Monday, October 31, 2005
Still Thinking About the Outskirts
I have been reading Donald Miller's book "Searching For God Knows What". In this book he brings up an idea that sounds interesting. As human beings, the thing that is missing in us, that one thing that we are searching and striving for in everything we do is a relationship. Not just any relationship but the closeness to God that we were designed to experience, but have been separated from since the divorce of the fall.
Because our view of the world is lacking this relationship we have replaced that acceptance by God with the game of comparing ourselves to others. Miller calls this the lifeboat theory. We are in a lifeboat and deciding who should be thrown overboard, who has more value.
"If there were a lifeboat adrift at sea, and in the lifeboat were a male lawyer, a female doctore, a crippled child, a stay-at-home mom, and a garbage man, and one person had to be thrown overbaord to save the others, which person would we choose?"
We rate people. We rate people based upon some arbitrary ideas:
•Slam dunking a basketball - athletes get respect because of their ability to play sports.
•Good Looks - What is beauty? Who says? Different cultures have different ratings for beauty, and it all is arbitrary.
•Intellegence - Does less ability to reason make people less valuable? Why? How far are we willing to extend this?
•Wealth - This one goes along with the idea of power and ability to get your own results in our world. We value money and possessions, we say things like "He who has the most toys when he dies wins." Why? Wins what? More worms?
•Rightness - We argue over things, trying to convince each other that we are right. I've seen some arguements that just keep going even when people realize that they can't convince the other.
All this comes back to thinking about the people that Jesus was interested in talking with and the people that most churches try to attract. Jesus didn't judge people by these catagories, but instead he just loved people. He spent time with people that others wouldn't see. He spent time with the untouchables. He spent time with the outsiders. Spiritual outsiders, those who couldn't enter a church because of the looks they would get, because of the feelings of unworthiness. These are the people Jesus spent time with. Jim Cymbala says something about this in his book Fresh Wind Fresh FIre. Are we really like Jesus while we do our best to attract the pharisees to our church? Too many thoughts, I think I'll have to try again tomorrow to organize these rants, and ramblings into coheriance.
Because our view of the world is lacking this relationship we have replaced that acceptance by God with the game of comparing ourselves to others. Miller calls this the lifeboat theory. We are in a lifeboat and deciding who should be thrown overboard, who has more value.
"If there were a lifeboat adrift at sea, and in the lifeboat were a male lawyer, a female doctore, a crippled child, a stay-at-home mom, and a garbage man, and one person had to be thrown overbaord to save the others, which person would we choose?"
We rate people. We rate people based upon some arbitrary ideas:
•Slam dunking a basketball - athletes get respect because of their ability to play sports.
•Good Looks - What is beauty? Who says? Different cultures have different ratings for beauty, and it all is arbitrary.
•Intellegence - Does less ability to reason make people less valuable? Why? How far are we willing to extend this?
•Wealth - This one goes along with the idea of power and ability to get your own results in our world. We value money and possessions, we say things like "He who has the most toys when he dies wins." Why? Wins what? More worms?
•Rightness - We argue over things, trying to convince each other that we are right. I've seen some arguements that just keep going even when people realize that they can't convince the other.
All this comes back to thinking about the people that Jesus was interested in talking with and the people that most churches try to attract. Jesus didn't judge people by these catagories, but instead he just loved people. He spent time with people that others wouldn't see. He spent time with the untouchables. He spent time with the outsiders. Spiritual outsiders, those who couldn't enter a church because of the looks they would get, because of the feelings of unworthiness. These are the people Jesus spent time with. Jim Cymbala says something about this in his book Fresh Wind Fresh FIre. Are we really like Jesus while we do our best to attract the pharisees to our church? Too many thoughts, I think I'll have to try again tomorrow to organize these rants, and ramblings into coheriance.
// posted by Eric @ 12:52 AM 
