A Soul Saving Love

This morning I woke up and decided, rather than getting out of bed, I would read. Right now I'm reading a book called "Searching For God Knows What" by Donald Miller. I read his book Blue Like Jazz and loved it so I decided this book might be worth my time. I'm only on the third chapter, but it was this chapter that made me realize something very important.

In this chapter, Miller explains how he decided to renounce God. He flat out told God that He does not exist. While he thought this would gain him a sort of freedom it didn't. You see, Miller was looking for an "identity" at the time. And this is what I first connected with him on.

Many of us find our identity in God. Or at least, the idea of God gives us purpose. I think most people need a way to rationalize the world around them. We need a way to explain why there are trees, people and catastrophic events. Whether it is good or bad, we credit it, or blame it upon God. It brings us comfort to know that there is some magnificent outside force controlling everything. But this is where the problem begins.

We acknowledge this God but we acknowledge Him only to serve our own selfish purposes. We see Him as what Miller liked to describe as "an impersonal god, a god of rules and lists and formulas." The problem with this is that we were created as relational beings.

But this goes back to the idea of searching for an identity. We all have this desire to know who and what we are. We look for confirmation from the people around us. Miller explained that he had always been smart. For him, that was his identity. So when he attended a lecture where the speaker recited poetry and caused every girl in the room to fall in love with him, that is where he decided to seek his identity. He began memorizing poetry and reading. All of this was so that people would think of him as cultured and smart. He explains that he did like reading and he loved the poetry, but the problem was, he was finding his identity through what others were telling him.

Like Miller, I think a lot of us look for our worth in others. We need affirmation and encouragement from those around us. For me this struck a cord. Not one I'm particularly proud of. Too frequently I find my "identity" of sorts through my accomplishments. I've always been the smart one in my family. I got the good grades and did the best in school. My friends know I'm smart and I do well in school. I've found more and more, that I don't try for myself, or for God. I try for the confirmation I receive when I succeed.

While it is nice to have those around you think well of you and to affirm you, I find that that affirmation is never enough. I always need more of it. I guess you could say it's an insecurity of mine. I need to feel important and needed, otherwise I lose my purpose in a way.

Miller connected the two ideas of the need for an identity and the concept of a relational God. Rather than looking at all of the formulas, lists and rules of God, what if we looked past that to the more obvious message of the Bible? I think the motivation behind our theology often times is relational.

My need and the brokenness inside me that causes me to want to be smart in the eyes of others are all driven by relational motives. I want and need other people to value me. But the gospel of Jesus is relevant to that exact need. It just never occurred to me before. Miller stated that "Jesus was always, and I mean always, talking about love, about people, about relationship, and He never once broke anything into lists or formulas." By dissecting and analyzing the Bible, we are missing its blatant message. It is not a self-help guide as we often use it. But rather, it is an invitation. An invitation to know God.

If the gospel of Jesus is relational; that is, if our brokenness will be fixed, not by our understanding of theology, but by God telling us who we are, then this would require a kind of intimacy of which heaven only knows.

This is the way Miller said to think about it: "imagine, a being as great as God's, with feet like trees, and a voice like rushing wind, telling you that you are His cherished creation." This is rather exciting when you really stop to think about it. Earthly love, or rather the stuff I was trying to get by sounding smart, is temporal and slight so that it has to be given again and again in order for us to feel any sense of security; but God's love, God's voice and presence, would instill our souls with such affirmation we would need nothing more and would cause us to love other people so much we would be willing to die for them. And perhaps, that is what the apostles stumbled upon.

All of this is to say; I realized that what I'm looking for is more than just the love of my friends and the importance they give me. I need God's love and confirmation. Without it, I amount to shallow and confused being. How to seek that confirmation is definitely not something that is easy, or that I honestly know how to do. But it is something I hope to be able to discover. And it's also something I hope my friends have already discovered or will come to discover.