(Based on Romans 15:1-13)
According to Paul, the purpose of faith is to build other people up. The gauge he uses for maturity is how well we get along with others. Instead of using faith as a personal knowledge builder, he says that those who have a strong sense of faith should use it to step in to lend those a hand who aren't having an easy go at life. Instead of using faith as a way to make life more convenient for us, it's used as a way to ask the question, "How can I help?"
I consider myself a person who has a strong faith. Most of the time, faith is really the only thing I have that seems lasting and real. My reason fails me, my actions fail me, and my words fail me. Nevertheless, there is still this inner peace deep inside that keeps me going, letting me know that this isn't the end but just part of the journey.
I think we all go through phases in our "faith" journeys. For me, it all started out as head knowledge - blind acceptance if you will. My faith was built around moral ideas that seemed right, but that I'd never had experience with actually breaking those laws that were constructed around my faith. I remember having a solid construct of what it meant to be good, and what it meant to be bad. I could easily group a whole population of people into these boxes that my moral ideas drew up. If you were gay, you were bad. If you had abortions, you were bad. If you divorced, you were bad. If you didn't drink, you were good. If you didn't cuss or look at pornography, you were good. So, I would use these moral constructs to define who was "in" and who was "out," all the while assuming that I was "in."
Then, as I started breaking my own moral constructs, my faith changed with it. As I began to drink, I became bad. When I began cussing, I became bad. When I began saying mean things to people, I became bad. There was no way to avoid the fact that my previous constructs and groupings of people wasn't working. My good, moral ideas weren't working anymore because I was becoming the "others." It was at this time that I started redefining what was good. I fell in love with the scriptures, specifically the Sermon on the Mount, and started doing different kinds of good things. Since I was now drinking, cussing, having sex, and doing countless other things that were on my bad list, I didn't have anything going on in the "good" list. So, I had to create something. I started hanging out with homeless people. I started buying groceries for people who couldn't buy their own. I started mowing yards for the elderly.
In this phase, faith became something different. It became a symbol for the conflict going on inside me. I would fight the "bad" inside me with the "good" outside of me. Faith became good works, and the new construct was built around doing enough outside of me to make up for the lack inside me.
The next phase of faith was built around utter hopelessness. There came a time when there wasn't desire to keep up the hard work of doing good outside of me, and my inside was complete turmoil. This is when A.A. became the most important part of my life. Faith was now built on turning all of my previous constructs over to God, and starting over - unlearning everything. It sort of looked like a blank slate, although it wasn't really blank. It was more like going backwards, but growing at the same time. It was like becoming a child again, and learning how to live simply.
The next phase was all about introspect. My faith became a way to learn who I was, and how to grow with new principles. Faith was a way to learn how to connect with God in the simplest ways possible, and to love myself. It was all introspect and no outer service to others.
The next phase was learning how to take all the introspect, and learn how to love others the way I was loving myself. This is where I am today.
Paul defines maturity as how well we get along with others. He doesn't say who it is we should be getting along with, so I'm assuming he means everybody - sisters, friends, coworkers, pastors, playas, brothers, moms, dads, girlfriends, people who talk too much and people who don't talk at all. Maturity is the self-awareness to be able to enter any situation with any person and ask, "How can I help?"
Maturity is being at peace with myself, and at the same time being at peace with others. My faith life has looked pretty extreme. I'm either at peace with myself, or at peace with others. For the two to come together and complement each other, there has got to be pain, struggle, and time. But, it's possible and I want it.
Sometimes it's easy to read about faith and see it as a snapshot. However, we all go through our own phases of faith building. We don't just arrive without the complex history of struggle, doubt, unbelief, and restlessness. I believe that's why Paul says in the beginning of the passage: "Those of us who have a strong and able faith should be stepping in to and lending a helping hand to those who are faltering." None of us are completely mature, and maturity does not mean having a bunch of head knowledge. Maturity is simply the gauge that shows how well we get along with others.
If we are not getting along with others (my group), then we are young in maturity. If we are getting along with others, then we're a little further down the line in maturity. When Paul says others, he means the people who disagree with us, belittle us, and talk crap about us behind our backs. If we are able to get along with our wives, girlfriends, and families, but aren't able to get along with the people we disagree with, then we are young in maturity. Or, the other way around. If we're able to get along with the people who treat us like crap, talk down to us, and don't ever listen to us, but not able to get along with our family members, we are young in maturity.
What Paul is saying in this passage is this: If we have learned how to get along with our family members and our enemies and church groups and the people who gossip about us, then we are responsible for stepping in to lend a hand to those who haven't learned how yet. And, that's what Jesus did. We don't need any more preachers, group therapists, and pontificators. We need more rabbis. We need more peacemakers who are willing to show the rest of us how to make peace with ourselves and others.
Paul says that when we learn to get along with everyone around us, how to ask ourselves how we can help whoever we're around, something beautiful happens. He says, "Then we'll be a choir - not our voices only, but our very lives singing in harmony in a stunning anthem to the God and Father of our Master Jesus!" That's what it looks like when we get along.
Today's Action: Before every event or interaction today, ask ourselves "How can I help?"
No comments:
Post a Comment