A Sobering Awareness
Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did.
1 John 2:6
My days in junior high were the most unhappy in my whole life.
It was a time of great malaise for me, this I was certain of -and I was very right about that. I blamed my circumstances, my school, my family, and some of the things I am now the most thankful for. Occasionally I suspected my own attitude had something to do with it, but I sent the suspicion away -calling myself the victim.
We studied the Bible in school. I considered myself to be a Christian, but I questioned whether or not I was actually living in the way God had commanded me to live.
The Bible readings were required, and not a matter of personal choice. It would have been easy to let the passages go in one ear and out the other, but I was full of questions. I didn't really want to know what happened to Noah's ark, or who the Nephilum were (although these were the questions I asked out loud).
The real questions I had about the Bible were really questions I had about myself.
With every command I read from God, I wondered to myself, 'Is this something I am doing? If I stood before God, if my appearances were as nothing as they are before Him, would He say, 'Well done, good and faithful servant'?'
One day the teacher introduced three verses we would be memorizing from 1 John. I had never seen these verses before. I remember the exact way that he wrote them on the green chalk board thirteen years ago:
Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world - the cravings of sinful, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does - comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.
1 John 2:15-17
I wondered how I could memorize a verse which seemed impossible to even read. Do not love anything in the world?
Really?
There were a LOT of things in the world I loved.
I loved cartoons. I loved the cheap pizza my mom would buy for my sister and I at Costco. I loved going to the movies. I loved pop culture. More than all of it, I loved video games.
And could it be that here in this very place, John was telling in the full authority of the Bible not to love these things? If I did love them, would the love of the Father not be in me?
It sounded like I would go to hell, except that it was worded in the present tense. 'The love of the Father is not in him.'
I didn't care that the Bible did not forbid these things. I could stop doing them. I could stop watching my favorite shows. I could stop eating cheap pizza. I could (maybe) stop playing video games. But how could I stop LOVING them?
The second verse in the passage -the one about the cravings and the lust of the flesh and boasting about what a person has and does- that sounded just like me, just like my style.
It was like I was singled out and laid bare.
After digesting this verse for some time, I gave this messy region of my heart over to God (at about the time I was baptized).
These days I don't struggle with loving video games. There are moments where I get to do fun things and sometimes I struggle with loving those moments.
Then I teeter-totter about it and say to myself, 'Well, I don't love those things that much.'
And then I think back and I remember the chalk board on that day. I remember the verse that God commissioned John to write to me ... to give me a warning.
I remember how serious that moment was. How terrified I was at the choice I had to make and how seriously God takes my actions.
Father, keep my heart from the idolatry of the world. Spare me from loving the things here. Guide me into the fullness of your ways. As you prepare a place for me, prepare also that place for you in me.
Amen.
Labels: Angst, Bible Reflection, Childhood
6 Comments:
I really enjoy reading testimonies of people who grew up in Christian homes and under Godly influence. I can't believe you were under such conviction so young. In jr high, I was still trying to figure out what God was. I remember thinking that He might be the sun since the sun was the center of everything. I thought He might be energy but everything I thought was far from the truth. Jesus was just a baby at Christmas time and even that story was mostly mystery to me. Even then, I did want to know who God was and what it was all about. Isn't it amazing how God draws His to Himself?
After I came to know Jesus, I have struggled more with wanting to go out of the world than with loving it. They are both detrimental desires. To love Jesus in the midst of all that tempts us or sends us searching for a place to hide is what Jesus says we're to do. I know for sure that I can't do it without depending completely on Him.
BB if you struggle that is a good sign. It means that your spirit is in agreement with God even if your flesh is not. Die to your flesh and follow the Spirit and you'll be just fine. Even if you follow your flesh, you will be disciplined and corrected. So all's well with your soul because you belong to Jesus.:0)
There aren't enough fingers in the world to count the amount of times that the New Testament has warned against being too attached to anything that is in this world. It's something that everyone struggles with, and I have to say that the only ones who seem to have completely given themselves over to this principle is the buddhist monks.
Living in a western society can make it even harder. There is so much material prosperity it's extremely hard to unattach yourself from consumerism. Sometimes our lives can devolve into work/entertainment, and little else. It's great to read other Christians taking the strong anti-materialism message in the New Testament seriously.
I wish I shared your same enthusiasm about defeating video game addiction, quite a few good ones are coming out soon ;)
Well Burning Bush your insight has hit me again! I too have wondered how so many people can scratch the surface of Christianity by asking only the superficial questions without the spiritual internalization of Gods redemptive works. I think thats how the Holy Spirit moves in us, from looking at a shimmering lake on a beautifully hot day to suddenly plunging us to a depth so crisp and clear it is Refreshment, but also so cold and foreign that it terrifies us. This one moment stays with us and compels us onward because we now know there is so much more to God.
Of course, when we finally do touch that memory again, He plunges us again.
Joy,
There is something edgy about remember the 'big' things for the first time and hearing about how others personally received Christ. There is a big temptation to think that salvation happened and so now we can just 'go with the process' -the very one that we are at times so very absent from. Thanks for your encouragement. I don't believe God has given up on me, but I do shudder to think of how tempting it is to take it all for granted when Christ demands total seriousness.
Tim,
Yes, we are called to not live our lives 'in the abundance of our possessions' it is true. Have Buddhist monks perfected this? I don't think I can see far enough into them to give an indisputable answer. I do wonder if they understand what it means to live in the world though. Perhaps they are more immersed than I picture them in my mind.
Circumstances and society carry temptations with them (and woe to the things which cause men to sin!), yet it really is our own thoughts and desires which lead us astray.
Thanks again for your thoughtful summary and appeal to the Scriptures, Tim.
Beast,
I like your analogy. The more we focus on the appearance the more we become spectators. Although we learn so many 'truths' the Truth remains a foreign traveler to us as you say, or as the reformers would say an 'alien' traveler. We do ask superficial questions out loud, it is true. I wonder what it would be like if we vocalized the questions we ask ourselves ...
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