Keep the merry, dump the myth?

I came across this recently on Youtube. It's about Christmas, you know keep the merry thing, but don't believe about the Christ thing! I know where these guys are coming from, I do. I have been there, bought the t-shirt. In fact I have a whole closet full of them. But they are greatly myth-taken :-). It is a strange but undeniable fact of the Christian life that when you walk close to the Lord the reality of the Kingdom walks with you, and when you drift away, it all seems so unreal. And the unreality seems to be proportional to the distance you allow between you and Him.

And I do mean allow! As a brash teenager (hundreds of years ago) I told God I did not need Him, and as a consequence drifted away from what I knew to be true. During that time I thought of my earlier beliefs as naive. But then came the time when my life was so messed up, I could no longer deny that I needed help. Times like this are crossroads. We can blame others for the mess we are in, refusing to admit that we had any part in the mess, or we can take stock, fess up and return to the One who loves us so much that He died for us, so that the broken, hurting and sinful like me, can find healing and peace and hope and joy again.

Now part of this drifting away thing, is that I believe the lies. And there are usually two equal an opposite lies that are told, depending on which one you and I are most likely to believe. A victim of abuse for example can, on the one hand, believe that it's all their fault, or that their lives are messed up forever on the other. We can even blame God for allowing this or that to happen.

The thing about a good lie, is that it contains something that (for you or I) is believable, and often some of it is true. The thing about the title to this post, is that nobody has perfect theology, so at least some of the things you and I believe are wrong. Coming back to abuse, it is very clear that others do things that are wrong, and in may ways deserve our resentment. But resentment keeps us stuck, while not really punishing the offender. We need to forgive for our own sake. Forgiveness severs the power the abuser has over us. It is particularly hard if we are blaming God, since deep down we know He has done nothing wrong. However we may still feel that He has, and we will need to forgive Him in order to restore fellowship. He will sort out our confusion about these things when we have forgiven. Another problem in this area is that it is often hard to forgive is ourselves. But again, when we don't, we keep ourselves trapped in self hate!

It helps me to know that all unforgiveness is, in the end, evil. As a Christian I know this because of the severity of the Biblical teaching on this issue. To the extent that I forgive, I will be forgiven. When I come out of denial and take responsibility for my life, I start to see more clearly how much I need to be forgiven. Staying in denial keeps me from intimacy with God, from the reality of His presence that heals restores and comforts me, from the strength to do what I need to do, and the strength not to do the things that I have learned from the School of hard knocks hinder me.

I did not always believe what I now believe about the Bible. I came to it with a dawning realization that this book knows us (knows me). It knows for example that what we do and what we believe are inexorably linked (See Romans 1:18 and coming post). It knows our propensity to rationalize behaviour (Jeremiah 17:9), it knows that there are consequences to what we do, that we reap what we sow. On top of this from the school of hard knocks I discovered more and more, at a deeper and deeper level that the things Bible forbids are the things that bring negative consequences into my life.

But it's not all negative. I more and more discover that as I follow the things it commands I experience the freedom it promises. “If you continue in My Word, You will know the Truth and the Truth will set you free. If the Son shall set you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:31ff). And the more I continue, the more free I am and the more sure I am of the things I have believed. And the less I continue and follow the less sure I am of these things. When I do the things I myself believe to be wrong, then I enter the fog that in my better times I know covers the whole of humanity including yours truly when I grow lukewarm or cease to follow.

In short I have learned by experience that when God says “no,” He does it for my provision and protection. When I fall, and when I fess up to it, then I have Someone on my side to take care of my mess, to set me on my feet, to cleanse me and help me start over. This is what Christmas is all about. This is the reason for the season, this is the ground of my “merry” and the certainty of what some of you guys call the myth. If this is you then, as I said before you are greatly myth-taken and it gets worse, because in addition you are myth-ing out big time :-)!

Take away lust add intimacy

We have confused unbridled passion for love. Perhaps it is no wonder as you can scarcely go to a movie without seeing this one and that one jumping into bed together at the drop of a hat. And there is a subtle lie behind it all, and that is that this is normal and natural and good and right and healthy. In the meantime we fall out of our relationships as easily as we fall into bed. Why should this surprise us? When we are told over and over there is no difference between us and the lower animals, and when in response we behave like them, then surely it is no wonder our relationships are like theirs. I mean how long do dogs stay married?

We tell each other “I love you,” but what do we mean? Is there more to love than wanting to jump into bed with each other? Do we even know what love is? Here is one description of it: “Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.”

We confuse love with lust when we say “Because I love you I want your body.” We confuse love with passion when we say “I love you but I have needs.” We confuse love with lust when we promise to remain faithful only as long as we both shall love. We embrace true love when we say and mean that if and when I no longer feel love, I will choose to love, and I will love you.

We start to embrace true love when before we jump into bed we determine that if and when we do, we will commit to each other to push through the inevitable relationship pain that comes at the end of the honeymoon. When we do this, and when we follow through to breakthrough, we come through to the kind of relationship that we were intended to have with God and with each other, we start to come into true intimacy.

Well if he (she) would love me like that, then I would respond the same way. Maybe, but it's hard when all you get (give) is “I, me, my.” We need help to get started (I do), and when we get started we need help to continue (I do). And that help is freely available, but we have to stop putting up walls against it (more than I do).

Someone described intimacy as “into me see.” It may sound scarey to let another do that, but we will not experience true intimacy while we hide who we are from each other, behind the high and defensive walls. The walls may keep some of the bad out, but they also keep the good out, and they keep our pain and baggage and fear intact inside the walls.

And we get stuck in responding the same old, same old way. We know that the World is a scarey place and, when we have been hurt, we can be reluctant to let anyone in again. What we need is a safe place to start, and the safest place is God. Not necessarily the God you encountered in Church nor in those who call themselves Christian but do not exhibit Christ like qualities. And this has been and is me at times, but Christ is the one to whom I turned, and He is the One who has been faithful and enabled me to love again. Indeed the Scriptures tell us “We love, because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19 NIV). Our ability to love at all comes because there is one who initiated love, and that is God. He is the source, the essence, the motivation, the first and the last, the author and finisher of love. True intimacy starts when we stop fighting Him, turn to Him in repentance, receive His forgiveness and grace and strength, His hope and joy, His peace and love. God so loved the World that He gave His only Son that whosoever in this undeserving world should turn to Him in this way should find all of these things in Him. It starts with intimacy with Him, it continues with intimacy with Him and it will end with intimacy with Him. This is the essence of eternal life to know the Father the only true God, and Jesus Christ the Son He sent (John 17:3).

If you want to pray: Father, please reveal Your Son in me. Show me the walls that I have erected to keep You out, and what I need to do to let You in. Give me what I need to love and live again. Help me to be the person You call me to be as I draw near to You, and become more like You in Your extravagant healing love. Flow through me, in Christ's name Amen.