Entertaining the Heart

Watched the movie Amazing Grace tonight with my ever so lovely wife.  Had a new admiration for her beauty and the intimacy of which our hearts are being intertwined.  I love her.  I am committed to loving her.  It is amazing to me, given how I have been taught to think, that my joy in her has increased.  Our hearts have grown more alike.  The more I know of her the more I love her.  Truly, deeply.

 

We took the night off to go see a movie.  She chose it awhile ago, and initially we thought we’d even have the theater to ourselves, though our only company proved quiet.  The movie was about William Wilberforce and his quest to end the slave trade in Great Britain, but to us it had greater implications for justice and manhood.  Towards the end of the film one of Wilberforce’s occasional friends compared his version of success to that of Napoleon’s.   While Napoleon returned home to pomp and celebration, he slept on a bed of injustice and death. On the other hand Wilberforce met with great opposition and derision for most of his life but in victory and even in defeat he knew the great justice of his cause.

 

The Kingdom of God is a necessary component of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  Without the Kingdom, the gospel is moot.  Jesus is justice and we ignore that.  Jesus is reconciliation for the races, Jesus is redistribution for the poor, most importantly Jesus is the path to reconciliation between God and man.  If we take justice away from the gospel, if the gospel restores us not to the kingdom of God but to a kingdom of ourselves in prideful separation from the sufferings of others are we truly restored to anything worth praise?   Social justice cannot stand apart from the gospel.  It has no hope.  True Justice is found in none other than the God who fully satisfied it in His Son Jesus Christ.  Justice was satisfied on Calvary and should permeate our lives to the degree that they are washed new.

I want my heart to be transformed by the loves that God has.  No longer am I satisfied to understand the truth.  I need to desire it, and with such force that it continues to motivate me to seek the things which God seeks.  My pleasure should be His pleasures.  I should seek to see my heart transformed by His pleasures and desires and hurts rather than seek to please the self-indulgence of my tainted heart.

Who knew a night out to the movies would mean so much.  God is indeed faithful to answer prayer.  Lord please transform my heart to be more like yours.

easter

the holiday ended up like most of our holidays since being married. sort of a whirlwind of relatives, friends and food. such large portions of all three can be overwhelming, especially for homebodies like me. we enjoyed many pieces, loved seeing five brothers and sisters baptized, loved the time with our church family, loved seeing each side of the family.  we reflected on how challenging it is to maintain relationships with people we see so infrequently. we definitely did not get to reflect as much as we’d have liked on what we were celebrating. tomorrow?

we like each other

Affectations

I am slowly being convinced of a new paradigm on affectations. 

How pure are our minds is the question.  No longer do I think that it is possible to hold a unbiased debate or to look honestly at a question where one stands to gain or lose and decide based on the evidence.  I believe that we are slaves to the decision our heart (or as the greeks would say our affectation) values more.   Psychologists would call this cognitive dissonance. 

If we hold to the notion that there is no God, or if we have created a god for ourselves that we are comfortable with, debate is a fairly useless tool to convince us otherwise, even if the evidence points in the contrary of our opinion.  This is so because our hearts have become comfortable with the notion that God is not or that God will not hold us accountable and we are free to live as we please with no consequences to our lives.

 But this is not so.  It is appointed for every man to die and then face judgement.  And the just God will judge justly.   Justice is inherent in the question of God’s love.  None shall escape justice.  Another problem here is that we view our lives to be good.  We are tainted in our understanding by the desire of our hearts again.  We seek to be justified when in fact if we were able to look neutrally we would know our condemnation is just. It is as if we seek justice for our enemies but mercy for ourselves and those with whom we align. 

But God does not show favoritism.  He will judge all according to how they have kept His law.  And all are guilty.  Including me and mine.  We are guilty.  We have lied, we have stolen, we have lusted in our hearts, we have blasphemed God’s name, we have dishonored our parents, most of all we have dishonored God in our hearts and with our lips.  And the penalty is and has always been to be seperate from His goodness for all eternity.  We shall dwell apart from God, in whom is every good thing, for He is just and we have broken God’s commands which we have known.  We are without excuse before God.  As Albert Camus puts it we have the Plague and are powerless to stop it, it will take us.

But the goodness of the gospel of God is that He has paid the price for our sin, that if we are born again (which means that we must die first to this life) to Christ then we will be saved.  God desires for us to take His sacrifice for us and to live in community with Him and His church.  We leave the kingdom of the world and participate in the comming of the kingdom of heaven.  Then He will give us a new heart that will desire His will and will be spared from judgement on the day of justice for our debt has already been paid.

May I reiterate that the point of the gospel of God is not to seek to please God by being good enough.  God is not fooled by our attempts nor does He need our sacfrices, the point of the gospel is to accept His payment of our debt and to give up living the way we have been and live His way.