My wife and I were in Powell's City of Books yesterday in Portland. We spent twenty minutes in the lobby looking at a bookshelf full of new releases and old favorites before we decided to venture any deeper into the labyrinth of bookshelves, magazines and Powell's brand merchandise. The store takes up an entire city block and they have every book you can imagine on nearly every topic. We were in the Red Room--the religious section--and based on my quick survey of the shelves, most of the books are crap. But everyone would find something they think is crap in the religious section.
One of the books we picked up was by the writer Deepak Chopra. It was about something called the "Third Jesus" and promised to tell the secret to living the kind of mystical selfless life that Jesus described in the gospels. Now, granted, I didn't read more than the jacket cover and a few random pages in the book, but it seemed to be that the key to the whole thing was wrapped up in a few key secrets to the universe that Deepak has somehow discovered by a lot of meditation. Or something like that. "Buy this book. It will tell you how to be a better person.
This had followed a recent conversation with a dear friend who shared that she was tired of the hypocrisy of Christianity and didn't see how it was doing much better than any other religion at making people into better people. I didn't really respond to her then, I wasn't really sure what to say. She has a point, Christians are statistically no better than anyone else on a myriad of social sins--though it is my personal opinion that statistics are 90% lies.
After Deepak, we went deeper (eh eh) into the bookstore. As I said, we were in the religious section and the shelves were lined with books telling me how to be happy, how to be fulfilled, how to be a better person. I had this feeling in the pit of my stomach that something about all of this was wrong. And then I think I figured it out.
It happened when my wife said, "They're all missing the point!" To which I replied, "Yes, they are. I was just thinking that." But between you and me I hadn't thought of that at all beyond the stomach thing. She was right though. They were all missing the point!
The Christian life isn't about being a good person. It isn't about being a happier, more fulfilled person. It isn't about doing good things in your church or homeless shelter. It isn't about feeding the poor. it isn't even about being 'god-concious' (whatever that means). All of these things are great things that everyone from Buddhists to Mormons do. I am reminded of a poster I saw one time advertising a clothing distribution organized by an Islamic group. That's not the point.
Here's the point: God. It's all about God. You want to stop being a scummy husband? Take your nose out of your navel and look at God. You want to care more about the poor? Take your nose out of your wallet and look at God. Feel better about your looks? Eyes out of the mirror and onto God.
My wife asked me one time why I loved her. My mind scrambled for reasons as to why I had picked her out of all the women I had ever known. She's beautiful? She's intelligent? She's funny? Yes, yes and yes, but that's not why I love her. I wouldn't be married to her if that's all there was; I'd have been married a long time ago to someone else because she's certainly not the only beautiful, intelligent and funny woman in the world. I couldn't answer the question. And then I realized I didn't want to. Whatever answer I gave to why I loved her would only demean the reality of the love itself. I love that she's beautiful, but I don't love her *because* she's beautiful. And that means she has the freedom to lose her beauty without losing my love. From what I can tell, though, it's only made her *more* beautiful. Because it's beautiful when a girl takes care of herself without worrying about whether she's taking care of herself enough. And my wife, a very beautiful woman, doesn't need to worry about it.
I think it works this way with God. He loves us no matter what. And when we realize this, we are captivated by him in a way that makes church politics,Christian morality, theological simplifications and those pesky statistics strangely meaningless. Because they have nothing at all to do with God himself. He is the one we look towards and all else falls away.
I don't always get him. I can't understand him. But I cannot deny him. And he is *not* like every other deity or deity-like figure we know. He loves me. Loves me with the kind of selfless love I can't even begin to understand the depth of. I can't say why, but I don't need to.
And that's the point.
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