Who Are You Going to Trust?

[HKHaugan]

Who Are You Going to Trust? 

Apparently, Mozart (1756-1791) had a falling out in Salzburg, Austria with the Hapsburg family. In the movie Amadeus, Mozart appears before their royalty who criticizes him for having too many notes in his music. Mozart replies with a question, “Which ones?”

 Every so often I hear something similar when belief is mentioned. “Too many denominations, too old and too full of myths.” “My religion is personal. It’s when I get close to nature, I feel spiritual.” “Can’t we just simplify this religious business and get down to the basic ideas of loving and caring about one another?” “You know, things like ‘love your neighbor, do unto others…’, ‘know the truth and the truth will set you free.’” “And we certainly don’t’ need ten commandments. The last six will do just fine.” “The Bible is a nice book, but it’s outdated, and modern science has evolved to free us from all the supernatural stuff anyway.”

 My response is, “Yo! Slow down bro! Do you really mean that? Think, yes think about what you’re really saying.” Then I counter. “The world is not a gumball machine where you stick a penny in the slot and the candy comes out. There’s a heck of lot more involved. People are not simple, easy to figure out and all you need is a simple formula to deal with them. Each one is unique, different and not easy to read. Platitudes and firm handshakes are superficial at best. True, there is good and evil, and people are a mixture, but that mixture is unique in every person. What’s more, what you see is not what you get unless there is a willingness to be open. There is a basic fear born in people that causes us to be guarded until we get to know and accept one another.”

 I continue, “That fear is what the Bible tells us is caused by sin, the basic problem within us. Sin is everyone’s spiritual problem. What does sin do? It makes us wary and self-centered. The things that really isolate us from one another are not visible but invisible. They make us feel alone. Aloneness is the major symptom of sin. What we do with our aloneness is our response to sin. Those inner responses are our spirituality. Think about the unseen stuff that goes on inside of us. The feelings from rejection, exposure, lack of control, hostility, anger, all the ‘me-first’ stuff, defensiveness, being easily offended or taking offense but with a smile. Emotions, all of them, are unseen but reflected in verbal and body language. The positives like love, concern, compassion, trust, kindness, gentleness, confidence and affection are what we really long for and want others to feel in us. It’s all spiritual.”

 What we want to get across is the importance of spiritual thinking. The bottom line is how we process what’s going on around us. It’s an unseen process that exposes the most important spiritual problem we face, our aloneness that makes us self-centered. It is personal, mostly felt in our relational experience and those moments we are in unfamiliar places and among unfamiliar people. This is the nature of spiritual reality. If we can get people to consider that what drives our engines is not based on what you can see but what you can’t see. The real question then is who do we trust to handle this inner unseen process of making choices? Right and wrong, good and bad, are spiritual issues. Having the ability to give a right response; meeting the need of the moment the right way, and, of course, feeling right after it’s given needs a perfect person since none of us is perfect.

 This is why we believe in a risen Jesus. Death is the proof of our imperfection; the resurrected Jesus is the proof of perfection and eternal life.   He defeated the thrust of the sin and evil against Him; the sin and evil that rules the atmosphere in human relationships, the real world we live in. Jesus overcame death because He was a perfect person. The reason He came to live among us was to solve the aloneness issue through the forgiveness of sin, its fear and pride, and offer Himself as the One we can trust with our relational life. He gives us a spiritual lifestyle He demonstrated and the Holy Spirit to build that relationship in us. Just as He said, “My words are Spirit and they are life…” assures us that the Bible is His guide for us to be spiritually relational with Him and others. A relationship with Jesus guarantees our eternity. No one and nothing else can do that. So, who are you going to trust with your life, your invisible existence, the person you are and to help you be the person you really want to be?