Say to This Mountain

[HKHaugan]

Transformation is a movement from self-righteousness to Jesus-righteousness, from sin to perfection. Clearing away the mountain of sin and living on the playing field of perfection. How does one get there? How do we experience perfection? How does one have a perfect attitude? What motivates transformation? Follow me for a bit as I reminisce.

One of the things I remember about living in New York City as a teenager was that I had to walk most everywhere I went. The exception was taking the subway to school which was about 80 blocks from where I lived in East Harlem which equals about 4 plus miles and also going to far places like the Washington Bridge or Staten Island. So when I first got to the city I’d look for a shortcut through alleys and side streets to cut down the distance to see a friend or go to church. But NYC was not like Greensboro, North Carolina with its woodsy shortcut trails and railroad tracks that would cut ten minutes walking to school.

I had to learn and did learn quickly those shortcuts were not the same in the city. There were certain streets I couldn’t walk through, alleys with lurking toughs and people throwing things out the window with no regard for those below. Most side streets were controlled by neighborhood gangs or groups that had special interests in those blocks. There was an unwritten map of safe paths, neutral territory, avenues that ran north and south and east to west streets where buses ran crosstown routes. All kids knew them. I found it best to use those safe avenues and streets even if I had to walk an extra five or six blocks to get where I was going. You were always aware too that night walking was never really safe.

Whatever it took to survive determined what it meant to be right. I learned that there was a right way to survive. You base your image on what a local group defines as necessary to survive. The gang, or whatever the group thinks of itself as, has an unwritten system of acceptance and trust. You look the part, you sound like the part and you adapt to the part adding your own little twist. This is especially true if you are smaller, younger and not athletically able. So you work hard trying to be perfect at adapting. What I did was to let the local world of the neighborhood transform me from being a North Carolina kid to a city survivor. Surviving becomes a lifestyle.

To me that was the world that shaped my teen years. Twenty some years later I would see it in a different dimension, a spiritual dimension. Now I see it spiritually as a counterpart to the daily walk we encounter with its gang-like attitudes, unexpected temptations, emotional challenges, the ‘don’t-go-there’ conversational traps, secret failures, the hidden expectations you’re just supposed to know. It’s a ‘tread-lightly’ world where every next step is a test of our learning, our wisdom and our endurance. It’s a world where conformity and compromise mean survival. Fear is its driving spirit. Expecting perfection is its goal.

The really big thing in a world like this is attitude, right attitude, a right ability to respond the right way in every situation. Being perfect, perfecting the skills of adaptability is ‘getting it right.’ This is why I believe that the deepest need in the human heart is not love but the need to be right, the need to be perfect in everything we do. Even love has to be right and not only right but perfect as well. That is the demand the world places on us and if you don’t get it right the world will kill you in its own way through rejection and isolation.

Right now, as an aside, I have some questions for us.
How can we be perfect without being perfectionists? How can we be optimistic without being an optimist? How can we be real without being realists? How can we be active without being an activist? How can we have ideals without being idealists? How can we be serious without taking everything seriously? How can I be right, feel right, without having to feel the need I have to be right all the time?

Enter the Lord Jesus Christ.

He tells the parable about the rich young man who comes to Him and asks what good thing He must do to get eternal life (Mt.19:16). Jesus reels off six commandments to which the young man replies that he’s done all those. But for the young man that’s not enough. There must be more. Jesus knows his real need and tells him if he wants to be perfect he has to sell all he owns, give to the poor and follow Him. So perfection is not something we accomplish. It’s the life of the Spirit the Lord Jesus gives us when we accept His invitation and follow Him. But the young man can’t accept the kind of perfection Jesus offers and goes away sad.

The point of the parable is that if we take the Lord into our hearts, obey His Word and take up the cross of faith every day, the perfect Jesus will live through us thus allowing the perfection of Jesus to perfect us. This is when we can truly say that we are obeying His command to be perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect (Matt.5:48).

The mountain we started with is the mountain of sin, its imperfection and evil spirits. It can be moved by faith in Jesus who allows His perfection to flow through us into the world around us. Jesus told His disciples, “I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there; and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you (Mt.17:20-21).” Transformation is moving mountains day by day.