Note to Self

A becoming love letter 💌

My heart is heavy and honestly, I want to scroll on my phone until the feeling once again subsides and I can tuck it away for another day…

I’m disappointed.

I’m also grieved.

About the same thing I’m grieved over frequently.

The state of us.

The state of much of the church.

The state of myself…

Even as I grow and intentionally let Jesus form me into His image; as I lean into becoming love while raising my son, choosing to serve others faithfully at work when I have the freedom and opportunity weekly to do the opposite and as I go about living life in general, I’m at times painfully aware of how far I still have to travel on the journey of becoming love, and other times I’m just proud of how far I’ve come.

The following is merely my musings about the distance we may have yet to go in the process of becoming more like him…

The expression that we’ve taken on isn’t always one of love and kindness, one of self sacrifice and compassion. We don’t always look much like Jesus at all.

The mock term “christian” meaning “follower of Christ” or “Christ-one” meant as a chide remark in its roots, now looks like an unattainable benchmark we refuse even to reach for.

To be a follower of Christ, an apprentice of Jesus, a disciple, isn’t really popular in Christianity today, it seems…

At least they’re not the loudest voices.

(And maybe that’s more like Christ than elevating your voice, as writing this article is my way of doing?)

In a conversation with a friend recently on topics akin to this one, a phrase she said struck me, “there are pieces of us that are to be crucified with Christ and then there are pieces of us that God created and breathed life into,” as if the parts of us hidden in Christ and dead to ourselves are not more alive than the parts of us… unsurrendered?

We similarly parse through the Scriptures, keeping what resonates, feels authentic (another word for “easy”?) and we quietly abandon the rest at best, or distort at worst. We misinterpret and misapply daily.

We become our own enemy in the garden of our souls, asking “did God really say?” about things Jesus said that are NOT up for debate even by scholars at the helm of translating them.

Did Jesus REALLY say, “love your neighbor as yourself?”

Well, sure.

But he said “as yourself.”

“I need to love myself FIRST.”

Me first.

This is where the heaviness lies.

Where the grief voices itself over and over.

Me first.

My comfort.

My boundaries.

My life.

My choice.

Me me me.

We sound just like everyone else.

Radical individualism, (if I may reach for concepts I only just grasp to support my point) has taken hold of not just culture at large, but the church.

It’s no longer for the sake of the world that God sent his son.

How many times do we read, “while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” And read “me” in the place of “us.”

We have fallen head first into a “personal relationship with God” that looks just as dysfunctional as our relationship with our dentist.

We know we’re meant to floss and brush every day, we know what’s good for us, but we treat Jesus as our cosmic dental hygenist, booking an appointment and time in the seat, mouth open, ready to receive often only when we are in pain or notice we’re pretty discolored in some areas. No longer pearly white, we come to Him asking to be made whole.

And when he gets us cleaned up and filled. We say “thanks,” and run off, full of conviction of the need to floss our hearts daily with scripture. “Search me and know me!” We say immediately following; imitating the psalmist’s intimate request.

Then we quietly slip back into the grips of the strongest habits of our lives.

Me first.

We come when we need him.

We leave when we’re out of pain.

“I’ll call you in another decade”

In the meantime we twist his commandments to love the lord our “God with ALL our heart, and love our neighbor,” settling for the sexier and easier (more “authentic”?) “as ourselves” as permission to live the life I want at the pace I want with the habits that feel good and provide no friction to our lives.

At the risk of riding the toothy metaphor too long: we quit flossing.

No need.

We aren’t in pain anymore!

My personal lord and savior Jesus Christ, has given me a hard reset.

But no where in scripture, as I read the gospels does Jesus put me first, or even himself.

He’s not interested in “self actualization” if in actuality we aren’t becoming living letters of love, if we aren’t actually filled with the spirit and producing the evidential fruit of a branch that’s abiding in the Vine.

We seem to forget that “love does not seek its own.”

Its own agenda

Its own gain

Its own recognition

Its own fulfillment

If we really would read scripture, write it on our hearts, we’d see a counter-“me-culture” pure religion that is so much more than the therapeutic self-improvement method we’ve made it.

Paul himself, in the breath after telling the church of Corinth to earnestly desire spiritual gifts, suggests that without love all the gifts and good deeds he’s just listed, (things like speaking with words of angels and giving everything to the poor) are nothing but childish playthings.

Maturity looks like love and love looks like something.

The gifts are available for the purpose of building another up; if use of a gifting does not edify another in a specific context, (such as speaking in tongues without an interpreter present) he cautions them against practicing it.

This is the intent behind every spiritual gifting and practice.

To build another up.

Something that does not come naturally and is often diametrically opposed when we are focused on “self-love.”

I’m not suggesting we abandon ourselves altogether and neither is Paul. He himself makes the comment that he prays in tongues more than anyone he’s writing to.

An act of self-edification and thanksgiving, communicating with God’s spirit in a way that supersedes our intellect and employs the purest expressions of our own spirit in communion with His.

But Paul says he’d rather speak five-words to the building up of the church than ten thousand words in the spirit.

This is telling.

If we’d live our lives as Paul instructs. We would neither forsake ourselves completely nor build the alter to ourselves that the idolatry of me-centered living quietly constructs.

So what now?

What fruit-of-love is forming in me through this lament?

What do these words have to offer?

My desire is that these words serve as an invitation for inventory.

Not to shame or belittle, but to gently tap the things in our lives that are only serving ourselves and offer up an alternative that doesn’t forget me nor exalt me.

I still feel heavy after writing this, but I no longer feel the same quality of discouragement; that is, I don’t feel as hopeless.

My hope and prayer is that we the church, return to a pure religion that is steeped in the essence of what we believe: the gospel. The good news of Love incarnate who still lives in us today.

May we grow in understanding that what Jesus speaks as truth: “whoever seeks to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will preserve it.” this being not a death sentence to a life of fulfillment and happiness, rather an ultimate guide into them.

Becoming Love,

Celeste