Deliver Me from My Certainty

In the sixth chapter of John's gospel, the crowd said about Jesus, "Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we all know?"  The sparked my mind to think about the ways we box in Jesus; how we know what we know, and that's all we need to know.

I am blessed by something quite unique.  I preach in a multi-denominational, multi-ethnic worship gathering in an overseas military chapel.  Most of the people at this worship gathering would not see each other if we were not overseas, because we would all be worshiping in places where the folk look, talk, act and believe just like us.  

The biggest problem for the Church, especially in the West, is that we flock to places that revolve around doctrine rather than Jesus.  We look for places that--even if they speak of relationship over religion--still speak our preferred religious language.  Doctrine gives us the Jesus, whose mother and father we all know.

Maybe I'm guilty of mostly listening to people who speak my language, or my dialect, but I try to read authors who poke me out of theological box of comfort and say things like "following Jesus is more important that adhering to a specific set of doctrines."

This is a statement that I cannot attribute to any given author, but the theme certainly exists in many of the books I am currently reading.

I'll ask you, void, this question:  what do people want or need more: rule followers or Jesus followers?  And here's a follow-on question: which is more transformative: rule followers or Jesus followers?

I'm reading Len Sweet's book I Am a Follower, and in the first chapter he talks about this video that went viral a few years ago.  (The link is here: Sasquatch Dancer)  It shows this young man, who may or may not be in an altered state of reality, dancing in a hill all by himself at a music festival.  After a few minutes another person joins him and for brief moments they are in sync.  After a little bit, another person joins in, dancing in his own way, and not much after that it's a full on dance party. (The whole thing really makes me miss being at Grateful Dead shows, I must confess!)

If Jesus really is "The Lord of the Dance"--as the old hymn says--then he's the one who's playing the music, and he's waiting for us to get up and move to the melody.  The people around us are waiting, not for the choreography to be listed, nor for the rules for dancing to be explained; they are waiting for us to dance--they are waiting to see us move with love.

Throughout Scripture, God continually reminds people boundaries do not apply to the nature of God.  The best example is from Exodus where Moses is trying to get out of the task set before him.  He asks God, "What if I go to the Israelites and tell them 'The God of your ancestors sent me to you' and they ask for your name; what shall I tell them?"  To which God replies, "I am who I am. I will be who I will be." (Exodus 3:13-14)

God is bigger than any understanding we may have, no matter how big that understanding may be.  A name cannot define God; a concept cannot define God; a dogma cannot define God.  Jesus may be the clearest picture we have of God (and I believe He is) but even Jesus says there are things only God knows that he does not (Matthew 24:36).

What's my point?  The Church is more like the crowd in John 6 than we might like to imagine, and Jesus wants to free us from our certainty.