Oh My This Is Hard

Like I told the group in an e-mail, voting on which header was the best brought up that whole issue that I don’t decide well.  Again.

I hate the optometrist, “Which is better, one?  Or two?  Two? Or Three?”  The poor fellow really gets his work out when I’m in the chair.

“Gee, I don’t know.”  Pause.  “Can I see them again? ”  Pause.  “One more time?” Pause.  “Uh maybe two?”

Yikes.  I had everyone’s header on a separate tab and clicked back and forth, back and forth, forth and back.  Crumb, snap, Sakakawea and all those words I use when in mixed company (folks that know me well and those that don’t).  Okay, I finally made a decision.  And stuck with it.  That is ’til I pressed “send”!  Then I wanted to change my mind.  But really, I would most likely have still chosen whom I did.  This, my Dear Reader, is why Dirt orders for me in a restaurant, we’d all like to eat sometime on the day we arrive at said eatery. 

Some stuff is just hard.

A friend and I were recently talking about the things in life that are hard.  Like changing up from the stuff you thought you knew was right and now you have come to see, that it isn’t so gosh durn right after all.  And tonight, trying to unwind from a fairly intense day, and no, it wasn’t all about the Header Challenge, I came across an article that reiterated what she and I were trying to say today, only the article was speaking of feeding livestock, we were speaking of feeding souls.

The very accurate words from the The Stockman Grass Farmer:  “It takes all of us far longer to unlearn what we know is wrong than it does to learn what’s right afresh.”  Allan Nation.

Allan Nation’s point was that a start up venture takes about five years to get to profit stage, while a restart takes way longer.  Because the enlightened grass finisher has to undo so much baggage.  So many things that they thought they knew about grass finishing but now can see how incorrect it was.  I think Allan’s words on this can apply to far more than just changing up farming practices, far more.  In fact the words in his article hit me so hard because it was exactly what my friend and I were speaking of about another subject entirely.  Church.

Church and all that goes with it, is something she and I and others, our families, other families have been changing up as of recent and we still seem to be working at getting to what we now see as good, as what was modeled for us by the first Christians in the pages of the New Testament. 

Unfortunately, unbiblical thinking, man made structures, desires and bents keep getting in the way.  Early on they were large logs in the path, now hopefully they are just a bunch of cotton strings but they still seem to be there to tangle our feet, impede progress, confuse the mind a bit.

I grew up intellectually knowing that the people who call themselves Christians make up the Church.  That we are the Church.  But our conversations and casual statements would lead a visiting alien to think otherwise.  The majority, like ninety-nine to one percent, of our speaking is that we go to a place called Church.  That we attend Church.  That we are members of this lovely church over here on this street and our good neighbors and friends, who believe pretty much the same things as we, attend yet another church around the corner.

We occasionally, some preachers I think have it preplanned, scheduled in, to come up about every other month, hear that we indeed are the Church.  What is the popular saying?  “Christ isn’t coming back for a building”?  So yes, the intellectual understanding continues even though I switched up traditions, but unfortunately, until recently, the daily words and quite frankly the actions never reflected this understanding. 

Luther may have fought, and given his life, that we might be given the chance to read God’s word for ourselves, let the Holy Spirit open up for us the meaning of the words within the scriptures, but we turn that right back over to those who attend seminary.  Yep, when they preach we, modern church goers, dutifully have our Bibles open to the chapter and verse they are reading.  But our mind shifts into neutral as we check to make sure that they read it right, that what they are expounding on does indeed match the context of that particular passage, but it glides into their teaching with out a great deal of thought, because they are the one that has gone to school for this.  Occasionally, a feather is ruffled and we get all up and challenge what is being said.  A far cry from being asked to test the spirit of a teaching or prophesy.   We just sat and swallowed from the spoon.  And sometimes somewhere in our heart we miss the ease of that and just want someone, more studied than us, to tell us what we are supposed to know.

We may be told in God’s very word that indeed one day is like the next to God.  That He doesn’t desire our sacrifices or our observances of Holy Days as much as He just wants our heart, daily, moment by moment.  But there we go, feeling like we aren’t much if we don’t pull out the special plates on the special day for the special bread we only share with special people.  If our group doesn’t grow to the size of the last Temple in Jerusalem we question our validity as a group of Christians.  Skip all the hard work, the testing, the challenges, we have made it through, the growth we have made, individually and as a group, ready to face just about anything now.  Forget all the soul feeding we have done, if we aren’t adding to our numbers daily by the thousands…  Oh wait, neither is the Rock and Roll Church around the corner from the Five and Dime and their face is on the cover of Rolling Stone.

It is hard to not want to devise some liturgy to make us feel like our time together was “time together” as we are exhorted to partake of in Hebrews ten.  Hard not to make sure we get in the correct number of hymns and praise and worship songs that will bring about a move of the Holy Spirit.  Hard not to want to dress the part of a spiritual person.  Hard not to want to recite, or say off the cuff, the prayer that will bring out the tears of our neighbors, the hearty amens all around.  Hard not to want to make sure we’ve got the program right and tight so that we can feel valid.

It is hard to break away from the baggage of what we were told for so long was the right way, the only right way, even though we never saw it modeled in the New Testament.  It seems the longer and harder a person was going in one direction it is that much harder to turn around and stay the course.  It is hard not to want to steal back from the freedom we have found and return to bondage, it is all so frightening and intense being free.

But like Allan’s word on farming, I hope it will be easier for those who start into this afresh rather than a reboot.