Did you ever know anyone who seemed to have no trouble making choices?
The thing I'm thinking about now is that we all make choices every day, if they could be called that. And these choices exist on several levels in our minds.
First level. I'm hungry. I will eat. Second level. MacDonald’s sounds good. I will go to MacDonald's. Third level. I could eat something here at home, but I like getting out of the house. Fourth level. I like living the American life of convenience. I will get something convenient. Fifth level. If I’m hungry I obviously should eat because those two things go together. Deepest level. I have needs and they are to be swiftly met by others.
Or it could follow another track.
First level. I’m hungry. I will eat. Second level. Taco Bell sounds good. I will go to Taco Bell. Third level. I could make something here at home, but I don’t have time to prepare something before I get to soccer practice, the bank, my hair appointment, and Radio Shack before it closes. I will get something quick. Fourth level. I could slow down and try to enjoy life, but quick things are better because I can get so much more done. Fifth level. My life consists of the things that I do. I will choose doing lots of things. Deepest level. My life is empty. Who or what will fill me up?
Or again…
First level. I’m hungry. I will eat. Second level. Wendy’s sounds good. I will go to Wendy’s. Third level. I know it’s not the healthiest, but it tastes good. I will eat tasty food. Fourth level. When I eat healthy, I feel smart but when I eat tasty food I feel pampered. I will be pampered. Fifth level. I deserve to be pampered because of my country of birth (or my race or my gender or my household income…) And so on…
I guess I picked fast food because I imagine we all eat a lot of it (I know I do), and because we all probably choose it with little consideration. Nobody ever thinks these things through to the deepest levels. Maybe once a year does someone ask themselves, you know, why do I eat so much fast food? Or why is it so important to me to…? Or why do I always…? The deeper reasons are seated in our subconscious, or rather somewhere deep in our souls.
I wonder if Jesus lived that way.
Jesus and his class had an on-the-go lifestyle, and they did do fast food. They were known to pick grains as they passed through fields. But I have to wonder, did Jesus’ decision tree look like one of ours?
Hm.
If you think about it, the deeper choice is a fountain feeding the shallower ones. The deeper choice sweeps the shallower choices along. The deeper choice is weightier. It matters more.
What if we lived from the deep instead of from the surface? What if we lived from our one heart instead of from our many faces? What if we didn’t wait for these external stimuli (hunger, gas prices, boss, commercials, peer pressure, whatever) to blow us around? What if we lived in the constant recognition that every choice was more or less a symptom, and not a cause? What if we rejected the idea that the value of our life is just the sum of our choices? What if we accepted the idea that every choice we make is only a brainchild of the big choice we’ve already made: what we are alive to and what we are dead to? Would that make a difference? Would it be a simpler way to live? a better way?
Jesus said no man can serve two masters. Either he will love the one and hate the other or hate the one and love the other. He will be dead to one and alive to the other. Paul wrote a good bit about this idea of walking in life and death, of simultaneously living and dying in Romans 6-8.
I think Paul and Jesus picked up on something. I think they woke up every day knowing that they were both dead and alive. They woke up every day knowing, then, which things and people were dead and which were alive to them. They woke up every day knowing, then, that whatever choices they made that day were already made because they were just incidental. In other words, the choices that they were faced with on that day were just little versions of the choice they had already made. They were really just opportunities for them to confirm the choice they had already made. Now, I personally think the choices were clearer for Jesus than for Paul. Hence the need for a certain type of prayer.
I have asked people before how I could pray for them. Sometimes they say they need “wisdom” or direction” from God. And they sometimes have this idea that they need to make the “right” choice. Now I’ve heard all kinds of discussion on whether it’s a sin to make the wrong choice or if God doesn’t really care because it is all where your heart is, etc. But those discussions weary me.
Maybe if our prayer started with the question of what I’m alive to and what I’m dead to, then the fog of the choices today would come clear, lose a lot of their heaviness, and let the light in.
One of the results of living this way is freedom. If I know who I am to God, what role He has given me, what I’m alive to, and what I’m dead to, and I am content in that, then the so-called choices that come along every day are a light burden. I think I might even get to the place Jesus was—so free, so focused, so content, so confident, so careless, so care-full, so determined, so joyful.
But I don’t think I can get there at all by studying the Bible, identifying all the choices that might present themselves to me, and being prepared with a right answer for each of them. I do think I can get there by having a profound sense of who I am, what I am about, and what I’m alive to, and what I’m dead to.
But who do you know that is sure of their choices? I think Jesus was. And I think Jesus was because he made his priority knowing his life and his death instead of learning how to make good choices.
Jesus made himself what he is by deathing himself into the will of the eternal Father—thus plunging into the fountain of his own life, the everlasting Fatherhood, and taking the Godhead of the Son. – George MacDonald
All the other choices are just steps along the way.
15 comments:
You should read a book called Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenburg. You would really like it. A phrase he coined in the book is "What is alive in you?" You just remined me of a lot of what he talks about in this post.
I'm done with fast food though. I just watched Supersize Me and got totally grossed out. I have gotten really sick of how I like to evade process. So as an exercise in breaking myself of that, I decided to bake fresh bread every day. It's such a small thing to do. It takes like 15 minutes of your time. You let it rest, put it in a pan and bake for 40 minutes. It requires planning, thinking, and actual work though. You have to knead it and work the dough for like ten minutes. But most people want to pop a tube and throw stuff in the oven. They like to avoid looking at or touching food as much as possible. We dissociate from food, from life really in so many ways. We have become part of the assembly line and the only way to get off is to notice all the ways you do this and interrupt yourself. Baking bread was, for me, a small way to begin that process.
The first chapter of the book is on this site. It is mainly a commercial for the rest of the book,(all first chapters usually are)but it's still pretty cool. I will disclaim, he is kind of a hippie. He uses the term "divine energy" to refer to God. (I find that distasteful, personally) but he still has some very valid and interesting things to say.
http://www.cnvc.org/bookchap.htm
That's really cool about baking bread. I really didn't intend to diss the fast food industry, but to me it's easy to see how easy it is to be impulsive and whimmish when there is fast, cheap food on every corner. I could just as easily point to impulse buying, shallow friendships, random busyness, and any number of things that hook us because we're not centered, settled, and resolved to die and live.
About cooking. I've recognized in myself an attitude towards the kitchen crew. How do I describe it? During the holiday season, I look at all the food, and at my aunts who slave away in the kitchen all day long and think, what a waste. They're going to spend all day in that kitchen wearing themselves out so we can spend half an hour eating entirely too much, and then spend another couple of hours doing dishes. But this is a great example of death and life. Whatever they could be doing they give up and dedicate themselves to making the holiday meal happen. They die to the life they could have had and live this one. A parent dies to his or her life and lives in the kids in big and small ways. And so on.
I would even go so far as to say that when you are reoriented to life and death, the terms wasteful and prudent become useless, or at least strained. Jesus praised the wasteful woman for anointing him with perfume, because after all, that's what she meant to do. It's true that the perfume could have been sold and then used for whatever women use perfume for, but this perfume was dead to that and alive to Christ. And I think that probably also says something to the man with two tunics who is supposed to share with the one who has none, and the same for food, and for wireless routers. Also for being struck on the left cheek and offering the right, and going two miles when you only have to go one. It's like--does it really matter if you're dead to your first life and alive to Christ?
You bring up an interesting point about turning cheeks. A few nights ago my husband and son were having a talk about that scripture. John was saying yeah, but Jesus doesn't mean you should be a doormat...ok well then what does he mean by that then? Guard your heart but not your cheeks?
Perfect.
Because it's hard to reconcile how Jesus could be embodied by a Father Martin Luther fiercely opposing the church and also by a Father Gabriel who was shot down in cold blood unwilling to take up arms to defend the people of his South American church in "The Mission".
So what is the principle?
Moreover, you have to deal with this enigmatic part of the story: "Then Jesus asked them, 'When I sent you without purse, bag or sandals, did you lack anything?' 'Nothing,' they answered. He said to them, 'But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one.'" (Luke 22)
So what is the principle?
There's not one. Jesus didn't live by principle. He lived by relationship to his Father.
If my wife or child or friend asks me something like, "This person offended me in this way. How should I respond?" I would say, "Depends." What does it depend on? The specifics and nuances of the offense? No. It depends on you. It depends on what you are alive to and what you are dead to, on where the relationship with this person is going based on where you are going with God. I can't tell you the answer to that, and no one can. All I can do is ask questions that help you find where your life is and where your death is.
Because you follow Jesus doesn't mean you should be a doormat, nor does it mean you should be a warrior. What it means is that you will be alive and dead. And this could compel exact opposite behaviors from you day to day. One day you're setting your face like a flint, the next you're offering your back to those who beat you, your cheeks to those who pulled out your beard. (Isaiah 50)
You cannot please God without being one with Him, without your life being connected with His, your death being connected to His, your story being connected to His. It starts with hearing His voice. And once you hear Him all the principles in the world don't make a hill of beans.
Oh I could go on and on and on here, but I will cap it before I start shouting.
Yeah well, I guess that's where you can really only look at the Bible as an invitation to take a walk with God. It bothers me the overemphasis on it. I remember being a kid (I grew up Catholic) and I went on a retreat and one of the preists gave me a scapular. It said on it "Whoever wears this will not suffer the eternal flames" Oo cool a get out of jail free card. Well though other denominations aren't quite that creepy, there is a bent to use the Bible that way that really unnerves me. Do we have a walk with an actual living being or a really good book? I don't read the Bible a lot and you know what, I'm not really scared. God talks to me and I talk to him. I don't have a designated prayer time or place either....again I'm not scared. He lets me know when we need to talk and I go when I want to. I don't want my kids coming to hang with me out of obligation, so I won't do that to God.
I really like how you put it, what are you alive to, what are you dead to...I guess that would kind of involve a little faith and some trust too, wouldn't it? But there is something in people that feels so much safer knowing that they've followed a schematic. It's so neat and tidy. All the loose ends always get tied. Plug in numbers and X+Y=Z...it is always the same. I have to admit, I really hate ambiguity. When you said "Oh yeah, it's different in every situation" There is such a part of me that becomes an ornery little kid...."But whyyyyyyyyyy?" God IS so very patient, I am living proof. Anyhow, I too could go on and on. That Jesus he sure is a perplexing dude.
This post stirs a lot inside, man.
This reaffirms how shallow, how mis-aimed Sin Management, "accountability groups", etc.
I've got a seemingly depthless ocean of experiences of people throwing their notions of direction, 'encouragement' and proper-living my way.
Notions which strike my heart as shallow, warped and more importantly just not anywhere close to where I am.
Nothing has been more liberating for me this calendar year than to decide I was not going to give them easy access to bore me with their shallowness.
There is a LOT to be said for cave living, man, let me tell you. It's highly underrated.
No one there to second guess, or blab hollow nonsense, or tell/suggest things that are clearly not on God's radar during this season.
I'm a sheep too. But the baa'ing from others right now is certainly not missed.
Yeah, the Gospel of Sin Management doesn't say much about life and death. It's more geared towards maximizing blessing and minimizing the possibility of wrecking your life. But the God I read about in the Bible seems to have a thing for wrecked lives. So much so that if you are chosen by Him and aren't sold out on wrecking your life He'll help you out. I think of Abraham's disasters with Hagar and Ishmael, and with the Pharoah's harem; I think of Jacob's limp from contending with God. I think of Moses' fugitive days, glory, and ultimate banishment from the promised land. I think of David's fugitive days, rise to power, adultery with Joab's wife, and fugitive days from his own son's coup. I think of Samson's death by a vixen's betrayal. I think about Paul being blinded. I think even about Jesus' whose body was broken, and his life drained out by wicked men.
It's almost as if God delights in broken things. (Kind of like Psalm 116:15 - Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints)...
...while we do everything we can to keep it all together. Or why does confession come so hardly? (I know there may be two reasons - one being that I just don't trust all Christians with my confession because they use that information like their father the devil: to shame and manipulate. But the other reason is that it's too hard to admit that I'm undone, and to let what is already dead be dead.)
About the cave living. We probably all need to know more about that. And I look forward to the day when the Phoenix rises from those ashes, and you can open your mouth and speak the words of God to a Body of Christ afraid of the death and life that might be waiting for her in that cave.
The cave imagery just reminds me of Yoda and Luke in Star Wars. Luke before he enters the cave asks Yoda "What's in there?" Yoda replies "Only what you take with you" He says "I am not afraid" or something like that and Yoda responds "You will be, You will be." He had to face that to understand things he otherwise could not have understood. That's what this sort of reminds me of.
You know, there's quite a few caves in the Bible.
Lot and his two daughters lived in a cave (ooh-creepy ending to that story).
There's the cave where both Abraham and his grandson Jacob were buried (let's see "I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob..." Where did they bury Isaac???).
There's the cleft in the rock where God hid Moses with his hand until his glory passed by (when Moses saw his hinder parts, whatever that means).
Then there's the cave where Joshua and the army of Israel found five enemy kings hiding (which they barricaded in with a big rock, killed all their armies, took them out, put their feet on their necks, hung them until they died, then put them back in the cave and barricaded it with more rocks).
Then there was the cave Samson was holed up in (before his own countrymen tied him up and handed him over to the enemy, after which he broke loose, grabbed the jawbone of an ass, and killed a thousand of them).
And then of course there's my favorite cave, the cave of Adullam, where David left Gath and escaped to (then all his kin went down to him there, and "All those who were in distress or in debt or discontented gathered around him, and he became their leader. About four hundred men were with him" - these later became of course "David's Mighty Men"). David wrote at least two of the Psalms in that cave - 57 and 142.
But then there's the cave where Saul, when he was pursing David to kill him, "went in to relieve himself" (the King James Version reads "went in to cover his feet"), but David and his men were hiding in there (this is when David cut a patch off of Saul's robe, but was so conscience-stricken for even such a small thing that he let him go, and even though the "Lord delivered Saul into David's hands", he bowed down on the ground and begged for the mercy of Saul, "the Lord's anointed").
Then there's the cave on Mount Sinai (Horeb), the same mountain Moses where met God (the same cave?) (the one Elijah traveled forty day and forty nights to after he slew the 400 satanic priests, but then ran like a baby from the Jezebel, fell asleep by the brook, got fed breakfast by an angel, and got fed second breakfast by an angel, then when he got there had a pity party with God, then the Presence of the Lord passed by, the wind, the earthquake, the fire, and then the still small voice, after which Elijah had another pity party).
Then there was another cave in Bethany with a dead man shut up in it (this is the one Jesus raised from the dead and busted out of there, called Lazarus).
And then, if this isn't too much of a stretch, there was the virgin cave where our Lord himself was first laid, not the one waiting for the stone to roll away, but the one waiting for the water to break - Mary's womb.
Finally, there is also the virgin tomb. Three days. Three nights. Jesus-free.
All these moist, dark places of death and waiting and frailty where the sun doesn't shine...God's recipe for new life and overturning kingdoms.
The cave for a Follower is tranquility. It's the absence of voices, except one's own and God's.
There is no taking things in there, as Yoda describes, rather it's is leaving everything in this rotten world OUTSIDE.
Still water brooks are in there. Salve. Comfort. Compassion. It rocks.
And yeah, Steve, there are a slew of people who have never venture there, or haven't ventured there yet.
All I've heard is it's bad...by people with a theory who have never been there. Go figure.
"Jesus often withdrew to lonely places". Selah.
Lonely places. I've always wondered about the forty days and nights in the wilderness. I wonder how Jesus survived without all the encouragement, edification, and comfort of His church/synagogue?
I imagine the angels were good enough company for Him.
I don't know if I'm ready to say that everything rotten is on the outside of the cave, though. I remember Luke Skywalker plowed through some pretty nasty stuff in there, and then he came face to face with his demons, with...his father...himself.
The impacting thing about the cave is not how wonderful it is. The wonderful thing about the cave is how impacting it is. It's amazing what emerges.
in a totally different vein, I laughed when reading the first sentence of the original post.
Made me think of people who will look at a restaurant menu, and even after the waiter comes back for the 4th time to take the table's order they still can't just freakin' choose something.
you've got lots of drafts, Sota.
Soasta go
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