As a kid I loved exploration, poking and prodding the things that made up the life around me. One of my favorite activities was capturing and watching, bits and pieces of my environment. I had cans and bottles and jugs filled with a bit of the stream that ran through our backyard or of a lake or filled with random ingredients. I'd watch them to see what would become of these samples.
There were glorious surprises. A can with a bit of peach juice in the bottom would grow luxurious strands of grey mold. Swamp water would grow swarms of single-celled animals large enough to see with the naked eyes. Strange, wiggling life forms would begin to emerge from algae-choked jars of water.
It was great for a couple of days, but then the inevitable happened. Decay set in. The stench of death dimmed my fascination. The wiggly things turned out to be mosquito larvae, and I didn't want to be around when they morphed into winged predators with a taste for my blood.
Stagnation has a limited appeal, and what was true for my early nature experiments is true for faith. I have a goal. It has actually sparked concern and alarm among traditionalists at times. I want my view of the world and of God to go through some radical change every two years or so. If not, I feel nervous.
Why? Because I don't want to stagnate. I'm not looking for some new and radical truth that no one else has ever been able to figure out. Originality is not my goal. I'm looking for understanding that is new to me. God is so big, his wisdom so vast, his understanding so far beyond me that I never want to be content with what I already know.
Spiritual stagnation comes when we stop exposing ourself to fresh opportunities for insight. What was in my jars died because they were cut off from new nourishment. They had become a closed system unable to survive. Each little environment consumed itself and died. My spiritual growth is dependent on an open system. Nourishment comes from God and his Spirit. That may seem sufficient, but it is not. God has chosen to work through his people to add to our, (if you will allow me to stretch out the analogy), spiritual nutrition.
The ‘me and Jesus’ model of spirituality can't be found in Scripture. Instead, we are given people who are gifted as pastors, teachers, and more, to instruct and train us (Eph 4:11-13). We are gifted by the Holy Spirit to minister to each other (1 Cor 12:7-11). These influences come from those immediately around me, or have been preserved by the writing of people such as Augustine, Luther, N. T. Wright, Timothy Keller, or Andy Stanley (This is not a comprehensive list).
God's truth is eternal, and my understanding is eternally lacking. If I don't work to push out the boundaries of my understanding, then I'll merely consume what I already know. If I don't challenge my assumptions, then God will not be able to correct the half truths that I carry with me. Tradition will replace a dynamic life. If I don't continue to ask, seek, and knock, if I'm not willing to test what I think I know while being open to be proven wrong (while God is proven right), then I will stagnate and never know the true meaning of abundant life.
No comments:
Post a Comment