Thu 17 Jan 2008
In continuing my evolving thoughts in Philippians 3, it’s brought me to this thought: There is something mysterious and other-worldy about conversion, whether you experience it as a moment-in-t
ime experience or a series-of-steps-on-a-journey. I grew up hearing the gospel as a child and heard it for years..over and over and over. Until one day…BAM! Like Paul on the Damascus Road, it lights me up and after all these years, I have yet to recover. But godliness never accidently happens. No one wakes up on a random Tuesday, transformed into somethin "godly." That’s why Paul says ‘I press on…’
Which led me to I Corinthians 9:25, where he writes that every athlete competes for a perishable reward, but our rewared is eternal/imperishible. That’s become more true and evident to me as I’ve been training for the AT&T Austin Marathon. For instance, I’m NOT a real athlete. (Winning some dopey college intramural doesn’t count. And though I played soccer in college, I’m not sure that counts either…) At the highest level of athletics, everything is done to reach a goal. Lance Armstrong. Tiger Woods. Michael Jordan. Tony Romo. Well, probably not Romo. But for the rest (and multitudes of others), every aspect of life is carefully calculated: how much i sleep. what i eat. how many ounces of protein/carbs/fat I take in. a particular kind of shoe i wear. my sunglasses. how many ounces of water i drink per hour. what kind of ‘free time’ recreational activities I participate in. Everything is designed for them to peak at an optimal performance. They do it for a reward that is perishible. The implication is that WE do it for something imperishible.
Paul confesses, "I don’t run aimlessly without a goal. I’m not some kind of shadow boxer beating at the air like some kind of weekend warrior. I beat my body and make it my slave. I know where I’m going. I have a goal and a plan and I’m fighting the enemies of my plan. I don’t just show up and hope for the best."
My confession is that when things start going bad for me I don’t want to stick to my plan for godliness. You know what i want instead? Starbucks. Because caffeine will make it better for me for a while. Or I want a double swiss and mushroom burger with curly fries and a bladder-buster Dr. Pepper. Or I want sleep. Or sometimes, I want to strap on my iPod, select some Demon Hunter or some Rage Against The Machine (Kiling In The Name Of will do nicely) and run at full speed for an hour. Or find some one i can pummel.
For the record, there are times that everything in me cries out to medicate and numb the frustration and angst. But that’s the last thing I need to do. What I need is Christ. I need to press on and press in. Pray. Throw my life at feet the feet of Christ and confess that, once again, I’ve screwed it up and am trying to do it my way. What my flesh wants is not what it needs. So I beat my body, make it my slave, and fight the enemies of where i want to go.
Paul tells us to ‘train ourselves for godliness’ (I Timothy 4:7-10), which comes from the Greek gymnopsium (we get ‘gymnasium’). It means ‘to sweat’. So, sweat yourself to godliness…don’t just ‘try to get into better spiritual shape this year. The problem is we set pseudo spiritual goals: I’m gonna pray more. I’m gonna get in the word. Plug into REMIX or Chasing Shalom this semester. Good for you, I guess. but godliness doesn’t happen out of ‘want to’. It happens out of discipline, sweat, straining, striving, commitment. Otherwise our whole spiritual life will turn into ‘“want to’s”.
Marathon….train. run when I don’t want to.
I think some people live life. But most people have life live them.
So, where are you running? What are the enemies of that? Have you defined them? Do you know them? For example, I’ve got friends who love to study. They study all the time and if I ever want to talk theology with them, they tcan alk circles around me. But they can’t seem to pray to save their lives. And then I have other friends who have powerful prayer lives…but I’m not sure they can read. And when I speak (or blog) about spiritual things, they sometimes email me and ask me how much time I’ve spent in prayer, because it seems to be lacking in power…The deal is that I need to both of them in my life. Closely.
If I’m ever going to become Philippians 3, it won’t be while on cruise control. It will be fought for. Labored over. Sweated for. Ever thought how strange it is that Paul says to ‘labor with me in prayer’?…
(thanks to MC for getting me to chew on all this…)
2 Responses to “ Forgetting and Straining, Part Three ”
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January 17th, 2008 at 11:16 pm
The Orthodox say, “A theologian is one who prays and one who prays is a theologian.” It may not be immediately obvious, but there is a depth and breadth in that one statement which continues to unfold for me.
It also strikes me that the goal toward which Paul is striving, the perfection he has not yet attained, seems to be the resurrection of the dead. Is that not our full and lasting gift of life from our source for any life at all? I often struggle to connect the Christian language I hear around me with the words and thoughts I read in our text. As I listen and even interact with those Christians I know I sometimes feel a bit like Inigo Montoya with Vizzini: “You keep using that word — I do not think it means what you think it means.” I rarely feel that way around you, Tom. Take that as you will.
January 21st, 2008 at 4:26 am
Isn’t angst and frustration valuable? Isn’t rage against the machine not without its merits (I like getting to use double negatives in such a positive way)? Isn’t physical training of the body worth but a little (coming from a fat man, I love the irony)?
Maybe we actually love our sin too much. Maybe we do not rage against it like a mortal enemy because it is our medicating fix for the day. “Do you know why they put oxygen masks on a plane?” Great question after you understand it. “Oxygen gets you high. In a catastrophic emergency, you’re taking giant panicked breaths. Suddenly you become euphoric, docile. You accept your fate. It’s all right here. Emergency water landing - 600 miles an hour. Blank faces, calm as Hindu cows.” The right reverend Tyler Durden understands. We have stopped fighting and have accepted the sucky perverse Christianity that the hucksters have shoveled for so long that it is nothing like the reality.
The theologian again speaks, “Man, I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who’ve ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. G__ d___ it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy s___ we don’t need. We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war… our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.” Maybe Tyler understood exactly what Paul was saying. Maybe we have accepted the pile of manure that has been shoveled in our direction so long that we have grown to love it instead of fruits and vegetables the manure is suppose to fertilize.
What if we have completely missed the mark of Christianity and actually love that which God hates? Have we so fallen in love with ourselves and our sins that we have forgotten that we are dead men walking? Have we completely lost touch with the reality of the Biblical text and find out that we are actually at war with ourselves? Maybe it is time to cast down our idolatrous selves into the sewer where we belong. Maybe it is time to go to the fight club and rip us out of our souls.
Again from the theologian Durden, “Listen to me! You have to consider the possibility that God does not like you. He never wanted you. In all probability, he hates you. This is not the worst thing that can happen.” We are not liked, we are not loved. We are still not our own because we are owned by our father the Devil. This is in actuality, an actuality until we are converted. We have so screwed up theology with love, joy and peace that we have abandoned holiness, justice and hell. Still we cling to our love of sin as if it we our god, gently tucked away in a book for Sunday medicating meetings. The opium is ready dear friends.