For a couple people out there, that I know of, it's midnight no matter what the hour may be: it is a midnight of the soul. These people have set their hope on something, some goal, some love, some reconciliation, some coming-together. But looking from the outside, from the world's perspective, these people hope in something impossible: the goal cannot be achieved, the love is irretrievably lost, the parties cannot be reconciled, the things that must be brought together are like repelling magnets that can never be made to touch. In other words, these people are idiots.
To me, though, they are the noblest of idiots, who in their unshakably stupid refusal to realize when it's time to let go show that they know something more than the greatest philosophers and geniuses of our age. They know that some things are worth holding on to. They are the wisest, then, of all, for they know the true value of what we discard and give up as lost.
These noble, wisest idiots are not alone. They come from a long and proud line. All of mankind's greatest stories feature at least one of such person.
Further, there is a name for this brand of terrifically wise lunacy. It is called faith. "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen," says the Bible in Hebrews 11:1. Thereafter, it lists off the people who had this kind of faith, this hopless hope. There was Abel who hoped to please the God who made all things when all he had to offer was a lamb. There was Enoch who hoped to be in the presense of the God whose face no one can see and live without facing the death that comes to all mankind. There was Noah who prepared for a truly apocalyptic rainstorm on a world where rain had never before fallen. There was Abraham who wandered as a stranger in a land God had promised to give to him and his descendents, and never possessed any more (nor did his descendents, for several hundred years after him) of it than a small plot on which to bury his dead. There was his wife, Sarah: a woman who was barren even in her younger days and yet hoped for a son well past the onset of menopause. When she finally did have this son, Abraham, in obedience to the voice of God, prepared to kill his son in ritual sacrifice, hoping that somehow God would still provide heirs through the son he was about to slay. There was that same son, Isaac, as an old man with no lands or noteworthy possessions who hoped his two sons would inherit great kingdoms and blessed them accordingly. Then there was one of those sons, Jacob, who hoped the same of his offspring, even though they lived as strangers in a foreign land that would later enslave them. And one of his sons, not to be beaten, hoped to be buried in a land neither he nor several generations of his descendants would ever be able to visit, much less possess. Then there was another family, who gave birth to Moses and hoped to give their child a good life, though the government hunted him to kill him from the moment he was born. Then Moses himself hoped doubly for two impossible things: to have a life better than that of a prince of Egypt by forsaking the title and living as one among many slaves, and to find a way to free an oppressed people from the most powerful dictatorship of the time by wandering around in the desert tending goats. When he led these people, they all had such impossible hopes: they hoped that some unseen power would decimate the populace of the most advanced civilization of their time--and yet somehow spare them because of a little blood on their doorways--, and also hoped that they could cross an impassible body of water on foot in order to escape a pursuing army. Their leader Joshua hoped to demolish the walls of one of the most heavily fortified cities in ancient Palestine by parading silently around them for a week. One of the inhabitants of that same city, Rahab, hoped that somehow this plan would succeed and that she would somehow survive the ensuing ethnic clensing--and not get killed by her own people as a traitor in the meantime. There is a truly great crowd of people who have come before us and held on to hopeless hopes.
If we are Christians, we stand among them, for the Bible says that this hopeless hope is the very same faith that saves all who profess the name of Christ: "For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience" (Romans 8:24-25). Jesus Christ Himself had this hope. He hoped to save condemned sinners from their just punishment at the hands of an omnipotent Judge. He hoped to love and be loved forever by the enemies who hated and killed Him. I confess that I myself am one of these people: I hope to be reconciled with one who has disdained to speak to me, I hope for the love of a woman who literally has not spoken to me in a year, and I hope to see fulfilled promises made to both her and me through a situation that looks tailor-made for breaking both the promises and those of us foolish enough hold on to them--and these are the temporal things I hope for, the eternal things I hope for are so wild I dare not confess them here...but I hope for them.
The great thing about our God is that He is a God of those who step out or stand strong in faith--of all those who hold to hopeless hope in His name. He never leads them astray, He never lets them down, and He is proud of them. He rewards their hopeless hope with impossible solutions. He gave Abel His pleasure. He took up Enoch without death. He saved Noah and his family by the flood. He gave the land to Abraham and his descendants, and they possess it to this day. He gave Sarah a son, so that he might have descendants at all. He sent an angel to stay Abraham's knife at the last possible moment. He fulfilled the blessings Isaac gave Esau and Jacob, and made great nations of both of them. He fulfilled the blessings of Jacob to his sons by making them the twelve tribes of Israel. He saw to it that Joseph was buried in the Promised Land. He gave Moses a name and a reward greater than that of any prince of Egypt. He also gave him direction and purpose from a miraculous meeting in the trackless wilderness. He killed all the firstborn of Egypt, but spared every household that had kept the Passover. He parted the Red Sea, and drowned the army in it when they tried to follow. He brought down the walls of Jericho. He preserved Rahab and immortalized her in the genealogy of the kings of Israel, and of Christ Himself (Matthew 1:5). He made salvation available in Jesus Christ. He drew men and women from all races and all walks of life to give their hearts to Christ forever. He raised Christ from the dead and in the future shall conquer death itself forever. Our God is the hope of the hopeless, and I am proud to be one of His.
Monday, January 28, 2013
Sunday, January 20, 2013
The Codependent God
Two men showed up at my door the other day. They greeted me cheerfully and read a passage from one of the Psalms to me "as encouragement." It was encouraging, despite being read from an English translation that obviously butchered the poetry of the original Hebrew text. Then, they handed me a colorfully-printed pamphlet with the title: Does God Really Care About Us? I excused myself, and they left.
The men were "Jehovah's Witnesses" of course. It's not the first time they've come to my door. They belong to a cult group which uses its own "translation" of scripture (hence, the butchered poetry) and wholesale distortion and manipulation of text in order to establish their own weird doctrines: among them the idea that all government is of Satan, that Jesus was an angel, that the Holy Spirit is a force (not a person), that God's only proper name is Jehovah, and that only through hard work and devotion to their cult can one escape annihilation in the coming apocalypse...after which, you may work even harder and more devotedly for the cult with the hope of rebuilding the devastated Earth into a parklike paradise which (if you are a good little JW) you may some day get to enjoy. Here is a more complete listing of their beliefs, if you'd like to check up more on them. There's also an index page that has links to lots of useful articles.
The so-called "Jehovah's Witnesses" are nothing new to me. I was approached by a couple of them up at college. I felt led to try to witness to them, yet I was at first afraid of what might happen if I tried. Would I be sucked in by their false teaching? Did their colorful pamphlets, grotesquely mistranslated scriptures, and fifth-grade level reading material really conceal an airtight case against everything I believed? I needn't have worried. All the colorful pamphlets and fifth-grade level text conceal is faulty logic and painfully-obvious cherry-picking of verses and parts of verses that say only what the writer's want them to say. For example, they will frequently quote John 5:28-29 to prove their belief in physical resurrection for everyone, saying, "all those in the memorial tombs will hear his voice and come out". They will deliberately leave off the last part of the sentence: "those who did good things to a resurrection of life, those who practiced vile things to a resurrection of judgment." Jehovah's Witnesses never quote that part, because they don't believe in any punishment from God except complete, instant, painless non-existence--thus a "resurrection of judgment" is an oxymoron to them, especially when paired up with eternal life. Small wonder that the Watchtower Society (the name of the JW organization) teaches its members that they will fall into apostasy if they study the Bible without Watchtower "guidance" as to its meaning. On a personal level, their logic is so twisted that two of them were able to look at Matthew 10:28 ("do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.") and, with it staring them in the face in black-and-white, claim that the soul was a breath or life-force which could under no circumstances survive the killing of the body by anyone or anything...and that this was what the Bible really taught.
Needless to say, I got nowhere with them. But in excusing myself from these fellows, I had agreed to read their pamphlet. Since I had nothing else to do that day during my breaks, I did so. I was rewarded with the knowledge that their god had two very serious flaws. First of all, their god has no grasp of logic. His plan for the world for the past six thousand years boils down to a non sequitor fallacy. According to the pamphlet, when Adam and Eve rebelled against god in the Garden of Eden, they raised a question: "Could humans do better if not ruled by God?" In answer, god "has allowed man a free rein clear down to our day to show beyond any doubt whether human rule independent of him can succeed." The goal was to show that only direct rule by god could be successful and to that end he wanted "every conceivable type of government" tried out. He wanted to prove that A (human independence) leads to B (ruin). He then allowed Satan to come in and take total control over all human governments and enslave mankind. Ruin resulted: as the pamphlet says, "life today reflects the ugly rulership of 'the god of this world,' Satan." Then god patted himself on the back for proving his point, even though what he'd actually shown was that C (spiritual dictatorship under Satan) leads to B (ruin) instead. Since god is apparently incapable of recognizing the basic error of stating, "C leads to B, therefore A leads to B too," he will regard the matter as closed now and proceed with the apocalypse...at least, so the Watchtower Society wants us to think. The true God of the universe would never be duped into such a basic logical error, nor baited into proving His own right to sovereign rule: he doesn't need to prove anything to anyone.
The second thing I noticed about the Watchtower god was that he was totally obsessed with the happiness of humans. I mean totally. It was like there was no other purpose to his existence, let alone any other reason for his creation of the universe and everything in it. According to the pamphlet, god's "purpose was to establish an earthly paradise free from suffering". Everything was created for human enjoyment: flowers, food, forests, mountains, lakes, sunsets, and animals. Human design was also optimized for human happiness. As the pamphlet says, god gave us free will because: "he knew the way our minds and emotions would work, he knew that we would be happiest with free will." Of course, there are god's laws, but you see those aren't really limiting because the only reason god made those laws regulate free will "for the common good" like "traffic laws." Also, god made sure "that we were designed to be happiest when in subjection to God's laws." Yes, god has allowed horrific suffering and sorrow to befall mankind during his (completely illogical) six-millennia test, but he has a long-term plan which will "benefit all creatures" and in the paradise-like new world god "will compensate us for the suffering we may have endured in this world" by "showering down blessings that will far more than make up for any hurts that we receive in our past."
There is not one mention of god having a bit of self-interest. Apparently, he has none. Nor is there mention of a sense of justice: no, in fact "good" seems to have been redefined as "what makes man happy" and "evil" is merely "what makes man unhappy." The only driving force in this god's character is to make humankind happy: it is the chief end of all his plans, all his creations, all his commands, and everything he does. Since codependency is defined as being obsessively concerned with fulfilling the needs and desires of others, to the point of ignoring one's own needs and desires completely (or worse, not realizing you have any), this god is by definition codependent.
The appeal of the codependent god is easy to recognize. A god whose only concern is your own personal happiness is not so much a god as a cosmic vending machine: a genie with an infinite number of wishes. He would never really hurt you, even if you had it coming, because his sole reason for existence is to please you. He is not really, at bottom, a god that you worship, but a god who worships you. But in the end, the codependent god breaks down. The codependent god has no definition of evil and good except your own fickle desires, so he cannot guide you. Worse, the codependent god needs you to need him. If your own good turned out to be something other than him, he would do everything in his power to keep you from realizing this and keep you dependent upon him. But the worst of it is that the codependent god has no reason for existence apart from you. As humans, we instinctively look to God for deeper meaning in ourselves and the universe around us. We look to Him to answer the questions of why we exist, why we are the way we are, and why things happen to us as they do. The codependent god has no answers for these questions. His own existence and nature are factors contingent on us and whatever our happiness should require. He bounces the questions back to us, unanswered. Because the codependent god exists only for our benefit, it is up to us to decide why both we and he exist, why we (and he) are as we are, and why things happen as they do (for all things are ultimately a product of our own actions or of god's acting on behalf of our own desires).
The true God of the Bible is not codependent, though. He loves us, certainly. He is capable of great acts of self-sacrifice in that love, but He never loses sight of His own desires, purposes, and plans. Truly, "God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8), but Jesus endured the cross "for the joy set before Him." Even there, He had not lost sight of His own interests. He occasionally reminds us that He is ultimately acting in His own interests. "For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it," He says in Isaiah 48:11, speaking of His mercy on Israel. He further did not create the world for solely our enjoyment, but rather all things were created "for Him" (Colossians 1:16).
Since God loves us, His interests are bound up with ours, but they are not lost and absorbed. God still creates solely for His own pleasure. God still upholds moral absolutes of right or wrong (derived from His own character) and guides us in them, even when we think discarding morality would be more convenient. God does not look to us as a source of meaning, He is His own reason for existence: "I am that I am" (Exodus 3:14). Since all other things came into being by His creative power and He in His sovereignty does whatever He pleases, He gives implicit meaning to all Creation and all of history--whether we understand it or not, it pleased the Lord that it should be so. It pleased the Lord that we should be so. This, I think, is one of the most important points. God doesn't need us, not at all. If He had never created us or the world or anything His life would yet be complete.
At first, this may seem cruel and cold, to say that God has no need at all for us. But if you think about it, it's much better than the codependent god. The codependent god needs us to give himself a reason to exist, to fulfill himself. When the codependent god creates humanity and associates himself with it, there is no deeper meaning to it, nor does it give us any deeper meaning. It is not a choice, it is the working out of the codependent god's own nature. He can no more refuse to create humanity than the sun can refuse to shine. He has no more power to stop seeking humanity's happiness than water has the power to cease being wet. But the God of the Bible is not so compelled. He has no compulsion to create humanity, to love them, or to save them. These things are not necessary parts of His character and nature: they are choices. God didn't need to create us, but He chose to. God was not compelled to love us, but He decided to. God was not forced to save us, but He wanted to. This gives meaning. This allows God's love for us to be real. After all, a love that is given under compulsion is not really love at all. But God's love is given freely, as He is Himself free either to give or to withhold it. The codependent god can never give true love, for he is never truly free.
I feel sorry for the Jehovah's Witnesses. Like in a previous post, their god is a god they must carry. Their god is a god who is never personally involved or intimate (how can he be? There's nothing to him but a bottomless hunger to please humans). Their god is a god for whom they must do everything, bearing the burden not only for their own lives and happiness, but also for his. They must work to determine not only their own identity and worth, but also must realize that their work determines his own identity and worth (not that they miscommunicate who he is, but because he is so codependent that his worth and identity are dependent upon them--in other words, they make god by their own needs and desires, worth and identity...and better be sure not to make him wrong). But the God of the Bible does all things for Himself, and in His grace provides for us as well. He chooses to love us and to give us every good thing, including an identity and worth that are derived from His own immutable, perfect nature and identity. The Jehovah's Witnesses will no doubt claim that they know a lot about God. Their distortion of John 17:3 reads, "This means everlasting life, their taking in knowledge of you, the only true God, and of the one whom you sent forth, Jesus Christ", while in truth the scriptures say that everlasting life is to know God, not know about Him. I wish they knew the true God, Who could lift the burden of the codependent god from their shoulders.
The men were "Jehovah's Witnesses" of course. It's not the first time they've come to my door. They belong to a cult group which uses its own "translation" of scripture (hence, the butchered poetry) and wholesale distortion and manipulation of text in order to establish their own weird doctrines: among them the idea that all government is of Satan, that Jesus was an angel, that the Holy Spirit is a force (not a person), that God's only proper name is Jehovah, and that only through hard work and devotion to their cult can one escape annihilation in the coming apocalypse...after which, you may work even harder and more devotedly for the cult with the hope of rebuilding the devastated Earth into a parklike paradise which (if you are a good little JW) you may some day get to enjoy. Here is a more complete listing of their beliefs, if you'd like to check up more on them. There's also an index page that has links to lots of useful articles.
The so-called "Jehovah's Witnesses" are nothing new to me. I was approached by a couple of them up at college. I felt led to try to witness to them, yet I was at first afraid of what might happen if I tried. Would I be sucked in by their false teaching? Did their colorful pamphlets, grotesquely mistranslated scriptures, and fifth-grade level reading material really conceal an airtight case against everything I believed? I needn't have worried. All the colorful pamphlets and fifth-grade level text conceal is faulty logic and painfully-obvious cherry-picking of verses and parts of verses that say only what the writer's want them to say. For example, they will frequently quote John 5:28-29 to prove their belief in physical resurrection for everyone, saying, "all those in the memorial tombs will hear his voice and come out". They will deliberately leave off the last part of the sentence: "those who did good things to a resurrection of life, those who practiced vile things to a resurrection of judgment." Jehovah's Witnesses never quote that part, because they don't believe in any punishment from God except complete, instant, painless non-existence--thus a "resurrection of judgment" is an oxymoron to them, especially when paired up with eternal life. Small wonder that the Watchtower Society (the name of the JW organization) teaches its members that they will fall into apostasy if they study the Bible without Watchtower "guidance" as to its meaning. On a personal level, their logic is so twisted that two of them were able to look at Matthew 10:28 ("do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.") and, with it staring them in the face in black-and-white, claim that the soul was a breath or life-force which could under no circumstances survive the killing of the body by anyone or anything...and that this was what the Bible really taught.
Needless to say, I got nowhere with them. But in excusing myself from these fellows, I had agreed to read their pamphlet. Since I had nothing else to do that day during my breaks, I did so. I was rewarded with the knowledge that their god had two very serious flaws. First of all, their god has no grasp of logic. His plan for the world for the past six thousand years boils down to a non sequitor fallacy. According to the pamphlet, when Adam and Eve rebelled against god in the Garden of Eden, they raised a question: "Could humans do better if not ruled by God?" In answer, god "has allowed man a free rein clear down to our day to show beyond any doubt whether human rule independent of him can succeed." The goal was to show that only direct rule by god could be successful and to that end he wanted "every conceivable type of government" tried out. He wanted to prove that A (human independence) leads to B (ruin). He then allowed Satan to come in and take total control over all human governments and enslave mankind. Ruin resulted: as the pamphlet says, "life today reflects the ugly rulership of 'the god of this world,' Satan." Then god patted himself on the back for proving his point, even though what he'd actually shown was that C (spiritual dictatorship under Satan) leads to B (ruin) instead. Since god is apparently incapable of recognizing the basic error of stating, "C leads to B, therefore A leads to B too," he will regard the matter as closed now and proceed with the apocalypse...at least, so the Watchtower Society wants us to think. The true God of the universe would never be duped into such a basic logical error, nor baited into proving His own right to sovereign rule: he doesn't need to prove anything to anyone.
The second thing I noticed about the Watchtower god was that he was totally obsessed with the happiness of humans. I mean totally. It was like there was no other purpose to his existence, let alone any other reason for his creation of the universe and everything in it. According to the pamphlet, god's "purpose was to establish an earthly paradise free from suffering". Everything was created for human enjoyment: flowers, food, forests, mountains, lakes, sunsets, and animals. Human design was also optimized for human happiness. As the pamphlet says, god gave us free will because: "he knew the way our minds and emotions would work, he knew that we would be happiest with free will." Of course, there are god's laws, but you see those aren't really limiting because the only reason god made those laws regulate free will "for the common good" like "traffic laws." Also, god made sure "that we were designed to be happiest when in subjection to God's laws." Yes, god has allowed horrific suffering and sorrow to befall mankind during his (completely illogical) six-millennia test, but he has a long-term plan which will "benefit all creatures" and in the paradise-like new world god "will compensate us for the suffering we may have endured in this world" by "showering down blessings that will far more than make up for any hurts that we receive in our past."
There is not one mention of god having a bit of self-interest. Apparently, he has none. Nor is there mention of a sense of justice: no, in fact "good" seems to have been redefined as "what makes man happy" and "evil" is merely "what makes man unhappy." The only driving force in this god's character is to make humankind happy: it is the chief end of all his plans, all his creations, all his commands, and everything he does. Since codependency is defined as being obsessively concerned with fulfilling the needs and desires of others, to the point of ignoring one's own needs and desires completely (or worse, not realizing you have any), this god is by definition codependent.
The appeal of the codependent god is easy to recognize. A god whose only concern is your own personal happiness is not so much a god as a cosmic vending machine: a genie with an infinite number of wishes. He would never really hurt you, even if you had it coming, because his sole reason for existence is to please you. He is not really, at bottom, a god that you worship, but a god who worships you. But in the end, the codependent god breaks down. The codependent god has no definition of evil and good except your own fickle desires, so he cannot guide you. Worse, the codependent god needs you to need him. If your own good turned out to be something other than him, he would do everything in his power to keep you from realizing this and keep you dependent upon him. But the worst of it is that the codependent god has no reason for existence apart from you. As humans, we instinctively look to God for deeper meaning in ourselves and the universe around us. We look to Him to answer the questions of why we exist, why we are the way we are, and why things happen to us as they do. The codependent god has no answers for these questions. His own existence and nature are factors contingent on us and whatever our happiness should require. He bounces the questions back to us, unanswered. Because the codependent god exists only for our benefit, it is up to us to decide why both we and he exist, why we (and he) are as we are, and why things happen as they do (for all things are ultimately a product of our own actions or of god's acting on behalf of our own desires).
The true God of the Bible is not codependent, though. He loves us, certainly. He is capable of great acts of self-sacrifice in that love, but He never loses sight of His own desires, purposes, and plans. Truly, "God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8), but Jesus endured the cross "for the joy set before Him." Even there, He had not lost sight of His own interests. He occasionally reminds us that He is ultimately acting in His own interests. "For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it," He says in Isaiah 48:11, speaking of His mercy on Israel. He further did not create the world for solely our enjoyment, but rather all things were created "for Him" (Colossians 1:16).
Since God loves us, His interests are bound up with ours, but they are not lost and absorbed. God still creates solely for His own pleasure. God still upholds moral absolutes of right or wrong (derived from His own character) and guides us in them, even when we think discarding morality would be more convenient. God does not look to us as a source of meaning, He is His own reason for existence: "I am that I am" (Exodus 3:14). Since all other things came into being by His creative power and He in His sovereignty does whatever He pleases, He gives implicit meaning to all Creation and all of history--whether we understand it or not, it pleased the Lord that it should be so. It pleased the Lord that we should be so. This, I think, is one of the most important points. God doesn't need us, not at all. If He had never created us or the world or anything His life would yet be complete.
At first, this may seem cruel and cold, to say that God has no need at all for us. But if you think about it, it's much better than the codependent god. The codependent god needs us to give himself a reason to exist, to fulfill himself. When the codependent god creates humanity and associates himself with it, there is no deeper meaning to it, nor does it give us any deeper meaning. It is not a choice, it is the working out of the codependent god's own nature. He can no more refuse to create humanity than the sun can refuse to shine. He has no more power to stop seeking humanity's happiness than water has the power to cease being wet. But the God of the Bible is not so compelled. He has no compulsion to create humanity, to love them, or to save them. These things are not necessary parts of His character and nature: they are choices. God didn't need to create us, but He chose to. God was not compelled to love us, but He decided to. God was not forced to save us, but He wanted to. This gives meaning. This allows God's love for us to be real. After all, a love that is given under compulsion is not really love at all. But God's love is given freely, as He is Himself free either to give or to withhold it. The codependent god can never give true love, for he is never truly free.
I feel sorry for the Jehovah's Witnesses. Like in a previous post, their god is a god they must carry. Their god is a god who is never personally involved or intimate (how can he be? There's nothing to him but a bottomless hunger to please humans). Their god is a god for whom they must do everything, bearing the burden not only for their own lives and happiness, but also for his. They must work to determine not only their own identity and worth, but also must realize that their work determines his own identity and worth (not that they miscommunicate who he is, but because he is so codependent that his worth and identity are dependent upon them--in other words, they make god by their own needs and desires, worth and identity...and better be sure not to make him wrong). But the God of the Bible does all things for Himself, and in His grace provides for us as well. He chooses to love us and to give us every good thing, including an identity and worth that are derived from His own immutable, perfect nature and identity. The Jehovah's Witnesses will no doubt claim that they know a lot about God. Their distortion of John 17:3 reads, "This means everlasting life, their taking in knowledge of you, the only true God, and of the one whom you sent forth, Jesus Christ", while in truth the scriptures say that everlasting life is to know God, not know about Him. I wish they knew the true God, Who could lift the burden of the codependent god from their shoulders.
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
What Jesus Asked for Us
Toward the end of John chapter 17 there's a section that's very special to me. John 17 is one of Christ's last prayers before His death. It's called the high-priestly prayer because unlike His other prayers in Gethsemane, this one is intercessory. He is not praying mostly for Himself, but mostly for His followers. Much of the prayer focuses on His disciples, the Twelve (well, eleven at this point, Judas having left and Christ knowing why). But at the end of this prayer, in verses 20-26, He includes a prayer for us today.
It's also worth noting what Christ doesn't ask for us here. He does not ask for a unity based on conformity or complete agreement on all issues. The early church did not have such a unity, nor did it aspire to it. Paul records in Romans 14 how Christian practices and beliefs differed from individual to individual (One believes he may eat anything, another is vegetarian; one observes holidays, another does not), and how Christians were to respect one another's beliefs out of love rather than trying to enforce universal agreement on non-essential doctrines and practices. He also doesn't ask for unity based on blind obedience to a leader. No leader is named in the passage, and even if there were the unity of the church is to mirror the unity of the Trinity. Christ certainly felt free to question the Father's plans for Him in Gethsemane--asking the Father three times to call off the crucifixion: the whole purpose for Christ coming to Earth--, though He ultimately obeyed them.
There's also other things Christ doesn't ask for. Christ doesn't ask for the Father's blessing on a moralizing crusade and culture war. He does not call upon the Father's aid in social activism campaigns. Christ doesn't even ask anything regarding evangelism. Though it's tempting as an evangelical (which I am) to consider soul-winning the ultimate goal and high calling of all Christians, it is not so. Neither is winning the culture war (or fighting it) or engaging in social activism. If these were Christ's highest aspirations for us, He would have made mention of it here, but He doesn't. Instead, He focuses His prayer on relationships within the church, rather than without...and this is a place where some churches are sadly lacking.
"I do not ask for these only [the disciples], but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me. I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them."This is the only time in scripture I can think of where Christ speaks directly about us today. I think it is very significant what He says here and what He asks for us. His prayer is first and foremost for us to have unity. This unity is to be His sign: a sign to the world that the Father has sent Him and that the Father loves us as He loves Christ Himself. To give us this unity, He has given us His own glory, the very glory that the Father gave to Him. He also makes known to us God's name and character, so that we may be unified with Him and filled with His love. Christ's desire here for us is that we all be unified with each other in a unity based on experiencing the love of God and unity with God as individuals, and receiving His glory individually as well as collectively.
It's also worth noting what Christ doesn't ask for us here. He does not ask for a unity based on conformity or complete agreement on all issues. The early church did not have such a unity, nor did it aspire to it. Paul records in Romans 14 how Christian practices and beliefs differed from individual to individual (One believes he may eat anything, another is vegetarian; one observes holidays, another does not), and how Christians were to respect one another's beliefs out of love rather than trying to enforce universal agreement on non-essential doctrines and practices. He also doesn't ask for unity based on blind obedience to a leader. No leader is named in the passage, and even if there were the unity of the church is to mirror the unity of the Trinity. Christ certainly felt free to question the Father's plans for Him in Gethsemane--asking the Father three times to call off the crucifixion: the whole purpose for Christ coming to Earth--, though He ultimately obeyed them.
There's also other things Christ doesn't ask for. Christ doesn't ask for the Father's blessing on a moralizing crusade and culture war. He does not call upon the Father's aid in social activism campaigns. Christ doesn't even ask anything regarding evangelism. Though it's tempting as an evangelical (which I am) to consider soul-winning the ultimate goal and high calling of all Christians, it is not so. Neither is winning the culture war (or fighting it) or engaging in social activism. If these were Christ's highest aspirations for us, He would have made mention of it here, but He doesn't. Instead, He focuses His prayer on relationships within the church, rather than without...and this is a place where some churches are sadly lacking.
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