Why I threw away my matches "So," began my friend's housemate inquisitively, "You've been a Christian a long time, so tell me: Do you ever -- like -- do you ever lose the fire?".
How do you go about answering these questions when it's been so long since you were part of the kind of subculture where being "on fire for God" was the sine qua non of Christian existence? I had a good stab at the answer -- something about not worrying about "the fire," comparing a relationship to God with a marriage, where the love and commitment is not dependent on the amount of day-to-day passion and feeling you can muster -- but I felt rather that this was one of those questions that couldn't easily be answered without a systematic dismantling of the whole framework or worldview he took for granted as a Christian.
You see, years previously, I would have been asking the same question. Christian living to me was about never losing "the fire," and this meant periods when I was "on fire" and feeling like I was pleasing to God, like I was living the Christian life as it should be lived, but also depressing times when "the fire" wasn't there, and I'd feel I had backslidden, forsaken my first love, and wasn't pleasing to God. And I actually felt quite sad when I went away and thought about my conversation that day, because I wondered whether this young man had been swallowed up by the same machine, and was in for a Christian life full of disappointment and self-doubt. I wondered if he'd ever discover the truth that God is constant even when we are not, or whether he had fallen for the notion that God's feelings towards us go up and down as the amount of "spiritual" activity on our religious heart monitor rises and falls.
Maybe I was totally off in my assessment. Perhaps my mind was working overtime. It's just that sometimes I think of all the young Christians who are at the place I was at as a young Christian, and I want almost to grab them by the collars and tell them they've been conned, that the Christian life doesn't have to be the way they were told.
Paul told the Colossians not to fall prey to hollow and deceptive philosophies. Such philosophies are rife in Christianity: Do this, do that, take this step, take that step, follow this principle, follow that principle, and you'll be a spiritual success. Why do you still submit to the world's rules, asks Paul? Well, Paul, I suppose because someone came along and told us at an early age that this was what the Christian life was all about, and this was how to achieve it, and we never knew any other way. And so we spent our lives jumping through hoops and over obstacles. Paul's message to the Colossians was simple: Forget all that crap; Jesus is enough. (I forget the biblical Greek derivation of that profound theological term, "crap," but you know what I mean.)
Don't worry yourself sick over all that religious hoo-ha about being "on fire": It's just another religious attempt to make the grade; Jesus is enough.
Grace and freedom to you,
Dave
10:53:29 AM 
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