How can we escape the moral rot of this world? How can we articulate in our own lives the essence of divine revelation that brings us to the Gate of Eden?
It’s easy to get lost in the mechanics of debate over what our society needs. I’m called to prophesy to the US; those of you elsewhere in the world can surely see the needs of your own context. What I see here in America is the lack of fundamental ingredients for building a life of Biblical Law. It seems to me a major element is failure to embrace the longer perspective inherent in Scripture.
The Covenant of Christ isn’t about you and me; it’s about the broad sweep of human existence, generation after generation, under God’s hand. It’s a matter of putting yourself into the stream. It’s not the same as dissolving your personal identity. Faith is deeply personal between us and our Lord. We are each made and chosen in our uniqueness. No two of us will ever have the same calling. But it’s the gift granted from Him that we can be part of something far, far bigger, something that gives meaning to this tragic fallen existence.
It also gives meaning to our failures. How do we know something is a failure if there is no context in which to compare it against something better? Even here we struggle with the false impression that there is some perfect standard. The Bible uses the image of moral goodness as an orientation, not a place to stand. The image is moving toward something nobody can understand, but which nonetheless clearly calls our names.
Failure means choosing something that pleases you contrary to the long-term outlook of God’s reputation. We do not seek some mythical objective standard, but a Person. Objectifying and depersonalizing the standard is nothing but an attempt to stab God in the heart. It seeks to replace Him with something cooked up in our own fallen minds. The fatal flaw is trying to drain the life out of things, of trying to analyze the situation as if being smarter is all we need. It’s not a question of whether you and I can come to consensus about the truth; consensus only determines whether we can both serve the Lord together, or whether we need to separate. God is not bound by our consensus, nor is His glory dimmed by lack of one.
I sometimes wonder if Radix Fidem as a covenant, not as a mere organization, will outlive us. It was here before us; we simply gave it a name we could all agree on. What really matters is the living thing to which it points. I’m trying to avoid having this become our little thing. I am driven by the image of it as something vital to life itself.
It’s not that we aren’t supposed to fail. If we don’t crash and burn here and there, it’s because we didn’t try to change ourselves over into His image for us. Anyone who reads my blog archives with some intelligence will see numerous examples of things I proposed and put resources into, that didn’t go anywhere. The whole point is not some measure of success as humans view such things, but of obeying that drive to serve the Lord. There are no unbroken vessels.
I’m hoping you’ll catch the vision of something far bigger than all of us together, something worthy of expending our broken lives. It’s more than a mere legacy, something that humans are aware of; rather, it’s something that touches the fabric of Life itself. Human awareness is a natural by-product, but it’s not the goal. The goal is making God smile.
We should live as if that’s all that really matters.
