The Good Old Days
Daily Bible reading and I have not always gotten along. Back in the day, I used to feel like a bad Christian for going one day without studying Scripture. After I more fully understood God’s message of grace and freedom, I embraced this whole new “just-need-a-break” approach to devotional life.
Don’t get me wrong. I pray all the time – I don’t know what I would do if I didn’t have that trust that God is ever-present and actually concerns himself with the smallness of our lives. So when it came to reading the Bible, I would give myself the freedom not to read in order to break the routine, just to make sure I wasn’t doing it out of guilt or obligation. But, as these things usually go, I have been growing more in this area and a good friend recently challenged me to basically get over myself and start studying it again. Good advice, and definitely time.
In any case, I’m not perfect, but I don’t think anyone really has a corner on the market of personal devotional habits, as they are simply that: personal. This week and last I have slowly been creeping through Ephesians, usually reading a chapter at a time and taking some time to reflect on it.
This morning when I was reading the fourth chapter of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, written while he was in prison, a couple parts jumped out at me and really grated against my lesser-developed areas of spirituality. Namely, dude’s writing from prison and reminding those in Ephesus to be “completely humble and gentle,” “patient,” and to “bear with one another in love” (v. 2).
I think back to high school, and even some of college, and tend to hold that up as a time that I was easily more humble than I am now. I am pretty well in touch with the evil part of myself these days and hope I am the first to admit it when I fall short of perfection, which is all the time. But, as much as I can hold up the past as a time of greater purity, more steadfastly devoted to the mission of Christianity, I think it would be wrong. If I knew then what I know now, I honestly would not have understood where 2009 Tim was coming from. I wasn’t so humble as I was just naïve, naïve about the world around me and unaware of my wearing, thinning humanity caught in the middle of a very spiritual tug-of-war between good and evil. I looked humble, felt humble, and even had that dumb humble look, but as I read Paul’s words I now know that humility comes at a cost.
And there it is. The human factor in spirituality is constantly causing us to look back upon better, easier, simpler days. I mean, if I live in the memory of the past, and how I perceive it, I don’t have to face the troubles I find myself caught up in today. We do it in the church, at work, in marriage and family, and in the quiet of our own lives, because reality is often to hard, or just too complicated, to face. But Paul is reminding us to be humble, and that church unity depends upon our individual willingness to open up to and lean upon one another.
This openness, this decision to live in transparency and to accept one another and ourselves, goes against every grain of humanity. And although our bodies may reject the implantation of God’s goodness and grace, we must hang on for they are life to our self-consuming and slowly decaying bodies.
So with this in mind as I read through the chapter today, the whole “time to grow” challenge I have been coming to as I pursue God in my later 20’s really comes to a head. I look to the past and cannot help but be thankful even for the young naïveté I now recognize. For as much as it frustrates me that I cannot yell back and tell “young Tim” to avoid this obstacle, or to pursue that area of growth, or even to bet on the Red Sox in the 2004 World Series, I cannot. I am the sum of my experiences, both good and bad, and even the darkest of nights has found a purpose and a place in the strength I know today.
For all of us who identify as Christians (and if you’re a “Christ-follower,” stop being so trendy and humbly exude some unity – you’re a Christian), learning not only to face the past, but to embrace it MUST be the defining process of true and lasting growth and maturity. This is the type of believer outsiders want to see, need to see. And this, I believe, is what will mark ours and generations to follow as one step closer to our purpose as the body of Christ than our Evangelical forbearers were able to witness. It is time for a change.
I find myself challenged to embrace humility, to think kindly upon others, and to remember that being a Christian is by its very definition not so trendy – and that that is okay.
