When it Started

What with all the conversations I've been having lately about what (who) is the church and how we "be" church as opposed to go to or do church etc., I got to thinking about how I formed by worldview on the matter. When or why did I come to the belief that we, the church, are somehow separate, or to be separated from the "others". Even before I read scripture that told me not to unequally yoked with an unbeliever, I had a sense of "us" and "them" and have never liked it.

It was the summer of 1977. I had turned 14 that spring, and even earlier, that winter, had heard the gospel for the first time and was still in the blushs of early love. The euphoria from my profound salvation experience had not quite worn off though it was fading fast. My uncle ran a camp for boys. The province sent them up to the camp instead of into youth detention and my sister and I spent a couple of weeks that summer at the camp.

Initially, the idea was that we'd work in the cookhouse but the health department showed up and wouldn't allow it - something about us not being able to prove we had our shots up to date, so instead, we worked alongside these juvie boys hammering shake shingles on the washhouse roof. Some of these guys were tough with rough stories to tell. I related well, having just come out of my own rough story. For the first time I felt the joy of sharing, and connecting with others, both believers and unbelievers, through and in Christ, and it was very very cool. Then.....the teacher who worked at the camp took my sister and I aside and proceeded to give us a lecture...it went something like this...

"You have the Thompson River, it's crystal clean, pristine blue, and very pure...and you have the Fraser River, it's muddy, filthy, dirty...(he proceeded to draw a sketch in the dirt depicting the area in BC where the two rivers join, and went on...) here the rivers join, and here is the key to what I'm telling you...the mud and filth of the Fraser River overpowers the clean pure Thompson and eventually, the one joined river is muddy and filthy...the clean pure Thompson does not wash the muddy Fraser clean...no, it's the other way around..the filthy Fraser pollutes the Thompson...I'm telling you this because when you hang out with these boys, you risk being made dirty".....

Being all these years later you have to appreciate these weren't the EXACT words, but something very very close.

And it clouded by world view ever since....I was a brand new believer and came to believe this "godly" man who told me that I have to separate myself from unbelievers or their filth and dirt will make me unclean.

Lord, forgive me.

Did not the monks of old have that same view? Hence, they cloistered to escape the corruption of the world. When we build our four walled buildings and make our churchs a sanctuary against "them" aren't we cloistering too?

Seems to me the people Jesus raved against were the cloistering "us" versus "them" self righteous types. He moved out among "them", lived with "them", healed "them", loved "them" all before "they" became "us".

Serenity

Went up north this past weekend. It's very serene up there. Enjoyed every minute. Entered into some pretty amazing conversations with a couple of pretty amazing women.....you know who you are.

• It's beginning to boggle my brain how so many of my fellow followers of Jesus Christ are beginning to venture to voice some of things that have been stirring in their hearts concerning how we "do" this walk of His. And maybe that's the point....we're not called so much to be "doing" it, as we are called to "be" it. Does not the scripture say "in Him we LIVE and MOVE and HAVE our BEING"?

Somewhere along the line I got this idea that I responded to His call to salvation, got a list of "to do's" via His word and now the rest is up to me....I go "do" and if I "do" it right, then His response will be to bless and keep me....and if I "do" it wrong, well, then, learn how to do it right, repent, do it right and get back into His favour. Now here's the weird part...this idea, this sense of reward and punishment, or cause and effect, wasn't something I cognitively understood was influencing how I related to Him...it was more like an underlying belief way down deep in my heart, that has been subtly warping my understanding of who He is and what He expects of me. BUT....it's not about "doing"....it's about "being". He is love...He lives in me....let me be love. He is good...He lives in me....let me be good. He is grace and mercy...He lives is me....let me be grace and mercy. You get my drift. If I am living and moving and having my being in Him, then will not...should not... all that He is, in terms of His humanity, flow in and through me and out to others? Without agenda? Will I not move where He moves, how He moves, towards those He loves to move towards, and be how He is towards them? Again, without agenda...other than His agenda ...which was to show the Father's love.

My head is spinning.....not a good time to blog. But after this weekend, my heart is doing cartwheels...and that's a good thing. No conclusions...and that's a good thing too.