Unachievable Cleansing

      I believe that as Christians we all yearn for a final or ultimate cleansing, a healing, that will take care of our attitudes, behavior, thinking, and our souls once and for all. A cleansing that will result in our once-and-for-all transformation into the person we want to be and who we believe God wants us to be. Yet no matter how much we yearn, it doesn't happen. It never will. Oh, perhaps we experience something that makes us feel like we have reached that ultimate state but we eventually discover that our feelings of wholeness begin to wane. Our humanness may allow us small steps toward transformation, and of course we are the better for it, but the big, final transformation frustratingly eludes us. After awhile and with reflection concerning all we know of human sinfulness, can we deduce that perhaps we are never meant to be totally transformed? Would a total transformation give us permission to stop seeking a higher level of righteous behavior, to stop seeking to act like Christ, to stop desiring a deeper relationship with the Creator? Is it possible that a total cleansing and healing would give us the illusion that we have achieved some form of presence or being that we are actually incapable of, given the nature of our humanness? Perhaps that would be something along the lines of Mormon belief, where, since Jesus was human yet became God, we are capable of the same?
      I have no answer for that, of course. I do desire complete cleansing, but my own sin consistently rears its ugly head, stuffing my own head back into the ostrich hole of reality. Yet immersed in God's creation, I have no difficulty perceiving my own fragility and inability, as Paul said, "to do what we want to do," because I consistently do that which I would rather avoid.
      I took a two hour walk today, back on the farm of one of our church patriarchs. It couldn't be termed an actual walk though. It was more like a plodding lurch as I trudged in the snow through the uninhabited sheep pastures and thick briers guarding the woods. I don't know what the temperature was but I believe it was in the 20s, with gusting winds that made the snow quickly snake atop the ice and cause it to suddenly rear up in great frozen clouds like an untamed thoroughbred. My cheeks are a burning bright red from the cold, wind, and bombardment with snow and ice crystals.

      I had my trusty camera with me. I downloaded the photos when I got home and was not surprised to find no "usable" images. There was beauty all around me but it refused to be taken capture by my camera. My lack of satisfactory photographic results did not diminish the walk in any way. Especially the part where I followed some deer tracks along a path that had let it's brier defenses down and emerged on a cliff overlooking Swatara Creek.

Swatara Creek

      Looking up and down the creek with its white banks and sporadically frozen waters granted me an expansive view of the creek that my camera was incapable of capturing. I started down the steep side of the foothill thinking I might have better luck if I could get to the side of the creek.  About halfway down I paused and turned around to look back up the steep hill I was descending.  

      That's when I realized, with the sun starting to set, that I was in an unenviable position. I wasn't sure I could get back up the hill, with the snow and ice laying atop a substantially unstable layer of dead leaves. As I looked back down the hill I wondered how Palmyra Rescue was going to get to my location should I continue down and not be able to get back up again.  So half-way down, I reversed course and went back up the hill, foregoing a beautiful close-up view of the Swatty in favor of a dry, warm evening at home.  Exhausted but victorious, my feet crested the hill and the ground became more level.  I hadn't fallen and hadn't broken anything.  But I lingered, not wanting to leave the beauty I had found.  Finding my own fragility and weakness among the cold snow and steep terrain was not fearful, but somehow comforting.  There were things greater and much more powerful than I, and that was as it should be. There was, and is, no question that I am not the center of the universe, God's, or even my own. That's a really good thing to come face to face with on a regular basis.  

Ken

      It took me awhile to get back to Ken's farmhouse but I eventually struggled in. He had the fire going in the wood stove and it was cozy and warm. I did a few things around the house for Ken, sat and talked awhile, and then came home to face the wrath of my too-long imprisoned dogs. I felt cleansed, not totally, but at least a little. I was put in my place and once again "put" God in God's. There is nothing that can do that like nature-a glimpse into the depth of God's creativity in the world and the cosmos in conjunction with the fragility of God's miraculous creation of life.

Christian Apologetics and the Ideal Life

Christian apologists were theologians who defended and advocated for the Christian message in the first centuries of the Christian Church as it developed in the first few centuries following Christ's death and resurrection. Obviously, their arguement and defense was in opposition to many of the held beliefs in that contemporary, Hellenistic Roman world.

The following is a paragraph titled "Chapter V - The Manners of the Christians" from The Epistle of Mathetes to Diognetus, believed to have been written in the 2nd Century. Describing the early Christian community, this description of Christian character and behavior stirs feeling of longing and desire within us; to realize that the community described was not simply a wished-for idealazation of what Christians should or could be, but a living entity that lived as we wish to live, but fail. How we wish we were a part of this community today. One wonders how the church could get back to this way of life, living, and testimony - a testimony by example.

"For the Christians are distinguished from other men neither by country, nor language, nor the customs which they observe. For they neither inhabit cities of ther own, nor employ a peculiar form of speech, nor lead a life which is marked out by any singularity. The course of conduct which they follow has not been devised by any speculation or deliberation of inquisitive men; nor do they, like some, proclaim themselves the advocates of any merely human doctrines. But, inhabiting Greek as well as barbarian cities, according as the lot of each of them has determined, and following the customs of the natives in respect to clothing, food, and the rest of their ordinary conduct, they display to us their wonderful and confessedly striking method of life. They dwell in their own countries, but simply as sojourners. As citizens, they share in all things with others, and yet endure all things as if foreigners. Every foreign land is to them as their native country, and every land of the birth as a land of strangers. They marry, as do all[others]; they beget children; but they do not destroy their offspring. They have a common table, but not a common bed. They are in the flesh, but they do not like after the flesh. They pass their days on earth, but they are citizens of heaven. They obey the prescribed laws, and at the same time surpass the laws by their lives. They love all men, and are persecuted by all. They are unknown and condemned; they are put to death, and restored to life. They are poor, yet make many rich; they are in lack of all things, and yet abound in all; they are dishounoured, and yet in their very dishonour are glorified. They are evil spoken of, and yet are justified; they are reviled, and blessed; they are insulted, and repay the insult with honor; they do good, yet they are punished as evil-doers. When punished, they rejoice as if quickened into life; they are assailed by the Jews as foreigners, and are persecuted by the Greeks; yet those who hate them are unable to assign any reason for their hatred."

He later says, "Let your heart be your wisdom; and let your life by true knowledge inwardly recieved."

Yup. I think we could all live with that!