Pilgrim Soldier

Back while I was England for my Assessment Conference I was reading Donald Miller’s Blue Like Jazz. Early on Miller made a comment about us being broken and this set me off on a train of thought.

Firstly, I think that this is something that we need to understand more. This brokenness manifests itself in many different ways but everyone is affected by it in some way or other. Whether is be through loneliness, lust, anger, jealousy, depression or a multitude of other afflictions we all suffer because of the broken nature of this world.

Our sinfulness is part of the brokenness. In some it means they are unable to form relationships, or drives their pursuit of finding out who they are!

Whatever the manifestation we need to learn to acknowledge it. The world is broken because the intended relationship that God wanted for us was broken. We broke it! We broke it the moment Eve listened to the snake in the Garden, and mankind continue to break it anew every day.

I think that we know instinctively that something is wrong. We know that because God’s design for the whole of creation was perfect and was good. It’s as if we glimpse have an inate knowledge of some blueprint of His perfect plan and cannot reconcile what we see in ourselves and the world to it. We’re ashamed of our brokenness just as Adam and Eve were ashamed of their nakedness in the garden.

Jesus, however, came to start the process of mending this world. He came to show us how we should live in relationship with God so that when God finally destroys this broken world, we won’t go and break the new one!

All too often we hear people saying that someone else is to blame for the troubles in this world. Christians are not exempt from doing this either, but we of all people should realise that we have been part of the problem. In my opinion it’s no good us blaming others for the broken state of this world. We need to see that it’s our own fault. We are the reason! We are the problem! I am the problem!

Only after this realisation can we set about changing thngs through the power of the Holy Spirit. Only then can we start to live in a way that shows that we believe God will make this world anew. We need to live as if we believe that God has mended our own broken humanity.

In his book The Irresistible Revolution, Shane Claiborne says:

Christianity can be built around isolating ourselves from evildoers and sinners, creating a community of religious piety and moral purity. That’s the Christianity I grew up with. Christianity can also be built around joining with the broken sinners and evildoers of our world crying out to God, groaning for grace. That’s the Christianity I have fallen in love with. pg 246

For me this is part of the problem. We condemn sinners and act judgementally towards them. But what would happen if we started looking at sin as part of our brokenness. We sin because we are broken, but if God has mended us then it is us who choose to break ourselves again and again!

So I look at my own life and see the sin that is hidden. The sins that only I and God know about. I see the sin that manifests itself for all to see and know that I’m broken. Only God is capable of fitting the ill-fitting shards of this broken vessel back together.