Wrestlemania

We have a tendency to unintentionally/intentionally, through messy thinking, create a 'tin god' that fits into our little self-made box.

Most of us pitch our tents into one of two camps.

The first is the 'Buddy Jesus' camp. Here, Jesus is my Homeboy (you can have the t-shirt to prove it), my boyfriend and the guy I shoot hoops with (okay, I don't know basketball, but all the other euphemisms seemed rooted in the 'mother country'). Buddy Jesus is all-forgiving, graceful to the point of naivety, never angry and abounding in love. My 'Buddy Jesus' often speaks out love without any regard for the truth at all. He lets me do whatever I want, whenever I want...and just loves me all the same. He doesn't want me to change a bit. In fact, just like Buddy Billy, he loves me just the way I am. Every thing's sweet as a nut in Buddy Jesus camp - he's just alright with me. And I'm okay with him too.

Somewhere else (on far higher ground no doubt) and only a pendulum swing away, is the 'Angry God' camp. Here, God is as mad as hell and ready to smite with a mighty smite the first inkling of moral wavering. We're always in a bit of a bind in this camp. We know it's culturally uncool to sacrifice a goat, but we should really do it anyway. It's just the right thing. In 'Angry God' camp, people don't talk too much; just enough to let their 'yes' be 'yes' and their 'no' be 'no'. There's a cozy culture in the 'Angry God' settlement- a compassionless moralism that finds joy in staying away from the edge and in creating new legislation that 'helps' people stay on the good side of a wrathful God who, quite frankly, is quite p'd of with you. Beware the stray thunderbolts in 'Angry God' camp - they keep us on our toes and remind us who's in charge and, more enjoyably, who ballsed up.

Both of these camps are built on a lie. A half-truth is ultimately a kernel of truth wrapped in a lie. A shrink-wrapped lie of our own convenience.

There's a tension that lies in the gulf between these two camps and therein lies the problem: we don't like tension much so we tend to lob in to one camp or the other. Sometimes we're gypsies, skipping from one camp to the other as our pendulum swings from one side to the other. Generally though, we lay our foundations pretty deep in one camp or the other.

The bedrock of another camp looks like this: humble grace. God hates sin but he's a merciful lover. It's fair to say the folks in this camp have the story of God and the life of Jesus on their side. When sin abounded, grace abounded even more. Not because sin was okay, but because grace was bigger.

There's plenty of wrestling in these parts though. Not a tormented, pugilistic, anger-driven punch-up, but a strenuous search for what makes sense and is true of Jesus...and what is us just making stuff up because we decided it sounded pretty good (or someone told us to think it). We continually work out our salvation with fear and trembling. Not because we doubt our salvation, or because we're petrified of God, but because we know that if we're not continually pursuing what's true in Him, where we make camp becomes our lie.

God is slow to anger, true, but He does get angry. God gets angry, true, but he's abounding in love. God's compassion abundantly exceeds His retribution but it isn't oblivious to choices and consequences. He is a rewarder of those who go all out to find Him because He wants to be found. And He wants to be found with a childlike faith that says: 'What's next, Papa?', not a faith in intellectual overdrive that has well-constructed box for God that, although disconnected from relationship, can be readily articulated.

I think Paul wrote for us all when He told us to continually wrestle over these things because as we explore, we get a glimpse of things that are not easy to throw in either the 'Buddy Jesus' camp or the 'Angry God' camp. We come with a childlike faith and we're cheered on to grow up, reach maturity, eat some meat and stop slurping all the milk. But in the wrestle, we realise we need a balanced diet so we become neither spiritually fat nor spiritually emaciated.

Strenuous wholeness doesn't come from living a life with the top down, the radio on and the car in cruise control...and yet there's time for simply enjoying God, being still and just 'cruising' in Him. It's not all about wrestling. Wrestling informs the journey but it isn't the journey. Sure it's part of it, but we don't just wrestle, we live too. Wrestling clarifies and deepens our relationship with Jesus, but it doesn't define it. In him we find out who we are and what we are living for. And we find out what He's giving us to do. And we get moving. But not without continuing to wrestle...because the connection between His heart and our stuff is so easy to sever. And the connection of relationship is the deal that informs that stuff. It's the relationship that leads us to repentance, to obedience, to faithfulness, to participation, to servanthood and to truth. Not disconnected from the author, perfecter and finisher. That's why wrestling has to remain one of our regular pursuits.

One last thought: whenever I think of WWF or any of those phony wrestling deals, I just see something totally bogus and dodgy. (Only Ultimate Fighting has a genuine authenticity about it - but that's another post waiting to happen.) Our wrestle isn't meant to play itself out under the glare of the spotlight to the tune of "We will rock you" or "Eye of the Tiger". It's in community and in the silence, but never as a spectacle. I hope I haven't been guilty of that right here. The big deal is the strenuous wholeness that comes from the wrestle...as much as it comes from the basking, the walking and the enjoyment of the light of God.

Where do you live? And how deep are your foundations in the camp? Have you ever shifted camp?