Earlier today I was reading and came to one of those points where conviction just sort of runs through my whole body and for a split second I realize how apathetic I've become. I'm not sure if these sorts of self-defining revelations are unique to me or they occasionally hit everyone, but I'm always so thankful when they come.
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I have a habit of needing to write things down when I'm experiencing them or when the thought process is fresh in mind. Sometimes I have a really cool train of thought but when I go back and try to remember all I have left are the first and last cars of the train, and I've lost everything in between. I was desperate to write down the source of these feelings, and this is what i was able to jot down:
"It breaks my own heart to realize the lack of love I show others in my life. The priorities I create in my mind coerce me into living in ways that don't reflect the person I want to be. My own ambitions ruin my life."
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Sometimes the irony of my life is just too much to take in. I'm here at a Christian institution, revising myself and my desires on a daily basis to come to terms with who I feel Christ wants me to be. I'm mulling around in my head constantly ideas of love and community and grace.
Then I step back, and look at who I really am; what I am, not in a comparative sense, but in contrast to who I am really supposed to be. I'm practically lost.
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That's not actually true. I know where I am, I know I'm supposed to be where I am, and I know that I'm going through a self-proclaimed "refining fire" at this stage of my life. But there are moments when I see how far I've come and then there are moments when I see how far I have to go. Today I had a moment where I saw both.
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What is so amazing to me is that in my life situation here at school you would think that the practice of genuine Christianity would be substantial. And I honestly think it is. It's incredible here. But at the same time I'm shocked to realize the lack of love that exists within the community sometimes.
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I think that what can happen is that when you have a group of people who are very close to you and whom you see all the time, we naturally begin to take that relationship for granted.
Some family relationships are the perfect example of that.
People who have been dating a long time take liberties with their boy/girlfriend's feelings. Spouses become indifferent to the preference of their partner. Close friends share a biting sense of humor and act nonchalant about their entire friendship.
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I'm not going to lie, when it comes to my friends I value the casual feel that we can have with each other. It helps keep things calm and safe. But there comes a point where the feelings of casualness don't hold on anymore. There is an aspect of community and grace with others that really shows us something about God, and the best ways that I have ever felt those things as genuine, really present between me and God, were when I experienced them through a relationship with another person. (And I'm not referring to a "relationship," it could be that but it definitely doesn't have to be.)
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I feel the love of God for me through other people. I feel the grace of God through other people. We feel the compassion, the forgiveness, the community, the wealth, the desire, the will, the kindness, the gentleness, the warmth, the adoration of God through other people. And when I feel farthest from God is when the relationships I have with people who matter the most are farthest from where they should/could be.
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We are the hands, the feet of Christ. We are the body of Jesus and we need to do on this earth what he did while he was here; hold each other, care for each other, cry with each other, love each other.
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In Shane Claiborne's book Irresistible Revolution, he talks about his experience in Calcutta for a summer working with Mother Teresa and serving the poorest of the poor. He talks about he would set up a small medical station to clean small wounds and bandage people who needed new dressing on their injuries. He said that some of the small children would intentionally fall to scratch themselves or scuff their knees just so they could come to the clinic and see the Christians and feel their love by being touched and held as they were healed.
How often do we do that? How often do people feel our love like those kids were able to? Those kids needed to be embraced and cared about, that was all they wanted. They didn't need a self-help lesson or a place to go and complain about life's difficulties or anything like that. All they wanted was to receive love, love like the love of Jesus.
And it just smacks me in the face when I look at myself and the people around me; we are Christians and I find it hard to see any sort of deep passion about people or conviction about caring for one another. Me and my friends! These kids are my friends, kids who I have theological discussions with and kids who I go to chapel with twice a week and kids who I live with everyday. And I have to squint to see Jesus' love shine through our actions. We walk this path of a "Christian College Student" and it's like I don't even see that mean anything in the way we treat one another, let alone other people.
What has happened to the basic love that we are supposed to show each other, the love Jesus showed every single person he ever came in contact with? It has all been replaced with sarcasm and swearing and apathy and frustration and restlessness and jokes and work and boredom and indifference. We don't want to get our hands dirty anymore, we just want everything to be casual. Just like our friendships.
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I don't know what to say really, I guess it is just that sometimes I look around at people who I know truly love God and are Christians and I struggle to see genuine consistency. I see so much more hypocrisy than genuine Christianity. I'm not turning to legalism or anything like that, it's just like, doesn't personal conviction exist anymore? Doesn't struggling with issues and feeling convicted about what Christ really wants to get out of us as a individuals show we are people pursuing what Jesus wants us? I don't know how many people I can say I honestly feel like that is the case with. All I know is that I am trying.
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God said that the world would know we are Christians by our love. If we don't notice our love in eachother how is the world ever going to notice it in us? I dont want to be indifferent anymore. I want to love people the way Jesus did. I want to love you the way God does. If I do anything less, then how will you see Jesus shine through me? Jesus loves you, and you should be able to feel that love through knowing me, but I doubt you do. We'd rather just keep it casual.
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I have far to go. Very far.
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