What Is Your Longitude and Latitude?

[HKHaugan]

What Is Your Longitude and Latitude?

Navigation on the ocean depends on knowing your location and a measuring instrument like a sextant is used to determine our latitude (horizontal lines) and longitude (vertical lines). Where those lines cross is our position. It certainly is important to know your physical location whether you are on the sea, the land or in the air. But there are also other locations. As the real estate agent says, “Location, location, location” which points to a good business location. Then there are social locations with class levels involved. But social locations also involve family, education, professional, ethnic environments and cultural surroundings that will accommodate our goals.

But there is a deeper and more profound kind of location and that is our spiritual locale. We can move in the seen dimension but what about the unseen one that includes all of the above? It's where we hang our hat in the spiritual dimension that determines how we handle ourselves in the visible. So how do we determine our spiritual location? For us a disciples of Jesus that's our first priority. This is where the Bible comes in. It's our spiritual sextant and by it we can find out where we are. It presents us with two basic questions. One is horizontal and the other is vertical. The first is when God asks Adam after Adam's fall, “Where are you (Gen.3:9)?” and the second is when Jesus asks Peter, “Who do you say I am (Mt.16:15)?” The whole Old Testament is built around the first and the whole New Testament is built around the second. While both are sourced in the vertical both are also horizontally expressed. The Old Testament emphasis raises the problem and the New Testament emphasizes the answer. When we ask these two questions we can pinpoint where we are spiritually.

That first question is God's call to Adam after he and Eve tried to go their own way instead of God's, “Where are you?” Adam's response named fear, hiding, aloneness, emptiness and blame. As we said, the whole Old Testament is built around that question and condition. It is a call to every person in every part of the world to determine where they are spiritually; their spiritual location, their spiritual longitude and latitude. It's not until you get those settings that you're able to find security and direction to plot your life's course. By the way it might be of interest to note that those two intersect, form a cross and spot you exactly. Look at it this way, if you know what your vertical relationship with God is like and intersect it with where you are relationally in the world you can get an immediate fix on your spiritual position. Could it be this is why Jesus said we had to take up our cross and follow Him? He becomes our longitude and the Holy Spirit our latitude. It's then that faith in Jesus is both the compass and the map as we traverse the spiritual terrain of every next moment.

OK, let's personalize that first question “Where are you?” a bit more. For each of us, because we are different and unique, the answers will have to be personally honest and relationally descriptive. You might say that we're kind of lost when that question comes up but it's a fair one, believe me. One thing that pops up immediately with our horizontal survey is that there is internal insecurity in the presence of external pressures. What we are aware of is we live in a world of attitudes, opinions, desires, dreams, hopes and fears demanding a response. Jockeying for a position among people brings up the immediate need to be right. There's hesitation, the need to feel right, having the right response, learning to think quickly. Just that condition in itself identifies aloneness and its fear of not being right as our deepest concern. The cause? Sin. That's the dark unseen spiritual cloud hanging over every human being from birth to death. I want to feel right, be right and do right but in the midst of others with the same issues to whom and where can I go for direction?

What we tend to do is to assess how others around us respond to the same pressures and follow the herd, so to speak. We look for a model and whoever seems to have the most appeal, power and authority becomes our model. But that 'following' kind of pattern is always directed by the fear of not fitting in. If the one or the thing we follow has some imperfection, like gang leaders, movie and media stars, social, political and economic icons, to whom do we turn? They have the same issues within as we do. And if we play that 'follow' game we find we have just given the one we follow power over us and we are always trying to look good to him or her. There is a subtle power shift and we discover ourselves being used. We become something we were never intended to be and simply a piece of driftwood in the maelstrom of social inadequacy. We try and the harder we try the deeper the fear of not fitting in. We struggle with this deep need to be right about everything and when we follow the outside rules that promise success at fitting in there is no pay off. We're still fearful and we can't shake the fact that our inner desires and hopes at being good at fitting the mold, in other words, being right, don't work. We have just found out we are one dimensional, horizontal.

So, when we ask the question about our spiritual location we find we have no longitudinal, no vertical appeal. We are dominated by fear and its companion, pride. We are trapped in the horizontal, alone and anxious. It is really the spirit of fear intersecting where we are. We may try the 'self-made-man' route but this is a false longitudinal line. It is idolatry with a capital 'I'. This causes everything else to be totally misread and our inner turbulence increases proportionate to the fear storms that aloneness and isolation bring. We can choose religion as a way out but what is needed is not a system of thought, a mystical practice or some therapeutic self-help method that seems vertical, above the world. It has to be an external person, a perceptive and accepting relational person whose perfection is in his vertical confidence and its horizontal application. See where this is headed? Inevitably to the resurrected Jesus. He is the latitudinal, longitudinal person, the vertical and the horizontal One who modeled perfection in both dimensions which is why the Cross of Christ signals such a strong presence in the world. The Cross of Christ is the spiritual, personal and relational satisfaction of our deepest and most profound needs. Everything in Jesus' life was in conflict with a world dominated by fear, aloneness and its 'fitting in' principles. Yet He alone is the model for human recovery and purpose. His life on earth was His eternal life before Creation, in Creation and above Creation, the life He offers us. Jesus was 'fitting in' to His Father's will and that's how He lived as a human being.

The problem with the world's 'fitting in' process is that meeting its standards depends on fear. You are always on your guard against making a mistake that might result in rejection. That's fear. Fear isolates. You never know who you can trust. When you take the 'fitting in' road you walk it alone. You are your own god. But a god with limited power. It seems you are a god in competition with other 'gods.' You're always concerned about what other 'gods' around think. That's what kills relational honesty. When we are more wrapped up in building an acceptable cultural identity than being who we really are, an image of the Creator God, we end up in lonely despair, desperation and depression. This is because all the cultural standards we depended on had no vertical reality therefore neither spiritual, personal nor relational fulfillment, no lasting value, no ultimate recognition. Not only that but the process of 'fitting in' is actually being a slave to fear, fear of the attitudes and opinions of others. That fear isolates because we feel we are always playing to whatever happens to be the standard of the moment. That moment of minor trophy successes changes and new ones make it harder to cope. Eventually we die---alone.

The good news is Jesus offers us a relationship with Him that gives us a vertical confidence with a horizontal way to live. He gives us His personal Counselor, the Holy Spirit, to teach us His Word bringing His mind and heart to recover, restore and renew His image in us. Wow! Keep your focus on Him. Fix your spiritual position and location. Don't forget the spiritual questions the Lord asks us each: “Where are you?” “Who do you say I am?”