If any of you have ever read the classic, socio, psycho and philo-work "Habits of the Heart" then you will most definitely feel and hopefully grasp my frustration when I say, "I hate specialization."
How in the world did we as human beings become so removed from walking freely from corner to corner of the earth long ago, with no agendas, anxieties, and especially no desire to OWN something? We westerners (those plagued by Enlightenment to the most appalling degree) cannot, no matter the belief system, remove ourselves completely from the struggle of propriety, and frankly, I despise this!
Confession...I mostly despise this about myself. I am a walking "fear bomb" waiting to go off as soon as I realize, my "specialty" means absolutely nothing! Therefore, I must keep busy to distract, to disorient and to manipulate myself. In some sick way, I feel compelled to sustain a pseudo-reality that was fed to me by those of limited understanding of Ultimate-Reality and who have also fallen into psychological and spiritual traps that believe this life is nothing but a journey of compartmentalization.
When I think of a remedy to this plague, I think of the word Repent. Now I know many of us have associations, memories and ideas concerning this term that make us cringe, for whatever reason. For me, the word has been used carelessly and irreverently. But over the past week, this word has been revived in my heart and mind. It no longer makes me cringe, rather inspirits my being.
Time to elaborate- in my bible class this past week, we discussed the True Gospel Jesus proclaimed. During this time of exploration through dialogue and language study, we got stuck on the word, Repent.
Did you know, in the original Greek, this word actually means to “alter your thinking”! My professor expanded on this idea more and more, and by the end of the session, I felt as though many of us in Christian circles have been fooled, thinking it all has to do with getting actions into check. At that point, I thought my actions are all good- but my thinking is destructive! My thinking hasn’t been altered (and I do believe this is a life process); I still feel captive to strange and wayward ideals. My thinking is involved in an existence where practicalities matter and specialization reigns.
However, here’s the kicker for me: When the last prophet before Christ preached, “repent for the Kingdom of God is near”, he was inaugurating a NEW way of thinking. To all walks of life, he [John the Baptist] says, “alter your thinking for the greatest reality exists! You must believe it to see it!! Let go of the old ways of thinking. You don’t have to hold on to what people want you to be, or what tradition and culture says is right about your identity. The Kingdom is near and it is outside of this world. Let go of the old and embrace the NEW!"
I'm all for it...Repent.
1 comment:
But it's so much easier to attend to the visible things in our lives... can't we just align our actions, words, and appearances with the institutionally approved, socially accepted, prescribed modes of expression and rest at night, knowing that those in authority in our immediate situation have stamped a blessing on our lives?
Alas, we are called to repentance! We are called to love the Lord our God with our entire minds, hearts, and souls! No mention of words or deeds here, is there?! God knows what he's after, and it's not conformity to tradition or religious institutes, even those which reign supreme in the local bodies of the Church today. We're called to re-orient our minds!
And for anyone who's uncomfortable that I haven't mentioned this dynamic, seemingly bringing the conversation right back around to where we started and where we are in church life... here: and out of a renewed, transformed, divinely altered state of mind, redeemed acts of a Kingdom nature will naturally flow. (But let me suggest that for those who enter a new mind orienting process, and genuinely let it take it's course from God alone, their actions might look distinctly different from what we are mostly seeing in evangelical, nay, most churches today).
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