How would it be possible if salvation were ready to our hand, and could without great labor be found, that it should be by almost all men neglected? But all things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.
-- Baruch Spinoza
Wow, its just seems like forever since I've had the time or been physically able to update this blog. Health issues, family and marital issues have weighed heavily upon me of late and I am thankful to still be alive and in the ring, still fighting and not down yet. One of my of my all time favorite Christian contemporary groups was a group lead by Bryan Duncan many years before his mega successful solo career: Sweet Comfort. They broke up back in the mid eighties and it was the end of an era to me.
Anyways, they had a song entitled "Contender." Its all about this fight going on between two matched and formidable foes. One has the resolve to say, I'm not quitting, I not giving up...." If you've never heard it, try YouTube and see if its available. Its well worth the listen. That's where I've been and while I must say that its not the most pleasant place to be, it is where you find what your made of, who you love, how strong you are or how weak....
With all this said, it make Spinoza's quote all the more applicable. Obviously, Spinoza was not a Christian in any traditional sense. He was an excommunicated Jew who said he found it difficult to teach philosophy without disturbing organized religion. So, suffice it to say that his idea of salvation was not the typical evangelical one employed by most today. But, regardless, his statement speaks to me, even if in a different way than he would of chosen.
I am reminded of the kingdom parables that Jesus shared along the Galilee countryside: the kingdom of heaven is like a woman who had ten coins and lost one (lk 15). She swept her whole house all night to find one lost coin, and finding it she rejoiced as much or even more for the one she recovered than the nine she had in her pocket. I wonder if that wasn't was Spinoza was meaning when he likened salvation to that which is excellent and rare? I also wonder how many things we allow to just fall into the cracks of our lives, like the lady's coin? How easy would it of been for her to simply say, "I have nine others, what's one lost coin?" Yet, Christ likened the entire kingdom of heaven to that woman's search for that one lost coin.
At forty-0ne, I realize today that I have let too many coins slide into the cracks of life and lost pieces of myself along the way: passions, talents, things I didn't even know were gone. Losing a coin or two here or there may not add up, but eventually, it can become your very soul that's at stake. Just as this woman stayed up all night searching for that coin as if it were her only one, there comes a time when you realize that you've lost too much of yourself... life, drugs, addictions, cynicism.... so many things went wrong that I never intended to go wrong.
Oh, don't get me wrong; I would rather offer to Him a coin left in my pocket. I mean, a coin is a coin, right? But, all I have left is rubbish and refuse from a life ill spent. How am I to take something that I didn't loose to bartar for His eternal love and forgiveness? So, I, like the woman with the lost coin have been sweeping and searching trying so desperately to find that one thing that will make me acceptable to dad.... to my God. Divinity? Resurrection? Infallibility? I found them all but even in all those things, I still did not feel like I found the right coin.
Then, the beauty and agony of Spinoza's words kiss in a moment of complete and utter clarity: surrender. I finally realized that he doesn't care whether I understand the incarnation. Hell, the church has been wrangling over it for milineums. It took them four hundred yearsto come to some definitive statement which ultimately split the church. He doesn't care whether I believe that every word in the cover of the 21st century bible is genuine reliable history. He could care less what I think of atonement theory or gay marriage. What he does care about, though, is surrender. The toughest, rarest, and most lost coin in my whole collection. I could fake the others if I had too.... but, surrender?
Surrender hurts; it forces me to say what I hate to admit. That is, I don't know. I don't have the answers. All my reading, all my learning, all my theological pursuits, think-I-know's, none of them could help me in the moment that I came face to face with the one thing I did not want to do: bow. Sounds so easy, at the hand of every person, so readily available, but so difficult and rare that it makes its price so far above value one could never substitute anything for it.
Well, to make a long story short, I am finally on my knees. I told my wife last night that I was not entirely sure what that meant (and you thought you were so far gone! LOL) All I know, is He is right here with me... and, that's worth more than theories, books, theology, cynicism, or anything coin I can begin to substitute in my collection.... thank you, Jesus!
