The Start of Something Big

[HKHaugan]

It's a Question of Faith
You are riding along blissfully in your convertible enjoying the air in a rolling mountainous countryside along the Blue Ridge Parkway you’ve come to really feel part of. Beautiful green trees cropped in the foliage of wild flowers and the fragrance of freshly rained air join the warmth of the morning sun as each curve brings another piece of scenery you wish you could put in a box and take home. Suddenly there is a pop, the car begins to shake with the realization of a blown tire. The last thing you remember is skidding and then the beginning of rollover and darkness. The next things you realize is you are a waking jumble of lying in a bed, tubes in your arms, bandages, a nurse adjusting something and somewhere a dull but anesthetized pain. The first questions in your mind are “Where am I?” “How did I get here?” “What happened?” A fear grips you and you begin to remember the ride, the car, the rolling. The fear doesn’t go away because now you are in a bed and something has gone terribly wrong and here you are. More questions begin to emerge. What is my condition? I’m in a hospital. Again I ask, “Where am I?” I look out the window and the mountains. That tells me I’m probably in Linville, NC. But can I, will I walk? I begin trying to work my limbs. My head hurts. There are bandages. Is there anyone else around? A moment of panic and yes, I can feel movement when about that time a doctor walks in and tells me I’ve been in an accident, I’m bruised with a minor concussion but thankfully, no broken bones or internal injuries. What a relief that is. With a few more tests he assures me I’ll be released in a few days. But I also realize something else. I’m not the same as I was. I feel differently as my mind tries to figure out what could have happened and, --- why?

Many people have gone through that or some similar experience and those spot questions are the same every time. The reason we visit that scene is because it helps us to see what Adam and Eve experienced when they disobeyed God by eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen.3). They found themselves having gone through a much more profound experience. They lost the memory of who they were, why they were, what they were and where they were. All they knew was that they were in pain, in an unfamiliar place and not being or feeling the same as they once did. They had blown a spiritual tire, rolled out of God’s presence into an internal land of aloneness, bruised, covering themselves with homemade bandages and surviving the best they could. We inherited their condition and generations of people since have added their own complexities. It was so cataclysmic it would take God to ask the question they were feeling but couldn’t articulate, “Where are you?” The Old Testament is the diagnosis and the reference point for the evaluation of that which caused the great separation---sin---from which none of us are free.

This brings us to the three concepts about human nature that the Bible encourages us to see as the human condition after the wreck in the Garden of Eden--- self-centeredness, aloneness and awareness--- and in that order (we’ll look at them as we go). They pose three questions we are called to answer--- Who am I? What am I? Where am I? One way to begin is using another parallel, remembering how we woke up this morning. After all, that is our common experience as human beings. The next paragraphs are written to help us as believers identify where people are who have no belief. We can relate to our past without Him and that is important as we talk to those the Lord wants us to reach.

First, who am “I”?
We are self-conscious, conscious of being an ‘I’ living in a body that makes demands for satisfying ‘my’ immediate needs. Like it or not “I” have to get up, eat, go to work or whatever, deal with other people immediately around ‘me’ and then face the world out there. In the process “I” am answering those three questions, maybe not consciously, but “I” am acting out a script of some kind with them as the backdrop in my mind. “I” precedes everything, my name, my family, my country, my job, my clubs, churches, beliefs and my pattern for living. It’s not just physically existing but processing an invisibly self-conscious being that prefaces everything with “I”. “I” think, “I” feel, “I” need to know. It’s me, myself, mine, my and “I”. Everything centers in my self-conscious being. That is my condition.

Second, what am “I”?
“I” am what I have been told “I” am from outside myself, from family, school, friends and society in general. “I” am a human being with an identity and live in a physical environment in a society of people like me with goals both visible and invisible. I am aware that I have needs, the need to know why, when, where, what and how. It is not just awareness of being but being aware I am in a very detailed existence of external visible and invisible reality. I am aware I constantly process what is going on around me. I am aware of opposites like beauty and ugliness, love and hate, good and evil, pain and pleasure. I am aware I evaluate, make decisions and act on the basis of a sorting-out system of choice that gives me the ability to make sense out of my surroundings. I act in accordance with the choices I make. That system is what I call my morality, the way I decide what I hope will be good as opposed to bad for me. I find I am aware that everyone does the same thing. I am aware of my emotions, my hopes, my fears and the relationships that give me satisfaction. I am aware of not only mountains and valleys, sky and oceans, night and day, sun and stars, distance and space but of the beauty in them. I am aware of not only the outside of people, how they look and what they say, but their inside as well, both of which I find make me curious and want to know more. All that awareness is needs based. I am a bundle of needs wanting to feel, be and do right, be loving and loved, having self-worth, value in relationships, accomplishment and productivity, being acceptable, avoiding rejection and generally finding a sense of stability, peace and happiness.

Where am “I”?
I find myself among other people who are a bundle of personal needs looking for satisfaction. That’s the ‘where’ we are within. But there is also the ‘where’ we are outside. We are very local physical beings in a vast physical interstellar space. While our physical location is clear it is where we are within that dominates our thinking. No matter how hard we try, how hard we dig within, the answers still come from outside. That fact indicates the glaring flaw in our humanity; we are imperfect in knowledge of everything from ourselves to the universe surrounding us. That’s made clear by the abounding conflict within and without, from the inner self to the international disruption of war and death. The answers are above any human being’s pay grade. That means our personal search for answers needs outside help. “I” need others. That’s the real ‘where‘. Answer that ‘where’ and we all benefit. Ultimately there is one unavoidable truth, all conclusions are based on faith in some method, some system, some pattern, some person we have chosen as the way to think and act.

Now in all three “I” questions the Bible offers us an objective means from outside ourselves to process the answers by pointing us to the “I” in Jesus, the Christ, God the Son, the One who claims to be the answer to those three questions. His premise is simple. He says He is the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6) and that believing in Him is the experience of living out the answers. He ordained the Bible as the single authority by which we can sift our experience and separate God’s thinking from world thinking. It is the Bible that provides the assurance of what we mean when we say we have become aware of reality. And reality for us is really two fold, it’s visible and invisible. What we can see, hear, touch, taste and smell in the physical dimension is accompanied by a whole invisible dimension of thought, analysis, evaluation and motivation that determines our behavior.

In Jesus we have three simple answers to the above questions. First, I am an image of God. Second, through faith in Him I am a child of God. Third, I am in God’s Creation with His identity, purpose and mission.

What we know from the Bible is that we are images of God with minds, hearts and spirits because that’s how Jesus presented Himself. The more we get out of ourselves and into Him the more we find balance for our disheveled humanity and become creative and productive people. Jesus tells us who He is, what He is and why He is. He is the “I AM”---Before Abraham was “I Am (Jn.8:58)”, His Father’s Son (Jn.5:17). He knows what He is---the light of the world (Jn.8:12) and where He is---He is the Good Shepherd laying down His life for the sheep (Jn.10). He is the perfect and exact image of God in His humanity (Heb.1:3). Our being an image of God (Gen.1:26) means we are made in the image of Jesus to be like Him. As we accept Him by faith He forgives the barrier of sin that displaced us and our spirits are born again in His Spirit. Now in Him through His Spirit we become like Him and that is God’s recovery program for us.

On the heels of these three questions comes the next natural foray into the future of every next moment, “Where am I going?” and “How am I going to get there?” These are the questions of ministry and mission, of love and action for those who don’t know Jesus, of destiny in Heaven and hell, of marriage and family, parents and children, citizenship in God’s Kingdom and in nations, of witness and testimony, of spiritual gifts and their application in the Body of Christ and the world.

The rest of what you will read here are the principles involved in that day to day, moment by moment recovery plan. They are principles not necessarily named but rather themed in order to be more personal, more appealing to the heart and more descriptive than codified. All of them are centered in the person of Jesus since real, spiritual, personal, eternal life is experienced through Him and Him alone.

Without Jesus we are aimless accidents, unidentifiable happenings, blobs of molecules defying precise analysis in meaningless existence, that continue to breed and breathe echoing a never ending chorus of who, what, where, when, how and why, flung and sung in the corridors of lonely frustration.