Path for Salvation
For those who desire to truly walk within the will of God and the pattern of the Kingdom, there are always two voices calling out to us.
One voice spurs us to strive towards a success of doing: to attain, to reach for the sky, to find significance, to command honour, to earn all that is good and well-deserved.
The other voice whispers for a success of being. But this success of being requires a considerable sacrifice in our success of doing.
There is a trade-off between the two dimensions, because our preoccupational capacity does not permit for a mutual focus upon the two.
In these past several days, the second of the two voices has gripped my interior attention more than it usually has, although it never ceases to speak in tones no louder than a mere whisper.
The specific manner in which I feel the need to embody this gravitation is to learn what it means to be doing the dance of life with people who, although being no less superior in dignity than my own, are often defined as being so by society. More than just being seen associating with them, I sense a beckoning towards the acceptance of such people as a part of my own fraternal spiritual family.
I do not like what I feel, but I feel the voice ceaselessly beckoning. It is a voice that bids me to keep drifting towards the goal to die to the self, to no longer be bound by the clutches of a fear of whom I am being seen with.
The voice is not calling me to be among them that I might cultivate a discipline of tolerance. Rather, it speaks with conviction, telling me that the lesser people - the mentally deranged, the emotionally disturbed, the economically disempowered, the helpless aged, the socially displaced - are God's path for my salvation. It says I need them.
All this, so that I may know what I am - nothing.
Comments (4)
Hi, its me Eugene from the St. Francis Church.The Blessings amidst blunders course thingy. Just so you know my e-mail address. =D
Posted by Eugene Wong | October 19, 2008 12:08 PM
Sherman, need it be mutually exclusive, when in the Master, I see the two in one.
Posted by blogpastor | October 19, 2008 8:51 PM
I guess it's quite arguable, depending on the perspective we choose to take in our reading of the Man.
In the Catholic tradition, the evangelical counsels found in the life of Christ - poverty, chastity and obedience - are exalted as the ideals of the Beatitudes enfleshed. It is that poverty (not just in financial dynamics, but also in terms of utter simplicity) that brings one to sit with the rejects of society.
Posted by sk | October 19, 2008 9:43 PM
This is similar to the struggle between law and grace. Doing for the sake of earning is always legalism, while doing in responce to the being we are in Christ is grace. Grace always call for us to die to ourselves so that we can remind the world that being God's child is the essence of grace.
A good view of the balance between being and doing can be found in Book 1 of Victor Hugo's, "Les Miserables".
I'll end with a quote from my favorite Christian musician, Rich Mullins, "Be God's"
Posted by Russell Ashbaugh | October 24, 2008 11:19 PM