That’s all Moses was doing. The Bible, though, is all about types and shadows, depicting the universal in little vignettes that we can view and comprehend.

Moses wanted freedom and justice for his people. When he attempted to bring justice, he got forty years of exile in the desert. When he tried to give them freedom, he got – well, forty more years of wandering in the wilderness. Out of all the man endured, this single flash of anger in a moment of frustration denied him entry into the land of Canaan and the opportunity to see his people settled and established in covenant with God.

Moses is not innocent in this. He took matters into his own hand, something Scripture cautions against repeatedly. He knew what God had told him. He could not plead ignorance, though he did not necessarily understand the significance of what he was to depict.

What does it mean to get a spring of water from a rock? Water is Spirit and life. The rock is God. If we speak to the Rock – that is, pray, relying on the grace of God, the life of God flows out to and through us by His Spirit. When Moses struck the rock with the symbol of his authority, his staff, he corrupted the story. Instead of depicting a trust in God’s grace, he depicts God in slave-like subservience to human demands, to man’s strength and authority. Though the Lord loved Moses and understood his weariness and frustration, He could not endorse his actions and reinforce the spoiled object lesson.

We may err in different ways with the same result. I am nobody; no one will know; it doesn't matter if I do things my way. Another view is the sort of new-agey way: I am as a god; I can do as I will and have my way. Or, as Moses did: I know God wants this done; I am going to do it, and since I am "doing the Lord's work", it doesn't matter if I do it my way.

What I am ever-so-slowly coming to understand is that this is replayed in my own life. Obedience in small things takes on a new importance since my actions are channels for big truth to enter into the small, otherwise insignificant details of my existence. I don’t know if those bits of acting right – rather, I don’t know how those bits of acting right ripple through the fabric of reality. I know they do.