The freedom of discipline.

On my internship I found out that I am a crazed fundamentalist. This was a eye opener for me, but I guess when you think the Bible is holistic in it's message and every word of it is truth, you find yourself not only on the conservative side of life, but on the fundamentalist side of life. Wild right?

Since I hold the Bible to be holistic in it's teaching one thing that has become apparent to me the past couple of months is the need for discipline. A couple of weeks before my wedding I realized that it is radical to want to love your enemy. Most preachers would get up and say something like, 'God has called us to love our enemies. While we don't always have enemies that want to kill us, we do have people we do not like. We should show kindness to these people and go out of our way to care for them.'

While this sounds like it is a good application to this wild scripture, I think we are missing the depth behind what this radical life would actually look like if it was played out in creation. Being kind to people we don't like can get us to some pretty interesting places, but it also can cover up what we are really saying in our mind. We all know that often we say one thing and we are thinking what we would have said if we had either enough courage or enough meanness in our lives.

Kindness does not cover a multitude of sin. Love does.

But the question remains, where does loving your enemy and finding freedom in discipline collide?

I read the first five books of the Bible last year, and the consistent theme that I noticed was this statement; "Walk in the ways of the LORD". This command is fleshed out in Deuteronomy 6,
“Listen, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. ⁵ And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength. ⁶ And you must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands that I am giving you today. ⁷ Repeat them again and again to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are on the road, when you are going to bed and when you are getting up. ⁸ Tie them to your hands and wear them on your forehead as reminders. ⁹ Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates."

God commands Israel to follow his commands and his decrees and to do it with a holistic life. Be disciplined in your love for your God. Be intentional with your children in this love. Be intentional in your community with this love.

As we know the Israelites had a hard time living this love out. They had a hard time walking in the ways of the Lord. God deals with them in his own way. This way leads to Jesus and we find ourselves in the middle of Jesus' ministry and in the middle of the sermon on the mount, Jesus' greatest sermon.

In the end of chapter five we see Jesus stating that if anyone asks of you give him extra and then he goes on to talk about loving your enemies, because of course you want to be as perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect. Loving your enemies is allowing us the opportunity to become complete. It is allowing us to see the restored world that God first created in Genesis One. It is not about being perfect in the sense of worldly perfection, but it is about being complete. Being whole. However, I admit that I have an extremely hard time at being nice to my enemies. Actually I would rather avoid them, and on my worst days I want bad things to happen to them.

So how do I clean my heart of my dislike for the people who are shitting all over God's world? How do I find love for those closest to me who are crazed and mean? How do I find compassion for those who have committed injustice?

I think the reason for the Sermon on the Mount is to refocus the Israelites on Deuteronomy six. I think Jesus is seeing a world where the people in it follow the law without fault, but the heart is not being addressed. Jesus is telling this world what it looks like to love the Lord with everything. Jesus is telling the world what it looks like to walk with love, to talk to our children about this love and to nail it on our doors and gates. This love is about how we view the world, how our hearts and our souls and our emotions lead our physical.

To live in love with the God of the Bible, we are to do this with all aspects of our lives. This is where I believe discipline comes into our lives. However, I must implement that this discipline has to be partnered with the following of the Holy Spirit. Without the Holy Spirit involved discipline is frivolous. However, when we decide to follow the Spirit in his active role we can grasp at this idea of discipline. There is freedom within this relationship because it allows us to make the choice. We know longer are enslaved to our impulses or even what we want, but we have the opportunity to make a choice that will benefit us in the end.

The world we live has been founded on instant gratification. If we want something we have it whether it is good for us or not. I truly believe this is where our emotional existence is as a church. We want what we feel, rather than disciplining our emotional existence . The artist in me fights against this idea of discipline, but the peace bringer in me finds it essential to all relationships. When we put our emotional existence under the love of Christ we can surrender our need to emotionally react to whatever comes into our world. We can follow the Holy Spirit and rather than lash out when we don't get our way we can have peace within our hearts. This discipline is needed if the church is going to be any sort of influence in this world. I truly believe when we put our emotional existence under the love of Christ we can love our enemies and we can see a world that is called to be complete. We can love our enemies because we can control our emotional impulses to try and run the world the way that we see fit. When our sense of injustice is put under the scrutiny of following the Holy Spirit and is no longer based off our emotional history and impulses we will be able to see the God of restoration more clearly in a world that is scattered and in chaos.

I have nothing else to say. I am without words. Or maybe the words are without me. The end and start of a new journey.

Waiting.

It seems to be a consistent theme in my life. Waiting for one thing to end and another to start. Waiting for the appointed time to be upon me. Waiting, counting the days, wondering what the future will be. There is a sense of that waiting within my soul, yet there is also a sense of slow motion. Seeing things, people, event and even words spoken in slow motion. Having the awareness that the decisions Waylon and I make determine our future relationship. Having the starving pride of knowing that I am a trained college graduate and I am unemployed. Sitting and waiting for something to happen while knowing nothing will.

I watch a lot of bad movies. I take the dog out. I clean. I read. I seldom write. I am not discontent. I am just here.

Waiting, patiently, waiting to seek out the happenings of glory in the world of Assumption.

Happy Endings.

I just finished a book called The Book of Lost Things. It is by an Irish writer with the last name of Connolly. I guess his main genre of writing is mystery thrillers, however, this book is focused on a young boy who goes through the season of turning into a man by being coerced to a secret land. The story starts off with his mother dying. His father remarries and has another child. During this whole process the boy is going through some interesting changes. He finds himself hearing the whispers of the books in his room and he is enticed into this magical world that is hidden in the sunken garden in the backyard. He finds himself trying to save his mother. Through his perilous journey in this strange land he meets people who come to his aid. These men have helped the boy with his jealousy and hatred, because as we all know childhood is not always sweet. We often as a society reminisce about our romantic childhood, but if we truly look at it with a skeptical eye we see hurt, pain, fear, even hatred. Through the book the young boy is tested in various ways and encounters the villain of the book.

The crooked man.

The young boy meets the crooked man and finds by the end of the book that the crooked man is evil. The intent of the crooked man is to get the young boy on the throne and to consume the heart of his younger brother. This is how the crooked man has stayed alive for so many years. At the climax of the book the crooked man is trying to persuade the man character to give him his younger brother.

The crooked man tells him that in the real world the main character will feel pain, sorrow, and grief. The people that the main character loves will die and leave him in his loneliness. The fantasy world is the place where the main character can be in control. In this world the young boy can have a happy ending.

The young boy does not relent. We often meet children like this. Those who have such courage and such integrity that nothing sways them from such virtue. These days, those children are far and few, but they still remain. The main character stands his ground. He goes back into the real world and he experiences everything that the crooked man proclaimed. He experiences the pain and sorrow of losing the ones he loves to sickness and to death. He experiences the pain of loneliness. However, at the end of his life he collects himself and he looks at his full life that he choose to lead. He finds that he did live a love of great love and a life of great pain, but he still lived.

For a happy ending filled with love cannot be without pain.