Breathe

The Fan Base just complimented this blog, making me realize I haven't written anything for a while.  In reading back over recent posts I see that it is strangely prophetic of things happening now.  This should not be strange.  We're just blind to the winds, tides, currents of time and circumstance.

God has indeed been working miracles in my life recently.  We prayed that he would work his will and glory and he is.  I don't want to say more now.

I've also been learning some new things about how to relate to God and others.  One that I will repeat from Wayne Jacobsen, whom I've mentioned before.  I had never really examined the Prodigal Son story.  Sure we all know the typical lesson from it about the kid who squanders his wealth and ends up crawling home only to be welcomed.  But we leave out two main points of the story.  One is the father who acts like no human father we've ever known.  Who gives an inheritance before he's dead?  Who allows his son to squander himself and his resources?  We'd call him a bad parent who didn't control his kid through other means.  And then he isn't the least bit angry when the son returns.  Not even a scolding or knowing look.  This is a picture of how God loves us, and I wonder if my notions of parenting aren't wrong in light of it?

Then there's the other son who doesn't run away.  He is angry about the prodigal and the reception of him.  He says he has slaved away for the father and got nothing for it.  I used to identify with this son.  I did the right things.  I followed the rules, and I was supposed to be so selfless as to not be miffed at the bad kid getting the party?  I thought it was a flaw in me.  But if we look at the response of the father a little differently it makes so much more sense.  This son wasn't doing right either.  The father says you are with me every day and can have these things any time.  But that son hadn't because he'd been so busy trying to be good...to run things for the father.  The Father is basically saying the son could have had that calf and the party any time.  He just hadn't.  It reminds me of that stupid pizza commercial from years ago where the scout master wants to pay for the free pizza in the buy-one-get-one.  He and the clerk go at it that he'll keep getting extra free pizzas that way because a free one comes with every payment.  Just shut up and take the free pizza!  You can't work it off.  God doesn't need our help.

I now believe this story represents God and his relation to those who are far from him and those who are closer.  Both miss the point.  One takes the good things he's been given and squanders them to his own destruction and fears to return because of the judgement he deserves.  The other works to earn his keep even though the entire wealth has been at his disposal the whole time.  But the father wants only to love and give to his children.

So then, how do we reconcile the Old Testament Vengeful God image?  I don't know.  I don't think it can be systematized.  Wayne suggests that it might be a case of mistaken motives.  Rather than reading everything as obey or else, perhaps it is saying, in me, you'll be able to...  In other words, it's more like in me, you will honor your father and mother, you will not be jealous, etc.  and wrath is a way of purifying sin from within us.  It's not a new idea.  The view of sin as disease needing cure has been around a long time.  It fits so well when you start applying it.  Even Jack's idea of hell being locked from the inside is built along these lines.  I don't want to get into the theology of it.  That is to miss the point.

The point is this:  God does all the work.  We can't change ourselves, save ourselves, or do anything to get rid of that which destroys us.  But God loves us and wants us to love him freely.  The rules are for two purposes: 1. show us what is destroying us by defining how we fail, and 2. warn us of how certain things will destroy us.  The true power of Christianity, which is as otherworldly and crazy sounding now as it was 2000 years ago is that we don't have to do anything.  Just open myself to the reality, the mere possibility even, and breathe.  Let that love become real to me.  Then I'll begin to love him back.  And that's what he wants.  Not obedience, not sacrifice, the love of his children.  He delights in us and in raising us.  I want to live like this.