You,
“All
in but not everything goes.”
The thing has always been
this deep discipline that runs through the practice of our faith. It is a hard
ask of anyone and it is practically impossible to live up to the letter of the
holy word. No human being, save Christ, has ever done it without stumbling and
no one after Him ever will. This of course leads to the great debate between
the gospel of discipline and the gospel of liberty. The former says we are all to
be steroid induced health freaks regularly pumping iron at the gym of faith or
holy conscripts of the universal army getting fit for the ten-dimensional war
of all things to come. The latter says nothing matters and all roads lead to
God, no need to keep things in check, let it all hang out and this is good for
you.
To be clear, all in does not
mean everything goes. We are not called to be the same people we were before
the light hit us. We are not called into the light because the dark does not
matter. Nothing can really support the view that freedom means licence to be
everything the faith tells us not to be.
On the other hand, this is
not a battle waged in the flesh or with carnal weapons. When you count the
number of hours spent in prayer and study as an instrument of the faith you are
being carnal. You are pushing something spiritual with a physical fulcrum. We are
not made to be mindless or clones or all the same. The riches of the Kingdom of
God are individual and distinct.
None of these postures speak
to the deep need we all have for God or the high call to all of us to respond
to His eternal love. There is nothing robotic about our faith but there is no
anarchy to it either. We have to be deeply rooted in the thing to find the…balance
is not the word I am looking for.
Let us just say, to find the
truth of all things.