Be Done
It is not enough to acknowledge God's will; we must act on it. Christianity is not a spectator sport. Being Christian is not a passive undertaking (which may be an oxymoron, but that's okay). As much as it pains me to say it, words are not enough. Not to suggest that words are bad; in fact, words are often necessary, and saying the words, speaking--up, from the heart, our minds (or more importantly, our souls)--is essential to our Christian walk. I am not suggesting silence, though it occasionally can be a good thing. I am asserting that actions, including the act of speaking, are central to our walk with Christ.
Christ admonishes us to act. He tells us that we are to go into the world and do things: we are to help the widows and orphans, we are to shine a light into dark places, we are to render unto Caesar. We are told to do. Too often, I feel, we settle for being instead of doing.
When my high school students study the American Transcendentalists, focusing on Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, we talk about the difference between living and existing. Thoreau comments, in Walden, that he wanted to "live deliberately. . and not, when [he]came to die, discover that [he] had not lived." We explore the idea of how a person can die without living, and we usually come to the understanding that the word live must have, at least in Thoreau's mind, more than one meaning--that one may exist (live in the biological sense) without experiencing life (live in the philosophical sense). It seems to me that being Christian can take on the same shades of difference.
We can look at being a Christian as what we are or as what we do. If we choose the former, then being a Christian means nothing more than a title. Of course, my immediate thought as an example is the title teacher. We have all probably experienced classes with someone who has the title of teacher but who is not, actually, a teacher. A teacher teaches; a teacher purposefully engages students in activities that lead (or push) the students toward learning. I hope we have all experienced that teacher, also. As Christians, we have the same choice as the classroom teacher: we can call ourselves Christian or we can do the things that make us Christian.
I am not suggesting that we can actually do anything to save ourselves. Salvation is only possible through the grace, the mercy, and the love of God, through Christ, who died on the cross to redeem us from our sins. The resurrection is the proof of our salvation. Nothing we do, nothing we could possibly do aside from believe and accept, could ever save us. So, I am not saying in any way that what we do leads to salvation. On the contrary, I am saying that our salvation leads to what we do.
If we are truly saved--if we have experienced the heart-change that is salvation through Christ Jesus--then we should probably feel the Holy Spirit moving us toward action. (A friend of mine recently suggested that the Holy Spirit is the forgotten part of the Trinity, that we may embrace the Father and the Son, but that the Spirit is forgotten, possibly because it seems too much like superstition--we, as a culture, tend to view everything supernatural as superstition; but, as Christians, we should recognize that the two ideas are not automatically connected, that there are "more things in heaven and earth. . . than are dreamt of in [our] philosophies.") Finding the Holy Spirit and its message to us should be a crucial part of our walk with Christ. We should open ourselves to the message, and we should act upon it.
None of this is to say that the amount we do or the kinds of things we do ingratiate us with God or that we can in any way do enough to move us closer to God. We should not view the things we do as points or as steps toward the goal of being with God--we should see that being with God is the reason for doing these things. We have to understand the direction of the cause-and-effect relationship: we act because of our relationship with God; our relationship with God is not because of our actions.
As already mentioned, the actions we undertake should be directed by the Holy Spirit; nevertheless, most of us will persevere in thinking about what we should be doing instead of listening to God for directions. It is (probably) part of being human. We will continue to look at the people sitting in church with us, and we will continue to compile mental score cards, listing the things others are doing or have done, identifying the "pew-sitters" and the over-achievers among us. The problem with doing this, aside from the fact that what others do is none of our business, is that we cannot see the big picture, as God can. It is like my students who always want to know the grades others have received on assignments because they need to compare their own performance against the performance of their peers, and they cannot accept that they need to compare it against the standards I have set. We, like my students, need to understand that each one of us is an individual, with individual needs and individual skills. God does not grade on a curve. What someone else has done (or not done) has no impact on what I need to do.
Beyond this, we also have to consider that we cannot, we should not limit our view of actions to the church. We tend to compartmentalize. We see church as the only venue for God and anything having to do with God, so we limit our thinking about possible actions to those things that happen within the confines of the church. We are Christians wherever we may be. We can do things in any environment. God's kingdom, as we have already noted, is all of his creation, so the things we are called to do may have to be done someplace other than the church building. Of course, things still have to be done in the church: classes must be taught, business must be managed, things must be done. However, we cannot limit ourselves to church-related actions because in doing so we are, in effect, trying to limit God.
Being Christian, then, means acting Christian, means doing. We must make ourselves receptive to Holy Spirit, and we must act on the message we receive. To do otherwise would be to deny God in our lives.
Christ admonishes us to act. He tells us that we are to go into the world and do things: we are to help the widows and orphans, we are to shine a light into dark places, we are to render unto Caesar. We are told to do. Too often, I feel, we settle for being instead of doing.
When my high school students study the American Transcendentalists, focusing on Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, we talk about the difference between living and existing. Thoreau comments, in Walden, that he wanted to "live deliberately. . and not, when [he]came to die, discover that [he] had not lived." We explore the idea of how a person can die without living, and we usually come to the understanding that the word live must have, at least in Thoreau's mind, more than one meaning--that one may exist (live in the biological sense) without experiencing life (live in the philosophical sense). It seems to me that being Christian can take on the same shades of difference.
We can look at being a Christian as what we are or as what we do. If we choose the former, then being a Christian means nothing more than a title. Of course, my immediate thought as an example is the title teacher. We have all probably experienced classes with someone who has the title of teacher but who is not, actually, a teacher. A teacher teaches; a teacher purposefully engages students in activities that lead (or push) the students toward learning. I hope we have all experienced that teacher, also. As Christians, we have the same choice as the classroom teacher: we can call ourselves Christian or we can do the things that make us Christian.
I am not suggesting that we can actually do anything to save ourselves. Salvation is only possible through the grace, the mercy, and the love of God, through Christ, who died on the cross to redeem us from our sins. The resurrection is the proof of our salvation. Nothing we do, nothing we could possibly do aside from believe and accept, could ever save us. So, I am not saying in any way that what we do leads to salvation. On the contrary, I am saying that our salvation leads to what we do.
If we are truly saved--if we have experienced the heart-change that is salvation through Christ Jesus--then we should probably feel the Holy Spirit moving us toward action. (A friend of mine recently suggested that the Holy Spirit is the forgotten part of the Trinity, that we may embrace the Father and the Son, but that the Spirit is forgotten, possibly because it seems too much like superstition--we, as a culture, tend to view everything supernatural as superstition; but, as Christians, we should recognize that the two ideas are not automatically connected, that there are "more things in heaven and earth. . . than are dreamt of in [our] philosophies.") Finding the Holy Spirit and its message to us should be a crucial part of our walk with Christ. We should open ourselves to the message, and we should act upon it.
None of this is to say that the amount we do or the kinds of things we do ingratiate us with God or that we can in any way do enough to move us closer to God. We should not view the things we do as points or as steps toward the goal of being with God--we should see that being with God is the reason for doing these things. We have to understand the direction of the cause-and-effect relationship: we act because of our relationship with God; our relationship with God is not because of our actions.
As already mentioned, the actions we undertake should be directed by the Holy Spirit; nevertheless, most of us will persevere in thinking about what we should be doing instead of listening to God for directions. It is (probably) part of being human. We will continue to look at the people sitting in church with us, and we will continue to compile mental score cards, listing the things others are doing or have done, identifying the "pew-sitters" and the over-achievers among us. The problem with doing this, aside from the fact that what others do is none of our business, is that we cannot see the big picture, as God can. It is like my students who always want to know the grades others have received on assignments because they need to compare their own performance against the performance of their peers, and they cannot accept that they need to compare it against the standards I have set. We, like my students, need to understand that each one of us is an individual, with individual needs and individual skills. God does not grade on a curve. What someone else has done (or not done) has no impact on what I need to do.
Beyond this, we also have to consider that we cannot, we should not limit our view of actions to the church. We tend to compartmentalize. We see church as the only venue for God and anything having to do with God, so we limit our thinking about possible actions to those things that happen within the confines of the church. We are Christians wherever we may be. We can do things in any environment. God's kingdom, as we have already noted, is all of his creation, so the things we are called to do may have to be done someplace other than the church building. Of course, things still have to be done in the church: classes must be taught, business must be managed, things must be done. However, we cannot limit ourselves to church-related actions because in doing so we are, in effect, trying to limit God.
Being Christian, then, means acting Christian, means doing. We must make ourselves receptive to Holy Spirit, and we must act on the message we receive. To do otherwise would be to deny God in our lives.
posted by Rodney Rhodus | 6:04 AM
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