Golf With A Friend
Recently, in lots of different ways, I'm becoming convicted that I was made to do life in Community.
I went to a Catholic college, and the campus ministers talked about community all the time, and I kind of brushed it off as mere words. I was wrong, and that wrongness hurt me and some other people I don't even know about.
When I'm not living in real community with my wife, and with good friends who are allowed to punch me in the balls if I'm living wrong, I begin to migrate into something much less than what I was made for.
For some people (most people) this is a "duh" but for me this is huge.
Mine has been a faith (and as a reflection) often a life that was mostly about me doing something, acting, persevering, enduring. This doesn't mean that I haven't had amazing friends, mentors, and strangers helping me with stuff, or people on the outside who had agency to hurt me. I have, and often miss it because I'm hugely egocentric, but that's not what I'm trying to write about. What I mean is that in the ministry, work, and life I've had to this point I've been either the "actor" or the "direct object acted upon." We are "challenged" by foes, we "are fed" by mentors and "pour into" younger people. This is all transactional. I live transactional. I am transactional. God wants more.
We were created to be interactional. It's a different paradigm. It's scarier and better.
I went to a Catholic college, and the campus ministers talked about community all the time, and I kind of brushed it off as mere words. I was wrong, and that wrongness hurt me and some other people I don't even know about.
When I'm not living in real community with my wife, and with good friends who are allowed to punch me in the balls if I'm living wrong, I begin to migrate into something much less than what I was made for.
For some people (most people) this is a "duh" but for me this is huge.
Mine has been a faith (and as a reflection) often a life that was mostly about me doing something, acting, persevering, enduring. This doesn't mean that I haven't had amazing friends, mentors, and strangers helping me with stuff, or people on the outside who had agency to hurt me. I have, and often miss it because I'm hugely egocentric, but that's not what I'm trying to write about. What I mean is that in the ministry, work, and life I've had to this point I've been either the "actor" or the "direct object acted upon." We are "challenged" by foes, we "are fed" by mentors and "pour into" younger people. This is all transactional. I live transactional. I am transactional. God wants more.
We were created to be interactional. It's a different paradigm. It's scarier and better.
2 Comments:
dude, Jesus wants a PERSONAL relationship with YOU!!!!!!! (Ha, what a crock that staement is).... I guess in some sense/technicaly it is true, but it leaves so much of the picture dark that I would say it is false from a practicle perspective.
I love the cathlic view of salvation (which really means "rescuing")... they view it as restoring the right relationship with God as well as with People,... a very communal perspective.
It's hard though, that's why my blog profile states: "I believe that we humans are created for community (but I really don't like people),... so I live a fun & frustrating life :-)
Love you man,
Keith
Jim Wallis says "God is personal but not private."
That's about right.
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