godliness #1 (med surg)
(23 jan: day 3/5 on Civil Rights Bus tour)
This is somewhat poorly written, but it is a free flow of thoughts from a time of more emotion than I’ve had in months.
I’ve been nervous to write an update on where I am at in the “pursuit” of godliness, but it seems a little easier right now, on the bus tour. The association between my story and godliness may seem a bit far fetched, but it really does parallel. Stick with me. We’ve travelled around several cities in the South, visiting some pretty significant civil rights landmarks/museums/etc. Tonight we watched the movie “Rosewood” on our way to Memphis (from Birmingham, AL). After the movie during our debrief time, a lot of people discussed the intensity of hatred displayed by the men in the movie. It was an awful account of a massacre of up to 300 African American men in a Florida town in 1923. The white leaders of this small town grouped together over the lie of one white woman, looking for black blood. They drank up each night they went out and brutally murdered any black person in sight. This is obviously some intense hatred. But as many students went on discussing this “hatred” by the white men, I continued to feel a sense that the word hatred was missing the mark. It didn’t accurately described what I saw in those men. Instead, what I saw was numbness. Absolute apathy... Frozen cold hearts.
The premise of my paper on godliness was basically that godliness is not simply moral compliance, but a initiative toward love; a pursuit to display reverence toward God through ACTIVE love. Resisting temptation is not the empitome of godliness, but passionate love towards others is. This movie showed me a dark reflection of my own apathy, and therefore my own lack of godliness. Perhaps many of my decisions and actions are moral and even respectable. However, due to the coldness of my heart as of late, I believe I am capable of a lack of action, a careless apathy, a numb dismissal, toward the valuable hearts of others. Had the men in that movie displayed hatred, I might have felt a little less sick. They would have been passionately displaying something. But instead, the lukewarmness made me want to puke. Apparently God too. “So, because you are lukewarm-neither hot nor cold-I am about to spit you out of my mouth” (Rev. 3:16).
Those men drank their feeling hearts away, were turned so cold that they could not regard the value of other breathing, bleeding men. One of them said that lynching a black man feels no different than snapping a cat’s neck.
Have we become this cold about things that matter so significantly to the heart of God? Maybe our legalism (nonacceptable of God’s grace) is a cold rejection toward what the Father has done for us. I know that my heart is not fierce for much of anything right now, and is therefore ungodly. Lukewarm. But- There is one flame that is flickering, even growing, in my heart: a burning desire to be hot again. To be so hot that I can pursue godliness with honesty. That I am not simply living morally, but I am fiercly running toward each day that actively displayed the love of Christ. That I am going far out of my way to initiate loving people. That I am going above and beyond sinlessness and acting in GODliness.
So, there has been little progress in godliness itself, but great progress in the desire for godliness. Perhaps an active longing for godliness is godly. It doesn't really matter in the end- Jesus is going to finish His work in me, even through these valleys.
This is somewhat poorly written, but it is a free flow of thoughts from a time of more emotion than I’ve had in months.
I’ve been nervous to write an update on where I am at in the “pursuit” of godliness, but it seems a little easier right now, on the bus tour. The association between my story and godliness may seem a bit far fetched, but it really does parallel. Stick with me. We’ve travelled around several cities in the South, visiting some pretty significant civil rights landmarks/museums/etc. Tonight we watched the movie “Rosewood” on our way to Memphis (from Birmingham, AL). After the movie during our debrief time, a lot of people discussed the intensity of hatred displayed by the men in the movie. It was an awful account of a massacre of up to 300 African American men in a Florida town in 1923. The white leaders of this small town grouped together over the lie of one white woman, looking for black blood. They drank up each night they went out and brutally murdered any black person in sight. This is obviously some intense hatred. But as many students went on discussing this “hatred” by the white men, I continued to feel a sense that the word hatred was missing the mark. It didn’t accurately described what I saw in those men. Instead, what I saw was numbness. Absolute apathy... Frozen cold hearts.
The premise of my paper on godliness was basically that godliness is not simply moral compliance, but a initiative toward love; a pursuit to display reverence toward God through ACTIVE love. Resisting temptation is not the empitome of godliness, but passionate love towards others is. This movie showed me a dark reflection of my own apathy, and therefore my own lack of godliness. Perhaps many of my decisions and actions are moral and even respectable. However, due to the coldness of my heart as of late, I believe I am capable of a lack of action, a careless apathy, a numb dismissal, toward the valuable hearts of others. Had the men in that movie displayed hatred, I might have felt a little less sick. They would have been passionately displaying something. But instead, the lukewarmness made me want to puke. Apparently God too. “So, because you are lukewarm-neither hot nor cold-I am about to spit you out of my mouth” (Rev. 3:16).
Those men drank their feeling hearts away, were turned so cold that they could not regard the value of other breathing, bleeding men. One of them said that lynching a black man feels no different than snapping a cat’s neck.
Have we become this cold about things that matter so significantly to the heart of God? Maybe our legalism (nonacceptable of God’s grace) is a cold rejection toward what the Father has done for us. I know that my heart is not fierce for much of anything right now, and is therefore ungodly. Lukewarm. But- There is one flame that is flickering, even growing, in my heart: a burning desire to be hot again. To be so hot that I can pursue godliness with honesty. That I am not simply living morally, but I am fiercly running toward each day that actively displayed the love of Christ. That I am going far out of my way to initiate loving people. That I am going above and beyond sinlessness and acting in GODliness.
So, there has been little progress in godliness itself, but great progress in the desire for godliness. Perhaps an active longing for godliness is godly. It doesn't really matter in the end- Jesus is going to finish His work in me, even through these valleys.