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While binge watching a TV series called Numbers, I was enjoying the sibling rivalry of the two brothers that are the main characters. One is a mathematics professor and the other is a kind of swashbuckling FBI agent. As the swashbuckler enters the professor’s office, a paper airplane falls at his feet. He picks it up and says “Wings are a little thin here buddy.”
The Mathematics Professor fires back with: “Forgive me if all my years of applied mathematics take issue with that assessment.” To that, the swashbuckler replies: “Well, you’ll forgive me if all my years of high school detention say I’m right.”
Some, especially law enforcement officers, would likely say a big part of their education was quite literally through the School of Hard Knocks. Those actually, or just perceived as being, on the wrong side of the law would likely attribute their education to the same school.Billy Holliday paid a big price for singing about Strange Fruit and of course we all know Jesus was also in the “perceived as” category by those who wanted to squelch his message about Spiritual Fruit.
Our Sovereign Lord came to earth to personally experience the joys as well as the injustices that are a part of the human experience. In his Gospel narrative, John quotes Jesus as saying: “My prayer is not that you take them out of the world, but that you protect them from the evil one.” Jesus held that the personal experience of faith is one in which challenges are a central feature.
For us, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are practical strivings. Potential evil serves to highlight the good by contrast. Grappling with hardships, reacting to disappointments, facing situations of social inequality, coping with our insecurities, knowing less than we can believe, sorting and sifting through error and falsehood, are all recurring and stimulating challenges to the person of faith.
The irrepressible reach for better things is a powerful witness. You’ve probably seen the popular bumpersticker that reads “It’s All Good.” While, in light of the foregoing list of stimulative challenges, this may be to some extent true. It certainly doesn’t apply to unwise choices, Paul said it best in his epistle to the Romans when he wrote: “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to his purpose.”
We are seemingly immersed in a dysfunctional world, where prevaricating politicians want us to take a hard stance on either the left wing or the right wing. And yet, as any native American can tell you, the left wing and the right wing belong to the same bird. Overcoming the gravity of our current geopolitical situation will not happen with the paltry amount of lift that is produced at the wingtips. In other words, no bird can soar except by outstretched wings.
We are pummeled with messaging that prevents us from righting the ship, getting on an even keel, regaining our balance, and maintaining equilibrium. We were told through Proverbs that “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” The political operatives of our day have offered no inspiring vision for the planet as a whole. They have instead sought, often in the name of God, to advance their own clubs of self-righteous exclusivity. They have exhibited few of the statesman-like qualities that will move us forward in the knowledge that God divinely loves his people, all of them.
Jesus sent us a Spirit Helper, the Spirit of Truth. He said this Spirit would lead us into all truth. And yet, for this to occur, we must be responsive to Divine Leading. If we are, the Spirit can lead us far beyond the elemental and fundamental religions of our mortal existence into an experiential relationship with the God of all Creation, the First Source and Center, the Cause of Causes, the one and only Uncaused Cause, and the most intimate friendship we will ever know.
Every true teacher acknowledges that experience is the best teacher. When we experience the realization of the Divine Indwelling, our human experience becomes one of perpetual life enrichment, ever progressing reality, a closer walk with Thee, and a relationship with Him that transcends all human controversy. Paul also observed that “For in Him we live and move and have our being.” Indeed it is the experience with Him and in Him that qualifies us for eternal live. The experience acquired in this short lifetime will also serve us throughout all of Eternity.
We have choices before us that will insure our extinction or survival. Our planet will become either an orgy of darkness and death or a world of light and life. This is not a time to land somewhere between wishy and washy or to be proactively straddling the fence.
Jesus said: “This is my command, that you love one another as I have loved you.” The experience of loving is in direct response to the experience of being loved. It is not enough that the Spirit be poured out upon us; the Divine Spirit must dominate and control every phase of human experience.