Faith Venture

Paul, the Apostle, wrote almost three-fourths of his letter to the Roman gathering of Jesus-followers describing how bad we humans are and how good God is.

Paul didn’t write in chapters—those were added later so that people could find their place and refer quotes to others.

But, at what we call chapter 12, he writes, “So…”

Whenever we see words such as so or however or therefore, we should pause. In the original, letters were read aloud. I can imagine the reader got to that point and paused. Then said, “So…” or the Greek equivalent.

Some people (and theologians) read 8:28 and stopped. But Paul went on to write 12-15 (16 is personal notes). These are after the “So.” And it begins:

So here is what I want you to do. Take your normal everyday life and place it before God as an offering.

What do we do every day upon rising from sleep? Pause and offer the day’s life for service to God. Whatever we do and however we do it needs to be ultimately in God’s service.

Why? Because we remember what God has done for us. God made us right with him. We didn’t do anything to earn it by following rules or offering animal sacrifices.

Paul offers a bit of practical advice:

Fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out.

Where you look is where you’ll go.

Have you met anyone who knows perfectly the mind of God?

Let’s make it easier. Have you met anyone who thinks or acts like they know the mind of God? Someone so smart that they think God asks them for advice?

I will answer for me—Yes. I have met such people. Or, maybe like Dostoyevsky’s Grand Inquisitor, they wish God would take their advice.

So had the Apostle Paul as he wrote these words to the Christ-followers in Rome:

Is there anyone around who can explain God?

Anyone smart enough to tell him what to do?

Anyone who has done him such a huge favor that God has to ask his advice?

Romans, from The Message translation

I read those words this morning and they hit me like that soccer ball struck from a few yards away directly into my nose. Down I went.

Meditate on these words that Paul writes next:

Everything comes from him,

Everything happens through him,

Everything ends up in him.

Always glory! Always praise!

Romans, from The Message translation

The best guides I have discovered are humble. Best advice is to emulate that.

I am reading Paul’s letter to the Roman gathering of Jesus-followers in a different translation (The Message) as if it were a personal letter from him to me. I wish to capture the flavors and subtleties.

I began what is labeled chapter 10. I’m struck by how hard he is striving to get across the idea that the work of setting things right between God and me is God’s work. And work he has already done.

Any trying I attempt is in vain. It is much useless thrashing about.

[The Jewish people] don’t seem to realize that this comprehensive setting-things-right that is salvation is God’s business, and a most flourishing business it is. Right across the street they set up their own salvation shops and noisily peddle their knockoffs. After all these years of refusing to really deal with God on his terms, insisting instead on making their own deals, they have nothing to show for it.

Romans 10

What a colorful metaphor.

It reminds me of the Red Queen in Alice and the Looking Glass who said that they had to run faster just to stay in the same place. But we could get off that treadmill and let God do God’s thing.

We don’t have to run faster, follow ever more rules, try harder. We just let God be God. And just live within his spirit. That will guide us to the most fruitful life beyond what we can imagine.

Philosopher Ken Wilber wrote, “Civilization is a competition to overcome testosterone.”

My contemplations lately have centered on the results of testosterone meeting ego meeting fear meeting need for power. The resulting compound includes will to power, struggle, destruction, loss of life.

Jesus presented his way of living in the kingdom of God as a stark contrast to the world of power. Perhaps the power was that of the religious rule makers and enforcers of the day. The larger competition was Rome and its worship of power in every relationship.

We think we can change the entire world. We can see real-time events from everywhere around the globe and want to change everything.

The reality is that we must change ourselves. That, in turn, helps others to change—not by preaching or teaching, but by the way we live. As others change, it spreads as if by contagion. It happened from about 35 CE to about 350 CE. Then, the church gained power.

Today, we are presented the same choice of the way to live as those who met Jesus face-to-face. We can live in the kingdom of God (peace, freedom, relationship) or the kingdom of power (others make rules, fear, struggle).

I made my choice many years ago whom I will follow. What about you?

Her name was Joanne. She had a husband and two children. Her personality was on the quiet side. Her demeanor was gentle. Overall an attractive person in every dimension.

Then the family decided that it would be good for her to get a job. She found a position as a dispatcher for the city police. She left interactions with women at the church and book club. Every working interaction was with every troublemaker in town. She knew the guys who physically assaulted their wives / girlfriends. She knew the drug users who were continually arrested for theft. Every interaction was negative.

When I talked with her a couple of years later, she was negative, cynical, darkly moody. A changed person in almost every way.

We teach balance in almost every practice I’ve studied. Our professions can lead us into a false understanding of the state of the world. It can also influence your very personality. Finding balance in our associations becomes the linchpin of an integrated personality.

That is why wise people have taught the value of periodically stepping outside ourselves and seeing ourselves as others (and God) see us. Vision gives us the ability for course correction.

Choose your associations carefully.

Tomorrow begins the 40 days of Lent. A period of time on the Church calendar set aside for adherents to search their hearts, confessing those areas of life where they fall short, and looking with anticipation of celebrating the resurrection of Jesus.

Without the resurrection, Christianity is nothing. A false dream. Even as an adolescent as I met some followers of “liberal Protestantism” and read books on the subject, I wondered what they preached if not the resurrection. Why call yourself Christian? God-follower, maybe, but Christian, no. And I was raised in the Methodist Church (not United Methodist), a semi-liturgical church. Some vestiges of Anglicanism left but not as liturgical as the Lutherans down the road in our village. And I classify myself a liberal, except for that.

Today is the day historically when people would clean out pantries to eat up food that might spoil during the next six weeks of fasting. So, people got fat celebrating the beginning of Lent, lost weight by fasting for 40 days, then gained it all back Easter Sunday.

Easter is spring in the northern hemisphere. The time of rebirth. Growth beginning. Jesus returning to life. The Church beginning its spectacular growth.

So, today, I started off with a traditional Polish Fat Tuesday treat, Paczki (poonch-key, approximate pronunciation, I’m not Polish and don’t have the right ‘a’ vowel on my keyboard).

I’d better celebrate, because I’m already deep in reflection on areas where I’ve fallen short of the target. And Lent doesn’t even begin for 20 hours.

The scene is imprinted in my memory. High school. Lunch. Teacher sitting at a table with several of her students. Someone pointed out she was not eating with the same etiquette as she taught.

“Do as I say, not as I do,” she replied.

At 16, I thought that was inappropriate. Years later, the new me concurs.

Yet, I wonder if that could be said of many (or most?) of us who point to Bible verses that someone else should follow?

Or the advice we give. “Eat right and you’ll lose weight and be healthier” said just before we snack on potato chips.

What is your view of Christians in general? Would it resemble that? If so, where is the failure?

My nephew just wrote to me that he is studying the ancient book of Job. I responded, “Oh, the book that shows the limits and futility of giving advice.” Only half joking.

Telling other people what to do or how to do it can deflect back to indict the speaker. Take care with freely giving advice. Parents know that children learn more by watching them than by listening (or not) to all the admonitions freely distributed.

Last time I thought about focus. Reading further into Romans, we see Paul criticizing his fellow Jews. We could take that as something for us to beware of today.

“Instead of trusting God, they took over. They were so absorbed with their ‘God Projects’ that they didn’t notice God right there in front of them.”

That thought caused me to pause to reflect on the many board and committee meetings I’ve attended, local level or state level, where he could have said the same thing about us.

How often we are so wrapped up in ourselves that we lose focus of the ultimate goal.

When I was in training as a soccer referee, I had to learn to concentrate on my stride and pace, yet I had to maintain a focus on the ultimate goal and time.

Similarly, we have to have the meeting, the project, the daily disciplines, yet we must not lose sight of the real goal.

It’s focus…focus on God. This God who is paradoxically right there beside us all the way.

Anytime you’re practicing renunciation, you’re deluded. How about that! You’re deluded. What are you renouncing? Anytime you renounce something, you are tied forever to the thing you renounce. There’s a guru in India who says, ‘Every time a prostitute comes to me, she’s talking about nothing but God. She says I’m sick of this life that I’m living. I want God. But every time a priest comes to me, he’s talking about nothing but sex.’ Very well, when you renounce something, you’re stuck to it forever. When you fight something, you’re tied to it forever. As long as you’re fighting it, you are giving it power. You give it as much power as you are using to fight it.”

Anthony de Mello, Awareness

Sometimes there is a paradox in our focus. We focus on what not to do, and there is what our attention draws toward.

Jesus knew that. He taught that we follow where our heart leads, not necessarily what the Law says or what people tell us to do. Paul knew that. He taught in Romans that a problem of the Law was that we focus on it instead of the Spirit.

We become what we think about.

We can choose where to place our focus. But that takes work. And courage. And often we don’t want to work. The easy road beckons.

Therein lies the power of daily morning routines. Rise, fix our coffee or tea, focus on God for a period of time, then focus on what we wish to accomplish with these next 16 hours, and now we shall not drift aimlessly during the day.

I also write about what is called these days “digital transformation.” Magazines and company blogs tout it as something new and revolutionary. But, it is neither, exactly.

My first baby steps into that world occurred around 1978 when I entered a lot of engineering data into the company computer for the use of the materials and cost accounting departments. Note: computer == digital. I have either done that or written about it ever since.

Why did we begin “digitizing” our data? Managers and workers wanted to make better decisions. Today, companies may spend millions of dollars to accomplish that.

I thought about making better decisions that result in more effective actions while I read the Apostle Paul writing the the Jesus-followers in Rome. He discussed becoming aware of the difference between living in sin and living in the Spirit. He wished to decide for the Spirit, but, he tells us, his decisions often did not lead to actions.

Paul wants me (us) to decide to live in the Spirit…and he wants to see that my actions follow through with that decision.

I decided to lose weight this year. Have my actions through these seven weeks resulted in eating less, emphasizing healthful foods, and exercising more?

I decided to live with more kindness. Reviewing my actions of the past seven weeks as if I were a detached observer, what have my interactions with other people reflected?

My Welsh Baptist ancestors emphasized making a decision for Jesus. The question that indicts is whether my actions have changed because of that decision.

Make a decision that sticks.