Pilgrim Soldier

One of the problems with college life is that it raises questions that make you ponder but then another question crops up in the next lecture and you forget what you were pondering as you ponder anew! Sometimes though a thought breaks through the morass of ponderings and takes up residence in the forefront of your mind. On those occasions it suddenly seems that everything points to that same thought and its just that you are seeing it from different angles! This is one such thought!

It’s a couple of years ago now that I suddenly realised that Jesus passed the mantle of being the “Light of the World” to us, his followers. It seems like quite a ‘thick’ thing to say because I’m sure everyone else had already grasped this. However, I wasn’t quite as quick on the uptake as others. I knew it but had never made the link to the same phrase being used about him. This isn’t the thought though, its just background!

What has come to me over the last few weeks and is something that I am desperately trying to work out in my own mind is what us being the “Light of the world” actually means. And what I’ve realised is that all too often we don’t use it correctly!

What happens when you turn the light on in a dark room? It illuminates the room of course and you see things as they really are. Of course there are shadows and we can see the dust on surfaces, but the light doesn’t point it out, it simply lightens the darkness! All too often we, and I include myself in this, go into dark places and start pointing out all the dirt in those places. Instead of simply lighting up the room we take it upon ourselves to show how dirty and dusty and shadow-filled that room is!

But if we look at what Jesus does in the Gospels we see a man who simply goes into the dark places of the world and sheds the light of his presence. He doesn’t point out the sin in the lives of those people he encounters, well he does but normally only when they are supposed to already be living in the light and are the religious people. Instead he simply allows people to see the dirt themselves and allows them to decide what to do about it themselves.

I’m beginning to realise that this is what we’re supposed to do as well. It’s about us taking God’s light out in the world’s ever increasing dark places and lighting up the room. We don’t need to point out the dirt because if our light is being truly effective, people will see it anyway. All we have to do is spread God’s light and give people the chance to see their lives in the light of God!

When I sat down to start this blog I had no idea where it would take me. There was no intention to it, other than as a medium for sharing my thoughts, particularly those that I had on my journey of faith. Sometimes I’ve written stuff that I wonder whether I should have written. Other times I’ve written stuff that I’m really happy with. Most of the time, being totally honest, my writing has been rather mediocre.

There have been times when I have wondered whether I should simply stop writing and give up on blogging. This has been the case over the last few weeks as my thoughts seem to have dryed up, or rather my mind has been full of thoughts that aren’t quite my usual direction. Today though, I was encouraged as I read this:

…modesty will remind us that what we call the Fall teaches that everything we think, do and say is flawed and partial. At best we only know in part (1 Corinthians 13:9).

I started writing because I needed a conduit by which I could actually process some of the thoughts I was having. It was partly frustration, partly spiritual exercise. I continued to write partly out of habit, partly out of sheer stubbornness.

A couple of weeks ago I taught on a Sunday morning about our inability to really know the ways of God. In that sermon I said two things:

1. In our fallen humanity, that state that developed after Adam & Eve ate of the tree, men and women, even Christian men and women, can sometimes think they have the solution for every situation.
2. Today though it can sometimes seem that when God seeks to move in ways that are not how we expect him to move, we attempt to stifle what he wants to do.

Those Christians I know who seem to speak all the time with absolute certainty and seem to always have an answer to every situation off the top of their heads often seem to be like these two bits from the sermon. They always have an answer and are never, ever uncertain about anything, yet they also want to stifle anything, usually deeming it unchristian, that doesn’t fit in with their certainty. These people seem to see everything clearly!

However, those who I respect most, and actually are some of the most Christlike people I know, whilst certain of their salvation, openly admit that they don’t have all the answers, sometimes get things wrong and on occasions encourage people to try knew things in the power of the Spirit. Amidst the certainty of their faith, they acknowledge their flawed and partial knowledge.

So where does that leave me? I don’t have all the answers and this blog has been, and will continue to be my rather small effort in trying to work out my thoughts. My thinking may be flawed, probably more often than not, but they are an honest attempt at trying to see clearer in a world shrouded by darkness but illuminated by the light of Christ.

I’ve now finished reading Disciples and Citizens, but it ends up putting many questions in my mind. Here are some of the questions I’m asking off the back of the final two chapters.

How can we allow the Spirit to work through us as individuals and church communities to herald God’s future and create hope that His future is possible?

Is it possible that the demise in church attendance is because the ‘future-made-present’ isn’t manifest within our communities and consequently the future doesn’t look attractive, even to people of faith?

If our evangelistic efforts concentrating on trying to scare people into heaven by the use of a ‘negative’ future and fail to show them a tangible example of God’s future in the present, are we being faithful to the Gospel?

The book is great and I would recommend it to anyone, especially if you’re in the UK. However, it doesn’t give a set of easy answers as to how to be a disciple in the 21st Century, it simply sets out why real discipleship is so essential for the future. We need a discipleship that is grounded in heaven but expressed in the world. Discipleship that isn’t corrupted by the world, but instead transforms it into localised expressions of the kingdom of heaven.

How do you respond when a Christian says that the Sunday morning church experience is bad for their spirituality?

Then, what do you do when you realise you really get where they are coming from?