More than once I’ve awakened to a pounding heart and the stinking sweat of terror.
Not merely from some bad dream, not simply a too vivid movie scene in my memory, but the very real threat of death crawled through my life at times. The source never matters; it’s the fear the kills more thoroughly than the pain and loss of life. At the other extreme of emotion, I’ve had many hours filled with oceans of warmth and thrill from unspeakable love. It breathed life and healing into my being. There were moments I wonder that I didn’t translate directly into Heaven.
How do you live during the times when the emotions are quiescent? Don’t tell me how much you love Jesus. You can’t, anyway. Show me.
My wife and I are at a crossroads moment. We know God is bringing changes, changes that are more important in His Kingdom than all the external stuff we are all watching in politics, economics and other noise. Among the questions our souls must answer is how to handle emergencies.
What if, in the midst of chasing God’s hand through my world, my life here ends?
I can’t promise you I won’t fear in that moment. I have no way to estimate how such an end might come or what will be my state of mind then. However, there is one fear I’ve conquered. It’s a fear our asinine American culture considers a mandatory fear: What will happen to my beloved wife?
Jesus warned about this when He declared that His Kingdom was more important than earthly family ties. That is, the shared spiritual identity matters more than DNA. So anyone who doesn’t despise their blood ties in favor of spiritual considerations is someone who cannot actually pretend to follow Christ. Did He actually say “hate”? We need not wrestle with the peculiarities of translating from Aramaic to Greek to English to make it clear what He meant. However, it’s simply wrong to suggest we have to insert that “by comparison” crap often appearing in so many English translations.
Fundamental: This world is fallen and irreparable. It is slated for destruction. Paul and his friends constantly reminded their flocks it was necessary to despise this world and our lives in it. We don’t trust what we experience in our flesh as having any significance unless it registers firmly in the Spirit Realm. The difference between the Flesh and Spirit is unspeakably radical; you can’t explain it, only characterize it. We can disregard human emotion in the sense of what really matters. Even the most noble human love is simply a poor shadow of the Cross.
This best of human affection is better than a lot of other things, but what we do in the Spirit is on a wholly different and higher plane. We have a foot in each of the Two Realms. All our conduct and considerations here are controlled from above. What is important is radically shifted in favor of the Spirit Realm. We do not cease to be humans with all the feelings, foibles and failures, but we keep them in proper perspective. Important in their own place, but they are not a major consideration in the face of spiritual concerns. It’s not a simple matter of compartmentalization, but of scaling correctly — quantum moral reasoning is complex that way.
My flesh fears what will happen if my wife has to continue here without me. Her flesh fears it, too. My spirit recognizes that such fears are not important. It’s not as if I pretend it will be all okay. She may well suffer and collapse under the crushing load of human care. It may drag her through human terror and suffering we cannot imagine. There’s nothing I can do about it. That is, if I invest all sorts of effort and resources following mere human calculations to prevent her suffering, it will most certainly interfere with the demands of Heaven. It’s not simply that such preparations have to meet biblical requirements, but she is already in God’s hands while I live. He has asserted a feudal claim over her entire existence, including that part we share even now, even as He asserts the same claim over me. Our lives are forfeit and He’s made it clear we are not to invest too much anxiety about this human life. We are told to prepare our selves for immense suffering and sorrow, that it is intended to drive us more deeply into His arms.
Contrast that with the nearly idolatrous garbage spewed by mainstream Christian religion. They misread totally what Paul meant about taking care of your earthly family. He was dealing with lazy louts who wanted their welfare system without contributing whatever they could from their personal resources. The question is not whether we obey His commands for this world, but the scale of things is completely off kilter. Compared to what it meant in that social context, what we see in common American church teachings is altogether worldly. They read our Western social mythology and materialism back into Scripture and pervert the gospel for pottage. That’s the reason so many churches are simply religious political institutions.
Don’t tell me how much you love Jesus. Don’t tell me about the oceans of warm feelings you have for His name. Tell me how you have prepared your mind to serve the Spirit in ways the mind cannot begin to comprehend. Tell me about that otherworldly orientation you get from serving Christ.
That warmth means nothing if your life isn’t already on the Cross.
