The Attractor

Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. -- Philippians 3:12

It took me a long, long time to grasp what this means.  I tried and tried to be a better person in order to be acceptable to other people.  I pictured, I guess, the standard others had for me – that I ought to be able to do anything and everything, perfectly.  Anything less meant that I was a failure.  Eventually I accepted the fact that I was a miserable failure, and I was never going to be anything else.  To deal with this, for a time, I resorted to self-medication.  That was pretty destructive, and, being the relatively common-sense person I am, I knew I could not continue in that path. 

Becoming a Christian didn’t help a whole lot, except it did give me hope that I could improve, that God would be able to transform my life to the point that I was Christ-like.  The people around me in church kept telling me about their transformations.  Men and women would get up and tell how God had delivered them and made them better.  I certainly acted better, but I knew I wasn’t better.  I could pass because other people couldn’t read my thoughts.  Too, I began to notice that a lot of these transformed church-goers still had serious problems of one kind or another. 

I am from Missouri and learned early on to believe half of what I see and none of what I hear.  I am, both by nature and nurture, skeptical and cynical – when it comes to me and to other people.  Cynicism is simply wisdom with regard to endeavors like politics, economics, history, and science.  The truth, though, was there in Christianity.  I could see it in the Word, even if that sometimes got torqued more than a little bit by the human tools that handled it.

We have not obtained it all.  We are not already perfect.  I do think some people get pretty close in this life.  I have met those who allowed me to lay aside my shield of cynicism in this arena and replace it with the shield of faith.  Most of us, certainly, will still be pushing for the goal the day this mortal body is surrendered. 

Paul gives us the secret here.  Christ Jesus does not make me His own because I am perfected or even because I am striving for perfection.  I am pressing on because I know I belong to Him.  

Pressing On The Upward Way

I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. -- Philippians 3:14

With the surrounding couple of verses, this passage describes life as a race in which the runner stretches toward the finish line, or the goal.  We have realized we are not what we should be, what we can be in Christ:   I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own (v.12).  Our motivation is really nothing except the love of God.  He wants us to be His children, His heirs. 

Christ is before us, calling to us by the Spirit.  Interesting is that phrase “of the upward call”, a very good rendering of the Greek, I am told.  It can be taken to mean that God is “moving the goal posts”, but I think it is more like Jesus is “setting the pace” and, at the same time, being our trainer, encouraging and inspiring us to keep going.  We are not going to reach the finish line – not in this life.  I would think we are never perfected, but off in those distant uplands Lewis’ narrator spoke of in The Great Divorce there is the unimaginable. 

To run effectively, one must forget what lies behind (v.13).  This means not only the sins and pains and failures of our lives outside of Christ, but all that we have achieved or seem to have achieved as Christians.  All the maturity and wisdom to which we might lay claim and of which we might boast must be cast aside.  No runner ever won a race because he set a world record in his previous outing.  No baseball team ever won today’s game with yesterday’s hits.  In this, the Christian may echo the SEALs – the easy day was yesterday. 

It’s a difficult thing to balance, to be always content yet never complacent – always satisfied but always ready for a new challenge.  We glory in and testify of what the Lord has done for us, but rehearsing past victories He has given us tells us that He will not leave us or forsake us in the trial we face today. 

This we may know with certainty:  we are being fitted for heaven.  And the fitter we become, the farther and faster we may strive toward Christ.  

There was a very nice lady that attended the same little church we did back in the '80s.  It was the custom, especially in the Sunday evening service, to have a few "specials".  The lady had a reasonably good voice, as I recall, and she would sing every few weeks.  It became almost a joke between my wife and I because about every other time it seemed she sang "Higher Ground".  Not a bad choice at all:

I'm pressing on the upward way

New heights I'm gaining every day

Still praying as I onward bound

"Lord, plant my feet on higher ground."

Practicing Perfection

You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.  -- Matthew 5:48

Perfect is a challenge.  The underlying word, though, is one with which Raccoons might be familiar:  τελειο, which comes from τελος – that is, telos, which refers to an end or a goal.  We should not think of degrees of excellence but of fitness.  If you have one lock that you really need to open and you have ten keys on your key ring, the one you want is the perfect one, the τελειο. 

My goal in life is to be the right one when I am needed.  It’s like the familiar parable of the Good Samaritan.  The priest and the Levite who passed by on the other side of the road were concerned with being “perfect” in the sense of being clean and inoffensive – not bad things in themselves.  The Samaritan, on the other hand, was the τελειο for the man who had been beaten and robbed.  We don’t know much about him other than what he did for a stranger.  Jesus did not relate this parable to endorse the Samaritan’s lifestyle or to condemn our efforts to keep ourselves pure and unspotted by worldly thinking and the corruption that accompanies it. 

Perfect may be translated as mature or complete.  Sometimes I think telling someone to be perfect can be a little like telling a small child to “grow up”.  On the other hand, if a man is over twenty-one but still irresponsible, spoiled and self-centered, telling him it is time to grow up is appropriate.  Even a child can act his age.  He can be perfect at that point.  And so may we be perfect. 

Our lock and key analogy, while helpful, is limited.  Our destiny is not static but dynamic and evolving.  Every time our “keyness” fits the situation, the door is opened to a new level of changes and challenges where the old “perfection” is no longer “perfect”.  We are always moving toward the goal of attaining (here’s that verse again)  … to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ (Ephesians 4:13).  

This is the ultimate Telos, the Attractor which draws our history and history in general.  So we are to continue … to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love (Ephesians 4:15-16). 

That will be just perfect.

    

Roofing the Temple

The end of all things is at hand; therefore be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers.  Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins. -- 1 Peter 4:7-8

My father helped build the little country church that we attended.  Most of the labor was volunteered by the men of the congregation so that the expenses were limited to material, but they did hire one experienced and skilled builder -- a man named Angus or Ang.  Ang liked to tip a bottle, like his father who was a local doctor.  He wasn't particularly a Christian, but he was no particular wicked either.  As they started to put the roof on the building, Ang observed to the crew, "Here is where we cover a multitude of sins."  The double meaning raised a chuckle, I'm sure.  In the end, the various, small "cheats" of the carpenter's craft would not detract from the integrity of the structure, from its clean, unpretentious lines or its utility.  It is an old church building now and has been remodeled a little and added onto a bit, but the core of the structure Ang and Dad and the rest raised stands firm and solid.   

Another Apostle agreed with Peter:  Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.

We know that Christianity is more than rule-keeping, more than law.  The Law is a sign at the border of the kingdom.  Christianity requires us to love, not just those who love us, but our enemies.  It is not, however, a naive, pacifist sentiment.  It is doing right by, for, and to others.  Sometimes the best thing you can do for someone, the most loving thing, is to lock them in a jail cell.  Sometimes you have to tell someone that what they are doing has to stop, and, if they won't stop on their own, the thing that is right is to stop them.  Whatever that takes. 

Most of the time, though, we are able to express our love by helping, encouraging, and supporting others.  Most of our enemies are not crazed jihadists on some foreign field but the guy down the street who lets his dog loose in our yard, the sadistic supervisor at work, or the snotty, overbearing mother at soccer practice.  Those are people that we can easily afford to forgive and easily help out when they find their battery is dead or they need lunch money.  Consider them as target practice.  They are helping us become better Christians. 

The truth is that we are all a little like Ang's church house, with our ugly little fixes -- that bad two-by-four that needed a scrap tacked on and such.  If we stripped off the roof and walls, everybody would see the places where things didn't quite come together and are a little out of plumb.  Decent people are always harder on themselves than on anybody else, probably harder on themselves than they should be.  If I am a decent person, it is because I am honest about my out-of-square corners and the rafters that don't quite meet at the heel. 

I can't really do anything about that.  I built with the material I had available and with the help that I had.   Those who poured the foundation may have misread the level a time or two, but I think they mixed the concrete plenty rich, and it is not going anywhere any time soon.  I'm not perfect, but maybe I am solid enough.  In any case, I can love my Lord by obeying Him and love my neighbors by doing them good and never wronging them, and this old house maybe won't looks so bad.  Perhaps those passing by will say, "At least it has a good roof."  

On Being Square

You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. – Matthew 5:48

In the last post we talked about the problem of good being in the world.  How is it that we determine good?  We know that someone like our current president has said that, for him, sin is doing something not in alignment with his own values.  Virtue for such a person might be summed up by the Shakespearean edict “to thine own self be true.”  We acknowledge the need to be honest and straightforward, that deception is wrong at all levels.  The full quote from Hamlet says, “This above all:  to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.”  There is virtue in this, but it is not a virtue much practiced by politicians, including Mr. Obama.  You might recall how quickly in 2008 Obama discounted and abandoned his mentor and surrogate father, Jeremiah Wright, when Wright’s sermons and utterances became too embarrassing to his campaign.  Wright even somewhat graciously recognized the need for duplicity in the political realm saying that Obama had to denounce him to win the election.  Was that a sin by Obama’s standard?  Or is that merely a reflection of his values? 

When we compare ourselves to ourselves, we find that our measurements are less than reliable.  A psychopath or sociopath can be “true” to himself.  Pol Pot, Mao, Che, Stalin, even Hitler may well have never sinned by their own subjective standards.  Did you ever try to measure something by holding your hands apart?  It might do in a general sense – you can probably accurately ascertain that your new Boxer will not be able to use the Yorkie’s old carrier, or that when they said the Prius seats five, they did not envision five NFL offensive linemen.    

It is hardly surprising to find that we deceive or attempt to deceive ourselves and others.  I think it is more surprising to see how much energy, psychic or otherwise, we invest in justifying or camouflaging our attempts.  It is almost as if we know instinctively that something is out of plumb -- as if we can somewhere, somehow perceive an objective standard of truthfulness, righteousness, and perfection which we know we are violating. 

Now, there are going to be some people who say that these are instilled into us by family and community, by our education.  I’m sure this must be partially true, for a child raised under inhuman conditions will be inhuman.   Yet we are not merely products of our environment.  We are born with potentials that can be shaped and guided or thwarted and perverted.  Again, that there are and have been cultures and societies that deviate and have deviated from the Absolute should not surprise anyone.  The astounding thing is that we are able to perceive those deviations. 

I refer to this passage frequently but that’s because it seems so profound to me:   Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.  He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power.  (Hebrews 1:1-3)

If we look at Jesus we see the perfection of God framed and defined in human flesh.  The Incarnation is the ultimate – so far – Revelation.   

It is certainly no easier to be perfect than it is to set a post plumb.  One of the reasons is that a post, like a human, generally has a few crooks and warps and twists you have to work through in order to get it straight -- as you might say, overall.  What we cannot do is accommodate our crookedness and say that we are merely being true to ourselves.  We cannot look at the post planted in the next hole and say that we are pretty straight compared to it.   

Unlike a breathing, mobile human, obviously, a post is a piece of dead wood.  While you and I may have some dead flesh that needs trimming, some overgrowth that needs pruning, we are still living and malleable, still capable of being formed and shaped toward “true and square”, toward perfection.  And we can see where we miss it.  We can know that we were we are not precisely on the level because we have something -- SomeOne by Whom we may measure and compare, Jesus Christ -- the same yesterday, today, and forever.  Look upon the tested, tried, and true Cornerstone.    

[T]herefore thus says the Lord God, “Behold, I am the one who has laid 1 as a foundation in Zion, a stone, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone, of a sure foundation:  ‘Whoever believes will not be in haste.’   And I will make justice the line, and righteousness the plumb line; and hail will sweep away the refuge of lies, and waters will overwhelm the shelter.”  (Isaiah 28:16-17)

Happy Return

You ascended to the heights, taking away captives; You received gifts among people, even from the rebellious, so that the LORD God might live there. – Psalm 68:18

Here is how Paul quotes that verse in Ephesians 4:8, “When He ascended on high, He took prisoners into captivity; He gave gifts to people”.

I did not read Gagdad Bob’s incredibly powerful post on Holy Saturday until this morning, but it coincides with the fact that I started reading Charles Williams’ Descent Into Hell last night.

I think I miss the evident for the obvious. Which is the forest – evident or obvious? How many trees does it take to make a forest? If a tree is a fact, is the forest an interpretation or an extrapolation? While talking to my wife yesterday, it occurred to me that a phrase in the Epistle to the Ephesians was of far greater significance than I could understand. He says, “Till we come … to a perfect man, to the measure of stature of the fullness of Christ” – that is to say until we reach maturity as measured by comparison to Christ. The Body of Christ, the Bride of Christ must come of age. He calls us to take His yoke upon us, but we cannot be unequally yoked.

Most of my relatives are not tall people. We range from short to average. Dad was about 5’7” and his nephew Clifford was about the same, maybe 5’6”. They had a neighbor named Tom who was well over six feet tall but slightly blunt on top. The three of them were cutting some logs together. When they carried the logs out on their shoulders, Dad took one end, Clifford took the other, and they suggested Tom get in the middle. Tom thought those logs were a little heavy. If you’ve ever seen a “Ma and Pa Kettle” movie with Marjorie Main, you might recall Pa’s rather mismatched team hitched to his wagon. In that case, it’s the little horse that has to work much harder to do what the big horse does.

The gospel is the “death, burial, and resurrection” of Christ. As we just celebrated, He liberated and despoiled hell – or as one local preacher puts it: Jesus razed hell. After descending to liberate and deliver, the Lord ascended to pour out the Holy Spirit with His myriad of gifts upon us. These gifts are not baubles for our adornment or playthings for our amusement; they are the means of our growth in wisdom, maturity and beauty.

The Lord has “ascended”. In this case, the obvious is that Jesus is no longer in this world, in the stream of time. He is, as it were, hidden from the Bride. He has given us the Comforter, the “earnest of our inheritance”, but He has left us in time while He waits in eternity – already perfect and unchanging, “the same yesterday, today, and forever”.

And then there is the evident. For what is He waiting?

For us, the Bride, to grow up.