Jesus said, “You have now seen him; in fact, he is the one speaking with you.”  – John 9:37

This blog is about discerning God’s presence. He is here in everyday life, revealing himself to people. Even those who might not recognize it. God is making all things new, and everything in our daily routine – even its mundanity and sameness – is divinely preparatory to experiencing the truly real.  

I’m intent on knowing Jesus Christ as the destination of my inner longing. It began with a crisis of confidence in the terse doctrinal system drilled into my adolescent brain; namely that the world mostly contains people for whom there is no redemptive possibility. It preached that the only true belief was that an unalterable divine decree precluded the majority of humanity to have any opportunity whatsoever of living eternally with Him. Since Adam and Eve, men and women remain accursed and utterly without God, because pervasive sin makes people so filthy that they are repulsive to God.  We humans, have been stripped of our divine likeness. Irrespective of Christ’s mission to “preach deliverance to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind”, some, so they said, are unsaveable.  Hence, there is no point in bothering to share God’s reconciling love in Jesus Christ with the already-damned. God, according to the founding father of this particular movement, “determined with himself whatever he wished to happen with regard to every man. All are not created on equal terms”.  

Nothing could be more cruelly bereft of God’s mercy and love. Like many Christians, we sought good grades on the Great Commission. But we flunked the commandment to love people in a way that makes them feel loved. It is reminiscent of the Pharisee who prayer-boasted: “God, thank you that I am not like other people”.  Recalling those days, if they were not numbered among “the Remnant” (just us select few), they were unworthy of compassion, God’s or ours.  That is historical Christianity gone wrong. Such dehumanization isn’t the Jesus who ignored artificial religious boundaries that forbade contact with lepers and detested non-Jews. And he healed the untouchables, like a Roman centurion’s servant, or a Gentile woman’s daughter. Still more serious, he “unlawfully” healed on the strictly-observed Sabbath day of rest. Even the dogs were to be fed from leftovers from his table. A God bereft of compassion is not worthy of my worship. He formed man from the dust of the ground, not from a pile of shit.

The late Rachel Held Evans mused, “I would hate to think that God creates disposable people”.  She believed in God’s promise to love each and every human being that has ever or will ever live, instead of what’s termed “limited atonement”. As Ms. Evans called it, unbelieving people who have real lives and real names were seen merely as “pond scum” in God’s eyes.  God only loves the precious few who win the Divine Lottery. Others – before they ever commit a single sin – are not afforded even a chance to be saved and are divinely auto-deleted. As one Calvinist professor explained, “Everything God does to or for the reprobate in this life is deliberately designed to prepare him or her for eternal damnation”.  It reminds me of a quote, perversely twisting the message of Jesus. It was uttered by a distinguished dean of theology about those who are not Christians just like him:

The other peoples of the world – Muslims, Buddhists, and those of other faiths, as well as those Christians not born again – do not concern Him.

And yet those people – over your backyard fence and all over the world – are searching for love. They’re rooting around for ultimate meaning. They are literally dying to see God as friend and lover. You know many like that, feeling devoid of any divine experience.

There are those who have learned to sing “hymns to an unknown God”; seekers who may never feel the spiritual need to get up on Sunday and attend a church. Some are church exiters, saying “I’M DONE” with oxygen-starved theology – especially with polarizing politics commingled with the Gospel. Others are nursing wounds after having been pushed under a busload of sanctimony. These may have given up not only on the institutional church, but also are resentful towards God, and will never again bow the knee. And that doesn’t even begin to cover the self-directed spiritual seekers, who have never knocked on a church door as the only hope for a lost world. God loves them, as well.

At the end of the day, Jesus did not come to construct systems competing for First Prize in the most correct theology. God will always know more than we do. Neither did he come not to organize a mega business/church that offers the best life – but only on our terms. Religion tends towards becoming sediments layered to reach God instead of a divinely-initiated encounter, exposing our hearts and souls to the mystery of being touched by him. Action-oriented “doings” primarily about what we do for Jesus, not about what He has done for us. This is Christless Christianity, as Michael Horton explains in his book of the same name, “our practices reveal that we are focused on ourselves and our activity more than on God and his saving work among us”. 

Good. I got that all out of my system. This blog, on the other hand, reflects my desire that all mankind let go of self and be enveloped by Christ’s grace, discovering the means by which we meet God.  I mean to say God really doesn’t hate you like others say. I’m grateful to have escaped the black hole of a retributive God to find a fresh vision of divine love. I invite all God-curious men and women into the true universe filled with the freely giving of the divine Self, which we call grace. Not only does God act in love, he awaits our love in return. Our proper response is the mystical experience known as faith, a heavenly wisdom superimposed over empirical knowledge, and extending well beyond. “Leave your country, your family, and your father’s house, for the new land that I will show you”, God told Abram and Sarah, saying “I will surely bless you”.  We all find ourselves needy and find it difficult to be truly at home with ourselves and at peace in the universe. God invites us to go beyond our own comfort zone and undertake a life pilgrimage to something infinitely better. God will move you quietly forward in grace as the time is right. It’s okay if you’re not yet ready to take that step in your emerging journey towards faith. Jesus said he didn’t come for the healthy, but for those who need a doctor.  The Physician is ready to see you now, but He also has a capacious Waiting Room.