the thing you will not lose.

“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”
-Jim Elliot.
It has occurred to me recently how empty my Christian claims have become. I have a natural aversion for ceremony and so I struggle through any series of events designed under a program. My church attendance has always been abysmal. So when I felt the dryness I linked it to being in direct violation of the book of Hebrews chapter 10 and verse 25. It seemed that a loss of community made my individual effort to reach or to be reached by God less real. So I looked for a church that was not too Pentecostal and not too orthodox, the centre, where all goodness lies. This did not help much. It was useful because I am quite sure that I will continue to seek regular church attendance and participation but apart from the expected glints of light I was the same.
My mind remained unfocused, my days stretched on in grim hope and I felt far from any sort of presence capable of shaping my life in anyway.
Yet life does not slow down for introspection. All was still dull inside so I clobbered to a halt outside. Criticism and cynicism crept into the soul of my mind as the only escape. And, the scary part, this seemed to be going on for years. Inch by inch my soul was slipping into inertia, then atrophy and then demise, all wearing the mask of goodness and smiles. The inherent absurdity of the unfettered life weighed my mind down to the point that minutes moved into days and I felt nothing from the wind or the water or the sound.
And quite without effort or expectation something changed recently. A sort of stirring had begun within the dead embers of the extinguished wood of self. My mind had begun its rebellion against the rebel of absurdity and my heart had begun to know the future shape of things. Pushed, I began to look again and to find solace in the foundational principles that govern the living.
Pushed and pushed again, I surrendered over a three day period, listening to an audio version of C.S. Lewis’ ecumenical defense “Mere Christianity”. The book is no stranger to my reading eye but we make a mistake when we think truth can be consumed in one swallow. The vital lessons come over and over again until we are mastered by them perfectly. Until they move from being merely real to being living reality.
My lesson here was simple and simply put. It is the sort of lesson a Christian must learn every day, the one strand of clarity that simplifies what we have made, by living outside the ark, more complex. It is also the thing we fear the most and unreasonably so because it is the fear that cannot help. It is fear of losing the very thing you have already lost.
I am referring to that place where your pride lies, where you can say, if the sun falls into the sea and all of nature rebels against reason, “at least I still have this”. Your consolation and fortress against the triumph of others over you. A little box of prepared victories that say you are worth something in the fluid nature of what is valuable and what is not. There is no need to specify. We all carry little boxes of instant relief around. You know the colour of your fake rainbow and I know the colour of mine. It may even be God but as deadening drug not awakening spirit.
Recently part of mine was divided into three un-whole parts: one woman, another and yet another. It was also writing. It was also cynicism. It was also God.
The problem with the “at least…” is much of the problem with modern Christianity as practiced: the pursuit for the consolatory prize when the real jewel is within your sights and already paid for. If you are first on the podium you cannot also be second. We have life, open and full but we prefer the weakness of the un-life. At anyone who has tasted of the real juice knows everything else is second best. This is at the very core of becoming a Christian, at the end, nothing else will do. It commands you to be hot, cold or spat out. There is no place for anything less than the best of heaven even if it means meddling through the worst of earth. You have reached, by becoming a Christian, the most unsafe place in this universe, and the next, for any trace of dark or inferior light. It is really all or nothing.
The all is hard. It is difficult to leave yourself vulnerable to only one source of delight. It is suicide to say: “God and all He gives and nothing else.” It is impossible. Sometimes we need to hear and heaven is silent. Sometimes we need to feel we are active and getting on in the world and heaven is strangely uninterested in motion or ambition.
Yet what is really hard is what our “at least…” feeds that must now go hungry. What fights tooth, nail and bone against the necessary surrender is the ego. The need to please your self is the greatest hindrance to saving you. God is interested in being the very real captain of your ship and master of your fate. There cannot be another one in charge of the sail and the boat. “Invictus” is fine poem, written at a time of physical ailment and personal doubt, a defiant and, perhaps noble, stand, but it is not the word of God. There is nothing wrong with being strong willed except that it is not the perfect will. Dying like Christ means exactly what you fear it means. It is going to interfere with all your dreams and hopes and ambitions though not to kill them but to test them and make them pure.
No doubt you have heard this all before but it is one of those lessons that I spoke of earlier. The one that is needed again and again. But it is what you truly need to get to the bottom of who you truly are. It is like a painting. The artist is the creator and what he paints is the created. The created does not know who he is outside the mind of the creator. He does not even exist outside the creator’s mind.
This is the kind of myth Christianity stands for except that it is absolutely true. It is the ongoing saga of love conquering self and self dying so love can enthrone itself in hearts and minds. If no one told you this before you signed on then I am sorry. They should have. This thing will kill the you that you have always known until you become a new creature. It is surgery and you have to consent to it. If you do you will live forever in an abundance unimaginable that has nothing to do with money. If you do not you will have your way in this life but that is all you will have.
In the end the faith is a gradual slide into the endlessness of God. It is as conscious as anything you know and more so. You will feel everything happening to you. If you choose it you will move from honesty to truth. His voice will become clearer in the steps and your heart will unfurl into His naked peace. Like Christ you will become. He gave it all and his disciples followed suit. Not many of us are called to die in violent ways in defense of Christianity. Yet this is the crux of the matter. The thing we will not give up. We take it in patches, swallows that cannot feed us.
The lives of those early dissidents of the impure order of things were laid forfeit as they followed a man to his bloody cross. Yet, here were men that lived and knew why they lived. Their lives were full because they gave up something important to gain something vital. Our lives are empty when we refuse to do the same.