Fuzzy Thinking

I'm discovering that it is possible to fail, yet succeed. Sometimes we try so hard to succeed at things that, in the end, just don't matter that much. The danger is that we succeed in those things, yet fail at the things that really matter. I'm discovering that it is possible to lose, yet win. That in order to save yourself, you must lose yourself, abandon yourself to the Mystery that is God.

I'm grateful for these lessons. I pray they are lessons that last and make a difference in how I plan my day and what I make my focus. After all, there is a chance that in success, I discover failure. Lord, give me the grace and the eyes to see the difference.

Reading through Wesley's sermon "Justification by Faith" and ran across this nice quote where Wesley addresses "good works" before one is justified:

5. If it be objected, “Nay, but a man, before he is justified, may feed the hungry, or clothe the naked; and these are good works;” the answer is easy: He may do these, even before he is justified; and these are, in one sense, “good works;” they are “good and profitable to men.” But it does not follow, that they are, strictly speaking, good in themselves, or good in the sight of God. All truly “good works” (to use the words of our Church) “follow after justification;” and they are therefore good and “acceptable to God in Christ,” because they “spring out of a true and living faith.” By a parity of reason, all “works done before justification are not good,” in the Christian sense, “forasmuch as they spring not of faith in Jesus Christ;” (though from some kind of faith in God they may spring;) “yea, rather, for that they are not done as God hath willed and commanded them to be done, we doubt not” (how strange soever it may appear to some) “but they have the nature of sin.”

6. Perhaps those who doubt of this have not duly considered the weighty reason which is here assigned, why no works done before justification can be truly and properly good. The argument plainly runs thus: —
No works are good, which are not done as God hath willed and commanded them to be done.
But no works done before justification are done as God hath willed and commanded them to be done:

Therefore, no works done before justification are good.

Yet, on the authority of God’s Word, and our own Church, I must repeat the question, “Hast thou received the Holy Ghost?” If thou hast not, thou art not yet a Christian. (From Sermon 3: Awake Thou Sleeper)

As I read through John Wesley's sermons I am amazed at how often he defined a Christian as one who has received the Holy Spirit. He was not ashamed of his view and this view would get him in hot water from time to time.

In some of his sermons he went as far as to say that even though you might act like a Christian, look like a Christian, or even smell like a Christian, if you had not received the Holy Spirit then you were not.

He didn't care if you had been attending a church your whole life, or if you fed the hungry and clothed the naked, or even if you were clergy. He even said that he was an "almost Christian" for years.

How many of us and our memebers would Wesley consider 'Almost Christians'? As I reflect on Wesley's definition, it causes me to wonder if perhaps the greatest need for the Methodist church today is for us to preach conversion to the church members (including the clergy).

Wesley's fear wasn't that Methodism would cease to exist, but that it would have the form of religion and lack the power. Our fear of Methodism is that we cease to exist. Perhaps it is time for us to concentrate more on the power of religion (the Holy Spirit empowering the life of love), rather than the form.

Many people of good will strive wholeheartedly for peace, mutual understanding, human encounter, world unity, and living harmony. Yet human vulnerability in face of the divisiveness that followed the Fall can never be totally overcome by excellent intentions, marvelous slogans, peace marches and conferences, disarmaments, sensitivity training courses and group dynamics alone. All of these efforts can be helpful. They can provide some relief, but not a cure; they should be put into practice insofar as possible, but they will never be sufficient in themselves to overcome our basic disunity. - Adrian Van Kaam, The Tender Farewell of Jesus pg. 124.

The above quote reminds me that good intention, while good, are not enough. It has taken me a long time to realize this and in some ways, I'm still coming to that realization. At times I live like I believe that good intentions offered up in Christ's name will provide the cure. Van Kaam reminds me that while it is important to practice these intentions, in the end, they will not be enough to offer the cure. They may provide some relief (which is important), but the cure will remain elusive.

A reality that we must grapple with is that we can do nothing and are nothing without God. Sure our pride will beg to differ, but when all has been done, we will realize that our efforts will always come up short to provide the cure that is really needed. God, through Jesus, is the one who provides the cure. Our role is to allow God's will to be done in our lives no matter how daily, boring, mundane those acts might seem.

Henri Nouwen writes,

The great illusion of leadership is to think that man can be led out of the desert by someone who has never been there. Our lives are filled with examples which tell us that leadership asks for understanding and that understanding requires sharing. So long as we define leadership in terms of preventing or establishing precedents, or in terms of being responsible for some kind of abstract "general good," we have forgotten that no God can save us except a suffering God, and that no man can lead his people except the man who is crushed by his sins. Personal concern means making Mr. Harrison the only one who counts, the one for whom I am willing to forget my many other obligations, my scheduled appointments and long-prepared meetings, not because they are not important but because they lose their urgency in the face of Mr. Harrison's agony. Personal concern makes it possible to experience that going after the "lost sheep" is really a service to those who were left alone.

Many will put their trust in him who went all the way, out of concern for just one of them. The remark "He really cares for us" is often illustrated by stories which show that forgetting the many for the one is a sign of true leadership.

I've been discovering the reality of this the past year or so. It has caused me to wonder if by defining leadership by our projects and programs we have in reality moved away from the kind of leadership Jesus displayed. As my schedule gets filled, I find it more difficult to care for the 'lost ones.' As my time gets busy I find my view of the "greatest good" defined by the "numbers served." Yet, the One I've been called to follow defined himself as one who was willing to leave the 'numbers' and search for the "one lost." My my life be reflective of His.

I was reading Looking for Jesus by Adrian van Kaam and stumbled upon this wonderful passage:

Clearly, there is no greater thing we can do than to be faithful to the work of God in the most simple events of our daily life. we must do the common work of every day in an uncommon way-doing this work in loving union with Jesus. It may sometimes seem easier to do great things than to do small ones. The grandeur of an enterprise, the excitement of a splendid project, the interest of others carries us forward. Their admiration sustains us in such moments more than Jesus' grace. We act, then, not because of him but because we feel successful, important, liked, needed. We become spellbound by praise, so much so that we no longer hear his voice in the depth of our hearts. Bewitched by the projects of people, we become estranged from the Father's work. Spoiled by success, we may become alienated from him. - pg 102.

Wow. I believe he nailed it. I find it is easy to get off track of following God's will because the pull of the 'grand plan' is so strong. Instead of being faithful to what God has called me to, I run off following my own dreams and visions. I'm not sure it is a problem just with me. How many of our plans are really of God?

Early in his ministry Jesus had to face these same temptations. Satan took him aside and started suggesting how he could make a grand statement by changing stone to bread, leaping off the temple, or even worshiping Satan himself! Perhaps Jesus knew that God calls us to be faithful, and at times that faithfulness is shown in the small matters and not necessarily in grand expressions.

Maybe it is time for me to put my dreams and my visions on hold and allow Jesus to live through me, even if that requires simple dreams and visions. As van Kaam writes, success can spoil our relationship with God and even alienate us from him.

Ben Witherington has posted an article explaining a bit about General Conference (which is meeting as I write this). He discusses some of the issues that will be addressed. Perhaps the most important issue is the proposal to create a central conference in the US. This proposal says that US concerns would be addressed in the US central conference. Is this important? yes. Why? Actually there are several reasons. Ben Witherington discusses, in my opinion, the most important one noting that the central conferences currently provide a balancing to the American church. He writes:

For another thing, they provide something of a theological and ethical balance to the American church which is too subject to the major cultural shifts in North America, often at the expense of the Gospel and the Bible's teachings. We not only need the two-thirds worlds voices at General Conference, we need their wisdom and votes as well. In an age when our church, and indeed most major denominations, are becoming more culturally inclusive and global in character, it sends the wrong signal entirely to not allow the Central Conferences to continue to participate fully and vote quadrennially with the rest of our church.

If this goes through, I believe the face of American Methodism will drastically change. Many of the 'hot issues' of the American church are seen as unbiblical overseas. Without the overseas conferences, it is difficult knowing what will happen here in the U. S. The proposal discusses that "U. S. Concerns" will be dealt with in the U. S. central conference. I've always believed scripture and Christianity are globally focused. It seems to me that by moving in this direction we could allow our expression of Christianity to be more culturally defined than what it already is.

I've decided to switch my site over to Drupal from Wordpress. I had several reasons. I'll see how this goes. Right now I have this linked to both http://fuzzythinking.davidmullens.com and http://www.davidmullens.com. Hopefully I will be able to add other types of content.

The man walked away depressed. Jesus had just told him that to gain eternal life he would have to give up all that he had and sell everything. Since he was rich, the news wasn't all that good.

As the man walked away, Jesus told those standing around how difficult it was for the rich to enter the kingdom of God. As shock was being expressed by those who were realizing what Jesus was saying, he comforted them by acknowledging that with God all things were possible.

Peter spoke up and said "We have left everything for you." When I read these passages I usually miss this statement from Peter. For Peter, the gospel meant leaving everything. Jesus responded, "no one who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children, for the sake of the kingdom of God, who will not get back very much more in this age, and in the age to come eternal life." (Luke 18:28-30). Could it be that Peter had left house, wife, and all for the sake of the gospel? I believe that he did.

I don't know about you, but there are times when Mr. Bitterness (as a friend of mine calls 'him') shows up. I don't think that Peter was bitter in this passage, but I know I am when I say the same things to Jesus. There are times when what I've sacrificed for the gospel become very real and very painful. Then if things don't go my way it is easy to say, "Look what I've given up...."

Living in America it is easy to see what others have and begin to envy their lifestyle, what they have, where they go on vacation, knowing that you could do the same thing, if you weren't doing what you were doing for the gospel. At the same time, there are others, many others, who have given up much more than I have. They have sacrificed their families, their health and their very lives. As you read this there are those who are not sitting behind a desk looking at a monitor or laptop screen. They are bruised, broken and in jail. They have given all to follow Jesus.

There is a bitterness to the gospel. While it is definitely Good News, it also calls for sacrifice. Jesus assures us, however, that whatever we give up, it will be worth it. One day we will be so glad that we made the sacrifice, that we sent Mr. Bitterness on his way to someone else's house, and continued to give all that we could for the sake of the Gospel. Until then, we rest in knowing we are doing all that we do for Him.

"...did Jesus support the law or undermine it? What was at stake was his implicit, and sometimes explicit, claim: that in and through his own work Israel's god was doing a new thing, or rather the new thing, that for which Israel had longed. And when that happened everything would be different. Torah could regulate certain aspects of human behaviour, but ti could not touch the heart. That did not constitute a criticism of Torah; Torah operates in its own sphere. But when the promises of scripture were fulfilled, then the heart itself would be changed, and the supreme position of Torah would in consequence be relativized. What was at stake was eschatology, in the sense already argued, not a comparison between two styles or patterns of religion." - N. T. Wright Jesus and the Victory of God (380).

I found this section from Wright insightful. As I read it, I immediately thought of John Wesley's heart warming experience. For years before this experience, Wesley had operated as a Christian. He did the right things, didn't do the wrong things and tried hard to be holy. Yet, what he found was that he failed.

After May 24, 1738, Wesley found that he still struggled, but his heart had been changed. Instead of always being victim, he was victor! This is what happens when God grants us the gift of His grace. It isn't about what we can do, it is about what God does within us. This led Wesley to teach that, for the Christian, sin no longer dominates. Instead the Holy Spirit empowers the believer so they can have victory over sins that at one time would imprison them.

As Wright explains, the Torah (Law) has its place, but when scripture is fulfilled (and it has been through Jesus), the consequence is that it is relativized. Now the transformed heart fulfills the role of the law. We fulfill the law not because we beat ourselves into submission by obedience, but because we live out the gift that God has given us; the power of true inner transformation.