Wednesday, August 03, 2005

Capitialismized Christianity

Man it has been entirely longer than i imagined in returning to this lil post but hopefully the lessons i think i have learned will be worth it. I recently took my first real visit to the non-american portion of the world, a little jewel known as Costa Rica for 6 weeks. Aside from learning incredulous amounts of spanish, more interesting were the stories of many of the people God placed before me. Did you ever play Battle Chess 3-d when you were a kid? One of the things i was always amazed at, was when you would move a piece this giant white hand would pluck the unwilling animated piece and if confronted with an enemy they would battle for the honor and dignity of their respective king. It was strange because on this trip i felt like The Lord, like the big caucasian hand in Battle Chess, delivered people into my life and i was left questioning which side i was playing for! I guess the moral of that is that almost unwillingly i participated in this grand scheme of God challenging me and strengthening me even when i didnt want it. This one girl imparticular sticks out in my memory because our friendship was centered around who i actually was and who she actually was and there wasnt any sense like i needed to be some windexed-shined teeth ideal mr clean christian sweating my brow trying to be perfect so she might she a glimpse of this guy i call Lord. I was real in my doubts, struggles, fears, concerns. loves, and joys. And for what seemed like the first time, an actual real human being responded to that!

However though as i have returned back to this culture of perceived comfort and pervasive apathy i have so easily fallen into that mode of learned sinfulness. What i mean by that (aside from taking a stab at the overall triteness of modern psychology) is that when you arent connected to the heart of the Father, when you dont hear his voice telling you who you really are, how He really feels about you, How at great cost to Himself he purchased you, how he longs and aches to spend time with his people, when you dont actively sit in that you open a backdraft of temptation to sweep through every place in your soul and empty you in a heartbeat. It then seems immeasureably harder to even return back to the place where you can hear but by His charity i am asking to be dragged into his presence that i might now taste and see and delight in This God who earnestly desires intimacy with me.