Wisdom 35 Spiritual Identity vs. World Identity, a Personal Testimony

[HKHaugan]

Wisdom 35 Spiritual Identity vs. World Identity, a Personal Testimony

 We live in a 'humpty-dumpty' environment. Remember 'Humpty?' He fell, broke into pieces and all the king's subjects and horses couldn't put him together again. As we have already said, that is the picture of fallen humanity. When Adam and Eve were separated from God and filled with aloneness, they sought their identity in everything but Him. They lost their greatness and, as a result, so did we. You could see it in many of the names given children and how towns were named after people and things. But the Lord can make us great again.

 We are a segmented people trying to figure out who we are. This is the reason we have made our professions, what we work at, even our ethnic, hobby and pleasure clubs, take over our identity. Yes, it's true, the secular world has told us the big lie, that our function, our appearance, what we do to earn a living, is our life, that function is life and function is our identity. Function gives us feeling and emotion is life for many. That's why, in the last article, we concluded that we experience a kind of death when our function ceases. When we retire, or we are fired, or we are jettisoned when a company moves or when we lose one job and move to another, we become irrelevant to where we previously functioned. Isn't this the reason for pensions, multi-formed insurance plans, Social Security, unemployment benefits, or the massive investment business? Then the emotional issues arising when the acceptance and applause we got from our jobs ceases. No one needs you any longer, who are you then? Where’s the payoff when what we thought was life goes away? What and where is our identity, our function then? All you have to do is spend time in a retirement community, attend a few meetings and check the reactions of people to minor issues. You’ll see what I mean. Recently, in a community I live in, a lady vehemently attacked a board chairman reminding him that she had been an executive on ’the eight floor in Boston’ and knew more about patio home legal issues more than he did.

 Across the board from corporate structure to religious institution, what we have been told was life giving, meaningful, significant and recognition producing, depended on others who also were living under the illusion of a false idol. When functions become ends in themselves, when something temporary is endowed with some sense of permanency, that's what makes them false. It's called idolatry. No world structure can give a life that lasts beyond its function. Ask anyone who has been part of something that failed like the steel mills in Pittsburgh or companies that move to another country or car companies that have ceased to exist like Studebaker and Packard or a closed school or church that now serves some secular enterprise. Ask the aging movie or TV star. Ask the 32-year-old retired pro athlete. Ask the executive forced to retire. Functions can only provide a means to physical survival and momentary satisfaction. Since world definitions fall short it follows that only its spiritual purpose provides permanency, the real life, the function, to give true identity. No secular source can do that. If that's the case, then who or what gives worldly work its importance?

 There is no question that we are called to work, to create and to benefit from what we do. That's built into us as an image of God who is the Creator, who worked at creating, still works and puts a seal on His work---'Good' (Gen.1:31). He gave us the soil to cultivate, the forests to build and cattle to feed. Work is good. Professions are good. Earning a living is good. However, its spiritual purpose is what validates it. Its spiritual meaning is what can justify our existence. But more than that it is the spiritual foundation of its workers that make work thrive for the betterment of others. When work is motivated spiritually then it produces what God intends. We have only to look at history to see the great advancements that have come from spiritually directed work.

 I found that out the hard way as a clergyman what function is about. I came to the realization that I was a cog in the machinery of a denomination and that my denominational function was my life and its existence the guarantee of life. It was religion. Religion is functioning. I had a religious career that promised all the perks: acceptance, recognition, security, significance, meaning and purpose; the goodies, so to speak. That's how you go into it. There's enthusiasm, a willingness to work in something that helps people find themselves and life beyond this world.

 But when you get into the religious mix you find there are unwritten rules you must learn along the way, like who to play up to and who to avoid. There are the 'in' clergy, those with larger, more wealthy congregations who have success based on worldly values like size, building programs and developed influence. These clergy are asked to be on committees, give talks and frame policies for denominational action. There is a clerical language, a 'preacher speak', an expected public persona as you walk through the landmines of local expectations to gain a foothold on the slippery slope of 'fitting in.' Denominational conventions are self-promoting exercises in mutual 'back patting.' Committees and their members have 'worked' hard within the institution, budgets have been set and met and the annual leader's address has been catalogued, given plaudits for its 'profound' statements. There is seldom recognition given to bringing Jesus into the hearts of the surrounding neighborhoods. Social agenda and political lobbying are the religious functions in the world. Money is raised to fight poverty, promote civil rights and gender conscious programs with 'feel good' speeches that 'more' has to be done.   Even if the denomination is losing members and influence you learn to justify its failures by extolling the 'superior' theological identity it uses to justify igself. It's all very subtle. But you are in it and you get on with the program and learn how to 'mature' in it.

 After you are in the flow for a while, you find there is not only a career but also a 'career path' to denominational leadership, if you feel 'led' to pursue it, but which has to be carefully trod. The expression that fits the bill is when a particular clergyman is said to have 'miters in his eyes (the desire to become a bishop).' A career path is set by massaging the institution and making yourself available to committees and activities that expose you to lots of 'in' people. You go from a small church to a successively bigger one. Clergy rise into the 'middle management' class and toe the mark. Hopefully one day they get the 'big' calling. Those that don't, well, they find themselves professionally alienated. Then they take a back seat to the ones who 'made it', the ones who become the protectors of the compromised process. Sound familiar? It should. It's all part of the world structures that the Lord wants reconciled to Him.

 I left that morass and became a chaplain in a New England prep school. After several years there I walked out on a dock in Menemsha Basin on Martha's Vineyard where I was vicar in a Summer chapel. It was early in the Summer of 1969 and I faced the reality of the emptiness in denominational life. What I really believed was not belief but being something I wasn't and that was a lifeless (functionless) leader in a lifeless structure. Not the eternal beliefs its creeds stated, which I knew were right, but rather the worldly cultural process that had overtaken the denomination and the dryness of its rote functions. It seemed to be a carbon copy of secular corporate structures with all the accompanying intrigues. The sedate atmosphere of its liturgies, its historic tradition and its sophistication, anesthetized internal evaluation and criticism.

 The denomination I used to be in is something you rise within to 'fit in', to justify who you are in the world. Clergy in it are so culturally and institutionally conditioned that they justify its cultural conformity as the 'new enlightenment', the 'new' faith, die Zeitgeist (German: 'the spirit of the age') its motivator. It's contemporary Gnosticism on steroids.

 There is a denominational establishment. You challenge its idolatry and it will bite you.   Preservation of the institution is more important than the Lord it is supposed to be presenting. Its national leadership, overcome by fear of not being politically correct, refuses to confront, or even mildly discuss, its growing rejection of Biblical authority. Leaving the Bible, they can no longer even agree on the basics like the Virgin Birth or the bodily Resurrection of the Lord Jesus nor personal Biblical spirituality (National leadership discussion is all recorded). Yet the Bible remains dutifully read in its services. Tradition. But as a preaching tool it seems Bible is spelled with a small 'b'. It is used to present some social or psychological issue rather than lift up the Lord Jesus. From what I can tell most of the major traditional denominations are experiencing the same dynamics. Those in its leadership are betraying the very people they are supposed to be teaching. That's why independent mega-churches are rising to fill the gap and doing it well.

 Walking out on that Menemsha dock in 1969 I knew I could no longer deal with the hypocrisy of religious structures, nor my personal unsettled hypocrisy and its consuming fears. This is when I turned and faced my empty acceptance of institutional religion and accepted that Jesus was not a savior and lord in a distant theological and institutional perspective, but my very own personal Savior and Lord, truly risen and truly alive. He was always there waiting for the moment I would turn to Him. I needed to realize and accept that. That's when I knew He was saving me every day. I knew my sin was real in very exact forms with its weakening goals and its subtle compromising nature. The Lord exposes them, and you face them with Him as He loves you through them.

 I also discovered a buried treasure. Something I had avoided for ten years after my ordination, that the Bible was the Word of God without error regardless of the attacks made upon it, even by clergy within the denomination. It's our life manual, our spiritual function resource. Contrary to the popular musical tune that quipped “What you're liable to read in the Bible, 'taint necessarily so” I found “tis necessarily so.” When religion is converted to relationship, the Bible is converted from an outdated religious document to Jesus' living Word. Jesus is no longer an historic symbol of goodness or a religious icon, but God the Son actively recovering and restoring you through the Holy Spirit. The Bible is the living truth the Holy Spirit uses to mature you in Jesus. If you are not spiritually struggling, like Jacob wrestling with the Lord, you are not maturing.

 Salvation is no longer a religious word but the living freedom to function spiritually centered in Jesus, overcoming sin and allowing Him to make us relationally right with God and others. People who don't know Jesus need to know Him, not just about Him, but Him directly. Salvation is all about Jesus and the freedom He gives to choose His way from one moment to the next as opposed to the world's way of ‘fitting in’, knowing the difference and maturing spiritually.

I am presently part of a congregation that was converted from being part of a culturally compromised bureaucratic religion to be a local part of the larger Body of Christ centering on Jesus as presented in Scripture. Tradition and structure are not ends but means, servants, tempered by Scripture to keep us honest and active. When structure is in Jesus it becomes a springboard to bring others to Him that they too may know Him, serve and share Him.

 

                                     The Lord God Wants to Make Us Great Again (Jn.10:10).