A thought on hope
Jarod,
I think I have rediscovered a vital element of my spiritual life. It is the ability to hope.
Before, I was descending deeper and deeper into a sort of cynicism about those people involved with ministry, believing their achievements to be manmade, converts to an attractive world-view, theologians pushing guilt complexes and then relieving that guilt with their message of God's forgiveness. I saw missionary converts as people wanting to gain access to the strange allures of rich foreigners, rebellious people who would have left their culture's religion anyway, and were looking for a good alternative. I saw people as being the way they were, and nothing more. I saw Christian artists who forged into secular territories have little effect, being misunderstood by the non-believers and mistakenly raised to sainthood by believers. To me, believers in the United States were not changing, I was not changing, and the worlds' broken people were stuck. They were not growing closer to God (at least, it didn't seem), things were static. God was not intervening in His world, if it really was His world at all.
This sent me into a deep depression, not necessarily noticeable in my tone of voice, but within my heart. My doubt stayed within Christianity, but I viewed God as heartless, a cruel puppeteer. I believed in the sincerity of the Christian workers' experiences with God, but I also believed in the sincerity of my Muslim friends' experiences with God. For awhile, it seemed God was pitting the two religions against each other, manifesting Himself in one and then the other, but never making it clear to either side that He was the same. I never doubted that He could change things, I only doubted whether He would. In fact, I didn't know whose side God was on. Get this, I still believed in the Christian story and the Christian creeds, I believed that was God's authentic story with humanity, but I didn't know if He backed His followers in their quests to make this story known to people all over the world. When I came back from Azerbaijan, my spiritual engine was running without oil. It was screaming out warning signals of being close to destruction. Without hope for change, following Christ meant nothing, literally nothing.
I had an intense desire to experience God's power. I wanted to personally watch someone go from honest seeking agnostic to fully convinced, changed heart believer. I've never seen that.
The only reliable reference at my disposal was my own experience. Inside of myself, had there been change as a result of following Christ? I had to answer. Yes.
So...how? How have I changed?
By believing that humans have something evil growing inside of them, I have taken on the responsibility of dealing with this problem I have of consistently being selfish. Instead of explaining away my unhealthy behavior or normalizing it, I try to do something to change it. By presenting my weaknesses before God, I open myself up to being changed supernaturally by Him.
By trying to follow Jesus, I have prioritized that which he prioritized (loving God and others), allowed his teachings on the world (through parables and other statements) to be filters through which I perceive the world, and followed his self-sacrificial example of serving other people and not allowing pride to keep me from interacting with those lower than me.
By agreeing with St. Paul, I also believe that the three greatest virtues are faith, hope, and love. These are virtues do not come naturally, but take risk. By these virtues, we may positively progress in our relationships with other people, and by lacking any one of these, our relationship suffers serious damage. An inability to hope is caused by a lack of trust, which more than likely stems from a breakdown in love.
So, I am on the road of learning to trust God, and learning how to hope and what kind of change to hope for. Most importantly, I am learning to keep a love for God alive and healthy. This doesn't really answer my questions, but it opens a door to move forward.
Thanks for walking with me,
Dave
