The Road Less Traveled: Detour

I’ve never been diagnosed ADD but you can probably tell by my blogging style that I have some tendencies in that direction, eh?!

Well, I just read something off of Big Brother’s blog (that’s not a reference to George Orwell’s writing) which really spotlighted another vista on this journey up the mountain imagery. Here’s the quote...it’s from Henry Nouwen’s book In the Name of Jesus...

“Christian leaders cannot simply be persons who have well-informed opinions about the burning issues of our time. Their leadership must be rooted in the permanent, intimate relationship with the incarnate Word, Jesus, and they need to find there the source for their words, advice, and guidance....Dealing with burning issues easily leads to divisiveness because, before we know it, our sense of self is caught up in our opinion about a given subject. But when we are securely rooted in personal intimacy with the source of life, it will be
possible to remain flexible but not relativistic, convinced without being rigid, willing to confront without being offensive, gentle, and forgiving without being soft, and true witnesses without being manipulative.

"To me, that last sentence captures many of my struggles with the church’s expression of its mission over the past few years. (My struggle began 2 or 3 years ago...the church in general has struggled with this problem since its inception) To revert back to the image of the mountain, I believe our goal is to ascend towards God. Mountains have always been thought of as holy places and locations where accessibility to the divine is increased. Now I don’t want to confuse anyone to think I’m condoning some kind of religious pluralism...certainly not. There’s only one mountain worth climbing. There are other mountains (religions and paths to the divine) but you have to be on the right mountain to get to the Creator God.

But I’m afraid what the church often does is say, “You have to go up the mountain this way!” There’s a rigidity and inflexibility (as Nouwen points out) which turns the journey into a static route. Here’s where the analogy breaks down a bit...somewhere along the way, the church gets comfortable at a certain altitude or level spot and mistakenly assumes they’ve arrived.

I don’t know if this makes sense to anyone. My attempts at continuing to process my own journey and its irregularities push me to find adequate expressions. I’ll keep trying!