Chad's spot for various thoughts, musings, poetry, ideas and whatnot

Friday, September 30, 2005

Over the course of the last several weeks the campus ministry I sponsor has been looking through the parables in the accounts of the Gospel. One of the great assets our group has is an older Othrodox Christian who is very well versed in the writings of the church Fathers, specifically the Desert Fathers. As we have gone through our study, he has pointed out that many of Fathers wrote of the Kingdom of Heaven as not being a place "out there, in the future" but as a here and now thing. Not only that but that the Kingdom of Heaven is a place and a state inside each follower of Christ. In their writings and their theology God is as intimitely inside us as we might imagine. Metropolitan Anthony Bloom wrote that God is closer to us than we are even to ourselves. God is not some sort of distant, omnipotent sky God but rather a personal, even sensitive God that knows us by a name that even we don't completely know yet and wants us to know Him in the same way.

At the same time, Christ, in His statements to His disciples at the time and also now, makes it clear that whenever we are going outside of ourselves to help another person we are doing that for Him also. Whether the person is great or small, wealthy or poor, sick or in good health whatever we do for the least of these, Christ tells us, we do for Him also. Thus we are called to look upon our fellow human beings as Christ. We are to see that outside of ourselves and our personal concerns there is a world full of God.

So often, as I listen to popular Christian media and thought, I hear the desire articulated over and over that we are to seek a personal relationship with our God. I hear from my students in our discussions and from others through print, radio and TV that they seek to really hear from God, to really connect with Him. As I think of the God that is both inside and outside I wonder (OK, I more than wonder) if our Christian culture has become infected with a "to have a 'real' relationship with God it has to be miraculous in a blatantly obvious way" mentality. He has to 'speak' with us and give us 'signs' and all the other or somehow we don't think our faith is real or that our relationship is lacking in some foundational way.

While I certainly don't practice what I'm about to preach very often I really think this kind of thinking is sort of an insidious rot from the inside. If we want to find God we don't have to wait for Him to 'speak' to us in some sort of Bill Cosby "Noah" voice. He's right there deep inside of us waiting for us to sit and be still with Him. Not only that but He's all around us, waiting for us to look outside our lives and to sit down and start a relationship with Him in the form of a hurricane victim or the victim of domestic abuse or even person who is the victim of their own choices. He is the child in our own home who seeks to be loved and the unwed mother who needs a little help to get through the week. Like Lazarus at the gate of the rich man, He sits on our very doorsteps waiting to be noticed.

Why to do we struggle so hard to find Him when He's right there? Why do I struggle so hard?

The Physicist   Link Me    |