Transformation 7

When I am thinking through things, I am sure I am wrong about some. If I knew which parts I was wrong, I would stop it. One of the ways I have come to know that I may be on to something is when others are also talking about it. If something is true, it must be discoverable by others. There was a discussion about change on the Jesus Creed blog today. That blog can get theological, but if you can wade through it and the comments, there is some good stuff there.




I have been blogging through the idea of significant life changes or transformation. Change seems to be a desired thing for Christians; at least we sing and talk about it a lot. Jesus directly taught that if we follow him, some amazing change would happen (something about rivers of living water flowing from our innermost being).

How does this change take place? Do we do it on our own or does God do it all? Beware if dichotomies. I love this CS Lewis quote:

"He [The Devil] always sends errors into the world in pairs- pairs of opposites . . . He relies on your extra dislike of the one error to draw you gradually into the opposite one. But do not let us be fooled. We have to keep our eyes on the goal and go straight through between both errors. We have no other concern than that with either of them."

Sounds an awful lot like our ridge path metaphor. Let’s not do it on our own. Let’s not passively wait for grace to rain down. Let’s try and stay on the path.

My position on change is that it is hard. We often sing about power and grace “raining down” on us on Sunday mornings. My observation is that this is more of a longing that it is a reality. In my 30 years of hanging out in churches, that kind of spontaneous, passive change doesn’t happen. I can’t say that it has never happened this way. God can do whatever God wants; however, it appears he very rarely wants to.

We need to stop expecting this kind of spontaneous, passive change. We probably should stop singing about it on Sunday mornings. That’s like singing about crossing the finish line of a marathon race or climbing a mountain without doing any training, or sitting in the back of a van smoking dope and talking about leaving home with no intention of doing so.  It makes us like Beer Man.

A changed life seems to require a mystical balance between grace and intentional, well-directed effort. Connection with the divine, faith, brokenness, and humility and a well thought out training plan seem to be both necessary for significant change. That seems to be how God wants it to be most of the time (allowing for the very rare exception).

The sad fact is that few people ever run a marathon. A running partner might help; better yet, a running group.