A Note on Palm Sunday

Today is "the Lord's Day" or Palm Sunday or the day of the Triumphal
Entry into Jerusalem. Each of these names indicates a certain understanding of the events of Jesus' coming to Jerusalem to be crucified. I don't want to spend a lot of time on this today because I think that reading the Bible and meditating on it yourself would do much better than anything I could say; the Spirit of God tends to be a better teacher than me ;-) I digress, there is one thing I'd like to tell you and it is my mindset going into leading worship today.

We are with Jesus

At Advent, we remember that God is with us and during Lent remember that we need that. Here on Palm Sunday we remember that we are with Jesus in this journey to martyrdom and on Easter we celebrate the beginning of a reconciling process between creation and Creator. In this spirit I encourage you to spend time today - at your church gathering or on your own - thinking about how the Christian life is to parallel Jesus' life. We're truly born at our baptism, this sets out the beginning of the Christian journey. We live and grow, learn and teach and when we come to points in our life (as there are many) in which we have to choose to be of Jesus' Kingdom or that of darkness, we die to ourselves; this is why the command to take up our cross is a daily-fulfilled command.

So, today, we walk toward the cross with Jesus, bearing in mind that this shameful and low event is not the end of our journey. Martyrdom - our daily bread - is the beginning of our life in Christ. Just as Jesus death was the beginning of the Church, so too are our daily "little deaths" the beginning of being re-created again and again.

Pray for your brother's and sisters throughout the world today as we all remember our relationship to Jesus and each other this week.

peace,
C.M.

Looking Through the Glass

How we regard ourselves is arguable one of the single most impactful things in our lives. If we think ourselves small and powerless, we are likely to behave small and powerless; if we think of ourselves as powerful and in-charge, we are likely to act thus. What is interesting is that it is not a matter of how we really are, necessarily, but how we understand ourselves. In looking in the mirror, we have to recognize that we don't really see ourselves. That is, we cannot see the inner workings of our body much less our soul and so, there is only a representation of ourselves and not the whole thing.

Paul, the apostle and mystic, has some words about this topic. When discussing love and the powerful, central role it plays in a Christian’s worldview, he mentions keeping a handle on reality.

Now our knowledge is partial and incomplete, and even the gift of prophecy reveals only part of the whole picture. But when the time of perfection comes, these partial things will become useless. When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things. Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.

                        -Paul, the apostle, NLT

First and foremost, Paul acknowledges the true way that we exist as created things; that is, no matter how developed or sophisticated our science and philosophy, we will only ever truly know things in a partial way. Now, the empiricist might argue that we know exactly how the heart works; how it moves, what powers it, what each ventricle, atria, artery and vein does. They would be correct only to a point, however; that is, we still do not know what initiates the first electrical pulse that powers the heart. Does it come from the mother? Is it self-generated? How does a heart actually start beating? This is one, limited example, but the point is that ultimately, there is mystery in all of our knowledge and it is a mystery, Paul says, that will never be revealed until we are one with God. 

Secondly, Paul speaks of process; that is, growing up spiritually by way of a physical analogy. He says that when moving from childhood to manhood, he let go of the childish things in favor of the manly things. This isn’t to say that there was no value in childish ways; as father of two little boys, I know their ways are beautiful. What he is saying is that when one has reached man-status (in whatever way that is measured), the childish things cannot be embraced alongside the adult ways; it is an either/or. If there is one thing that is true about children is that they often think they are more mature than they are; this also should be a word of caution to us: don’t think that you are more mature than you really are. Evaluate yourself with sober eyes and realize your shortcomings; they are much easier to reconcile with when they are laid bare.

Finally, Paul looks to the end and speaks of the time when we shall know ourselves and everything else in its fullness, just as God does. It is a little strange to think that God knows us better than we know ourselves, but it is the truth. Do you know how the soul is attached to the body? Have you walked the corridors of the spirit to discover what secrets lay therein? No, only our Creator knows the depths of our person. Someday, however, we shall see ourselves as we truly are; not just past the physical, but in a larger context with all of our connections and relationships laid out like a road map. Until then, we should only strive to know God more, for that is how we learn more about ourselves and actual reality. What we see now, Paul says, is a distortion of how the world really is. We are the ghosts and beyond the veil is reality. We pray now for revelation and look forward to the time where we can be with him and him with us. There we taste the fullness of his gift; for there is no offense and, indeed, no forgiveness between God and us because there is no space or room for it; He is in us and us in Him.

So, today, pray this: that we should be with him in that fullness and see ourselves as maturing and not-arrived-yet. The truth of our lives is that they are not over yet; let us embrace the process and, in humility, see ourselves as we are to the best of our ability.

Peace,

C.M.

Love Your God: with Your Mind

Part 3 is here! I encourage you to go back and read parts 1 & 2 about loving God with your heart and soul. I have been systematically walking through the passage in Mark in which Jesus says that "the most important commandment is...you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind and all your strength (Mark 12:29-30, NLT)." So we find ourselves ready to evaluate how to love God with your mind; let's begin.

The first thing we ought to do is define terms:

What is the mind?

The mind is a person's intellect, capacities to reason and memory. As I said in the previous post, I believe that the mind is a facet of the soul and thus not necessarily located in the brain (I won't get into it, but I will say that all that science can say definitively is that if there is a connection between the soul and the body, it is likely in the brain/nervous system). In this post I would like to expand on this idea and add that I think the mind is the guide to the soul; that is, it is the part that directs the soul where it would go and what it would evolve into. This is why we're told through Scripture that it is by the reforming of our mind that we are transformed into Christ's likeness. If you renew your mind -- the conductor of your "soul train" -- you necessarily impact the rest of the person.

So how do we love God with this mind?

I think, while there are many specific ways which we can love God with our mind, there are also general categories. My purpose here is to draw out these broad categories.

First, our mind can be made to love God by expanding it. Learning is one of the most primary ways that we honor God. Any time creation is as it is intended to be, God is honored; by learning, the mind is most fundamentally acting as it should according to it's purpose. In this way, we utilize our mind in humble submission (and thus love) to God's will and intention for that piece of our being. Again, there are specific ways that we can do this and most people learn by different means. So, whether you are a visual, auditory, a reading or a doing learner, you can love God by pushing the margins of your knowledge to new limits. God want's you to; he made you to; he delights in the wise and learned; he blesses seekers of truth.

A second general way that we can love God with our mind is to "meditate on the things of God". We covered this in subtlety in the last post. In lay-terms, think of things that are of God; things that are good, true, honorable, etc. We also do this by thinking about the teachings of Christ, the traditions of the church and things revealed to us by the Spirit. For example, once in a time of transition in my life, I felt the Spirit clearly say to me "eyes forward, hands on the plow". A reference from Scripture recalled and re-worded for my benefit, this message carried me. I spent time thinking about it; if I wanted to be fit for the work of the Kingdom, I needed to be forward looking and have my hands firmly gripping the tasks at hand. It is often true that you become like that which you think about.

A third way that we can love God with our mind is to do what it naturally does: drive the soul. Specifically, we ought to use our powers of intellect and reasoning to form a worldview that reflects the worldview of Christ. This means that we need to take his sermon on the mount seriously; it means that we need to view the world in terms of spiritual warfare; it means that, despite modernity, we ought to realize that the world as we  know it and the governments we submit to are not good enough. In light of this Christ-like worldview, we ought to be driven to action. Our mind drives not only the soul but also the body in this way.

There are probably things that lay outside of these categories, but I'm fairly sure that most uses of the mind and most ways of loving God with it fall into one of these three broad and often inter-related categories.

Things to keep in mind:

While there are many things to note when discussing loving God with our mind, I think that one of the most important is that we ought not fear reason and intellect. There is a subculture within Christianity that would say that unquestioning obedience is what God seeks and that philosophy, doubt and reasoning ought to be held as suspect. This, however, is not truth; Jesus consistently pushes his followers and challengers to think well. I am of the belief that Jesus was the greatest philosopher in the most academic sense of the word. Here is a fantastic book that builds a solid case for the life of the mind in a Christian's walk, here is a book that beautifully demonstrates that Jesus was indeed a philosopher and here is a book that shows you that doubt is not the opposite of faith.

I strongly encourage you to look up those books and even read them. Also, think about what has been said here; learn, think about the things of God and form your worldview to match Jesus'. Join me next time to talk about loving God with our strength. Also, please feel free to add your own ideas in the comments section: how else can you love God with your mind? Let us reason together!

peace,
C.M.