To be absolutely honest, I have changed in some very subtle but drastic ways in the past couple years regarding my faith. Its been more and more difficult to grasp a sense of rational certainty about the things I confess to believe. Sometimes Jesus, as a historical entity, seems so alien to me and beyond my grasp. Ive been thinking about the fact lately that I have never met Jesus.
There is evangelical lingo out there about having Jesus "in my heart" and "knowing Jesus" in a personal way. But Ive never met Him. I believe in Him. But Ive never seen Him. I read the New Testament with new eyes these days. Most of what we are taught to believe about Jesus in the New Testament concerning His present state is that He is gone. He went away. He is not among us. He is absent. That is what seems to be the concrete fact of the matter. Where is Jesus? Not here. John 16-17 would be the strongest case for my point.
Sure there is mystical talk in the Bible about how we should remain "in" Jesus (John 15:5) and how all things are held together "in" Him (Colossians 1) and how Jesus will "dwell" in our hearts through faith (Ephesians 3). Im sure there are numerous other examples of His imminence in Scripture that I dont have the time to look up. But that all feels so mysterious to me.
For the most part, Jesus feels absent to me a lot of the time. And this is a problem, because He is supposed to be the cornerstone of my faith (pre-eminent in all things).
And so Ive been struggling a lot with the questions "where is Jesus?" and "how can I be HIS disciple?" I dont want to be a disciple of a culture, or a way of life, or a book, or a denomination, or a school, or a great thinker. I want to be a disciple of Jesus. That seems necessitated to me by Scripture. I am ultimately believing in Him and confessing His name. I believe that His historical life and death is the hinge upon which the entire course of history turns. And yet, when it comes down to it, He is the most distant component of my faith. I dont know Him. I havent met Him, touched Him, heard Him, or even have any idea where He physically exists at this moment (for He does still have a physical body). He feels almost entirely inaccessible to me.
The things that feel accessible are the church, the Bible, the communion table, creation, communities like Covenant and Cono, and a vague sense of the Holy Spirit in my life (although thats a difficult thing to distinguish or talk about most of the time). Those are the things, that when added together, give me a sense of "faith" in something. But these are a means and not the end to faith.
Questions about Jesus are everything to me. The answers to who He is, where He is, what He has done, and what He is going to do, are answers that the entire weight and direction of my life rest upon. And yet these answers are often so mysterious to me. I have systematic, abstract answers but not concrete ones that seem historically plausible. For instance, I know Christ is in heaven, but where is that? I know He's at God's right hand, but what does that mean? I know Hes coming back to judge the living and the dead, but the pictures I get in my mind of a fire lake and a big white throne and a flying white horse just dont seem real to me. They seem like mysterious images. Mystery. So much mystery.
And yet, the thing that keeps me holding on is looking outside, realizing the world is most definitely created by a wise God, looking in the Bible, and realizing that it is certainly a trustworthy, historical text, and looking in the mirror, and realizing I am definitely a sinful human being with a distorted mind unable to grasp the higher truths of the universe that I would only expect the Creator of the Universe to know. And so I think the only legitimate, intellectually honest response I can come up with is a thankful heart for being alive, and a humbled spirit for being weak and limited in a world of such magnitude, and a prayerful tongue. For if great thinkers like Solomon and Augustine and Kierkegaard can pray without having all the answers, so can I.
Posted by todd at April 27, 2006 03:55 PM