Book 2, Chapter 1
-Part 7 Again Continued Even More-
The fact that one can possibly possess a diluted, pedestrian faith is one with which any believer must wrestle. We may one day successfully ward off the influence of the world, and the next day find ourselves having lapsed in our love for God and yielded to the inducements so readily at hand from the shadows. We may indeed find ourselves penetrated by the mentality of this present world.
Vigilance is in order – the type of which is urged upon believers by Paul in Romans 12:2: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, so that you may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God, even the thing which is good and acceptable and perfect.” (Amplified Bible)
We must remember, too, before moving on from this subject, that the mere anti-world sentiment will not prove to be the originator of one’s love for God. The relationship goes the other way: One’s love for God will work in the soul of the believer in such a way that the polluting effects of the world, the age, will become better known and more readily rejected. Love for God will work a man loose from attachments to the world.
The means for eternal life is not to hate the world and arrive in Heaven, but to love God and live in this world in hope for eternal life with Him.
The believer will indeed leave his friendship with the world, “hate the first and love the second,” but must do so out of love for God. A person detached from the world is not necessarily attached to the Lord.
John Climacus, a 7th-Century monk, articulated this need to renounce the world for the love of God in this way: “The man who renounces the world because of fear is like burning incense, which begins with fragrance and ends in smoke. The man who leaves the world in hopes of a reward is like the millstone that always turns around on the same axis. But the man who leaves the world for love of God has taken fire from the start, and like fire set to fuel, it soon creates a conflagration.” (The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Step One: On Renunciation of Life) (My emphasis.)
Nor is someone who claims to be attached to the Lord necessarily free from an injurious or even lethal attachment to the things of the world. “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I say?” asks Jesus in Luke’s version of the Sermon on the Mount (Luke 6:46). “I have never known you” (Matthew 7:23), He will say to supposed disciples who neither renounce the world nor embrace God with the love that only His love evokes.
We cannot hope to move on to God’s place of excellence for our souls until we have done with the world as prescribed in the Scriptures. In our hearts, we must agree with Peter: “Lord, we have left everything to follow you” (Matthew 19:27).
Here we have to rely on the grace of God to lead us and the mercy of God to tend to us when the corruption of the world grazes our soul.
Importantly, we must also consider that our one, singular renunciation of the world is certainly not going to accomplish a permanent detachment. The world, as much as we would like it to, will not lie down and leave us alone for the rest of our days. For the believer who uses the words, “I have done with the world,” the more truthful statement of renunciation might be: “I am working on it on this day.” What is needed is a persistent will toward detachment.
The world will not cease its drawing us away from God and draining us of our spiritual resources.
Henri Nouwen, a 20th-Century spiritual writer, describes our situation in this way: “It is not easy to keep our eyes fixed on the eternal life, especially not in a world that keeps telling us that there are more immediate and urgent things on which to focus. There is scarcely a day that does not pull our attention away from our goal and make it look vague and cloudy.” (Henri Nouwen, Here and Now, 1995, Page 68)
Nouwen resolves this problem by urging us to return again and again to prayer. Always prayer.
Guigo II, a 12th-Century Carthusian monk, in his work The Ladder of Monks, also emphasized how one’s love for God and a love for the world are incongruous and also ruinous to the life that is to be marked by prayer, reading, meditation and contemplation – the four “rungs” on his ladder.
Obstacles to these spiritual disciplines, according to the monk of nine centuries ago, are: “Unavoidable necessity, the good works of the active life, human frailty and worldly follies.” (Chapter XV, Four Obstacles to these Degrees)
The Christian seeker is excused from all but the last of these four. For “unavoidable necessity” from living in the world, we may understand this to mean the matters that one incurs from existing as a member of a family, an employee, a citizen, or any other responsibility or state of life that naturally arises from living in the world. Just for one example, Jesus did not excuse his followers from paying taxes.
With regard to “good works of the active life,” the Christian must confront a need for a balanced life between one’s quiet meditative moments and the ministry or activity that brings the Gospel to life for the good of the souls of others.
“Human frailty,” Guigo wrote, “invites compassion.” We understand ourselves to be in weakness, and we rarely live as our own ethical equal. In the margin of the pages of our imperfection there is ample room for grace and forgiveness to be written.
Only “worldly follies,” says the monk, fall under the category of “blame.” Or, if you like, “guilt.” He goes on to explain how this shows itself:
“How ill it accords, how unseemly it is for ears which so recently listened to words which man may not utter, so quickly to attend to idle and slanderous stories,
“for eyes so newly purified by holy tears to turn their gaze so soon on worldly vanities,
“for the tongue which has scarcely ended its sweet song of welcome to the spouse, scarcely has made peace between Him and the bride with its burning and pleading eloquence, and has greeted her in the banqueting hall, to revert to foul talk, to scurrility, to lampoons and libels.”
We know well that Peter’s noble words from Matthew 19 are not the only quotes from the rough-hewn fisherman who acted more often than not as the spokesman for the group. He also, out of fear for his own life, denied three times that he knew Christ. When Jesus earlier became more specific about His pending death, Peter proudly stepped in and announced he would not allow such a thing. Jesus corrected him immediately. He who had left his nets to follow Jesus three years earlier returned to fishing after Christ had died. What restored Peter is that which restores us all, the mercy of God – His loving-kindness.
We even see in the biblical announcement to the world-infected Laodiceans that mercy would be at hand if they would repent: “I reprove and train those whom I love, so repent in real earnest. Look, I am standing at the door knocking. If one of you hears me calling and opens the door, I will come in to share a meal at that person’s side” (Revelation 3:19, 20).
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