A New Formula

I realize that clichés are annoying.  I realize that usually, if you see the point of them, you no longer have whatever problem they are supposed to address.  Or else they just point up what the problem is in the first place without you being able to fix it.

  And you should realize that I don't tend to see things in "math" terms.  But, for the sake of communicating, I am going to express what the pants-wettingly enthusiastic propaganda writers and poster designers at Nortel used to call "a paradigm shift." (value-add for the whole virtual team, rolling out and ramping up as soon as feasible, folks, with synergy and increased effectivity for all)

  I wrote some books, and I've gone through quite the ecclesiastical gymnastics trying to get a handle on what works better for me than the way that I was raised clearly didn't.  I can express it like this (And listen: don't think about it, talk about, consider it, balance it or argue with it.  Try it):

I tossed this old thing out:

(My normal week + Church stuff) - (anything my church was suspicious of) = wanting to be dead

and have tried this instead:

My normal day + God = whatever that turns out to be

  So much better.  It's like I'm not spending my day perpetually perturbed, mourning thwarted assumptions and expectations.  The "plus instead of takeaway" approach feels very different.  I'm convinced lately that if we manifested the fruits of the Spirit, like at all (I say manifested, not "dutifully simulated") everything would be a whole lot better than it is.  According to Wikipedia, the fruit(s) is/are:

• 1 Love (Greek: agape, Latin: caritas)
• 2 Joy (Greek: chara, Latin: gaudium)
• 3 Peace (Greek: eirene, Latin: pax)
• 4 Patience (Greek: makrothumia, Latin: longanimitas)
• 5 Kindness (Greek: chrestotes, Latin: benignitas)
• 6 Goodness (Greek: agathosune, Latin: bonitas)
• 7 Faithfulness (Greek: pistis, Latin: fides)
• 8 Gentleness (Greek: prautes, Latin: modestia)
• 9 Self-control (Greek: egkrateia, Latin: continentia)

     The way I was raised involved being scolded for doing (or even seeming) anything that was kind of the opposite of what someone with these virtues would do.  It was like we thought the secret to patience was simply hiding impatience.  Like the secret to love was simply hiding your resentment deeply.  So we all did that.  Tamped that gunpowder down firmly inside ourselves with each passing afternoon.  
  There was the bizarre idea that the path to these fruits of the Spirit was simply obeying the bible's commandment to "do" them.  Like you can obey your way to being a better person inside.  

  But the fruits of the Spirit aren't commandments or rules or guidelines.  They are a description of what kind of person you are, in your essential self, if you have the Spirit in there.  

  Thing is, whenever we clearly didn't manifest this fruit, no one ever pointed us toward Him.  Ever.  Instead, they reminded us to clamp down harder on our natural tendencies, ourself.  With (get this) our willpower.  Which the bible refers to as "the flesh."  They encouraged us to fake these virtues.  Act as if we actually had them, actually were that good person.  Big believers in "fake it until you make it."  Faking them was okay so long as you didn't ever for a moment forget what a fake you really were.

  Well, needless to say, that doesn't work.  Like, at all.  The very reason we needed a Christ to come down and save us is that we CAN'T just simulate or obey or "will" virtues like love or joy.  We can try to suppress facial expressions, tones of voice and actions which reveal that we are impatient alright, but that isn't nearly the same thing as actually becoming more patient as a person.  And all that "peace" that's talked about in the bible?  That comes from becoming more at harmony with God and in one's self.  It doesn't come from repression and warring with self.

  Interestingly, Paul doesn't just list the fruit of the Spirit.  He also lists the fruits of the flesh (The Flesh: the incomplete human, disconnected from God and trying to get along with human systems and willpower and the best of plans and intentions.)  The first few of these rotten fruits were ones that our church men loved to preach against ceaselessly, because they sounded quite saucy: 
 

sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft. 
 

  We felt pretty good preaching against these.  We often referenced the Catholics (and maybe hockey or television) when preaching against idolatry.  Pretty hard to preach against witchcraft in the 80s, so we preached against Judas Priest and Dungeons & Dragons and the astrology column in The Ottawa Citizen.

  But our church often has a lot of the following stuff, so we didn't hear much preaching against it at all:
 

hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy. 
 

  And then there were two more that we were once again happy to preach against, because once again, other people were doing them, and once again, they sounded quite saucy.  We loved to talk about bad people no doubt doing bad things because we didn't see them out at church:
 

drunkenness and orgies.
 

  We had to seem different from regular people, in order to be a Good Testimony.  I don't remember hearing that we could actually become different. We were all horrible sinners, and had to just try not to act it.  It was all about outer appearance.  We were to seem better, while being hyperaware that we weren't. Christianity was about pretending to be like Christ, by acting as we thought he would, like play actors (Hypocrite: from Greek hypokritēs-actor)  And we were to attract others to this lifestyle of playacting.

  Well, that's not enough for me anymore.  I'm not willing to live the rest of my life suppressing the opposites of these virtues and feeling that's good enough.  We've suffered enough by eating that Fruit, and should know a good from a suppressed evil by now.  I'm not willing to try to hide, sit on or generally negate my negatives, and be content with that, just as if I had those "positives."  I want those virtues. I want to actually be these things.  I don't think that's unreasonable to want, either.  I think it's entry level Christianity.  Anything less than that isn't anything I understand.

  To recap: no amount of knowledge of or obedience to the bible/church lifestyle routines is going to make me loving, inside myself.  That only comes directly from God.  The bible points me toward God.  A good church and good Christians might do that too, though not nearly as well.  But the bible doesn't provide me with rules I can follow, myself, without my really having a personal and meaningful relationship with Him, and magically have it all work out just fine.  Nope.  That's what an idol is.

  So I'm not going to try to act more patient.  I'm going to look to God and wait to actually become more patient.  I'm sure that's making some of you nervous, this reckless, idealistic foolishness.  But it makes me feel quite differently.  This all makes me feel like things are looking up, like there's more in store than I'd suspected, Godwards.  Like we've been settling for a Christianity that doesn't actually require Christ.

  I've been reading the bible lately.  And not just the passages with wrath and foreskins and dung, though those things sorta keep cropping up, in the Old Testament especially.  I was always taught to read the bible so I could learn and obey.  Well that's not enough anymore either.  I'm not interested in learning about liberty and love.  I'm not content with knowing what the bible says about them.  I need freedom.  I need to love and feel loved, rather than repeating "love one another" all by myself, suspicious of other people.  I'm wanting to actually fulfil ("obey") the laws of liberty and of love.
  And "obey" is used ironically here.  It's not like obeying the speed limit.  It requires being better, not just acting better.  I'm trying to read the bible like a catalogue of stuff I can order.  I partly blame Marita Smith for that.
  It's simple: read the fruits of the spirit and instead of following the trained behaviour and reminding yourself never to forget to always remember to daily act like you are a virtuous person with these traits; instead of following the trained behaviour and reminding yourself never to forget to always remember to daily suppress and clamp down on their opposites, read it like something you've ordered from Sears.  (It may take some time to arrive.  But I'm settling for no imitations.)
  Listen: You want the Holy Spirit in your life.  Why?  He's comforting.  He makes communication possible.  Also, he comes with that list of nine nifty features which will actually make the whole world a better place, and you a better person people will endlessly waste time in trying to figure out.

  Because the bible doesn't say "act as if you loved one another.  Act as if you loved your enemies."  (Good thing.  I can't even fake all that, much less feel it or act that way.)  It actually says "Love one another.  Love your enemies."  And it means it.  

  And it doesn't just mean "conjure up warm and fuzzy fake feelings toward them."  It really means what it says.  And it's not romantic love, or friend love.  It means love your neighbour as yourself.  (For people who hate themselves: deal with your neighbours the way you'd deal with your kids, if you had any.)  You're to actually want to see the growth and betterment of everyone.  Because you want it, as if it was happening to you personally.  Because God wants it and it will make everything better.  You want actual virtues.  We can't fake or obey, learn or "understand" our way to them.  

  There's more than a mere paper drawing of a birthday cake on offer.  Because it is your birthday.  Get ready.  (and don't say you don't deserve to have a birthday, or didn't do a terrible lot of the work when being born (again), that you haven't really been truly living a life that's worthy of your having been born, or that it's really okay, you really just don't want to allow people to celebrate, or your Dad to give you stuff.)  Open up.  Come on in.  There's a bunch of stuff waiting.  It's your birthday.

  Another tiny epiphany I had recently while driving through the Adirondacks and idly seeing my phone, on the seat beside me, lighting up over and over as person after person posted on a Facebook group about "Well, Christians are to obey the law of liberty, of course, but we have to always remember..." and "Well, that's all well and good, but Christians can't just go around..."  I suddenly realized:
 

"I'm not willing to have a single conversation more with one more Christian about liberty, if he or she isn't free."
 

  Are you at liberty?  If not, what did Christ die for?  Does he know you or will he deny you?

  Like, I'd been accepting it as annoying but normal for any discussion of grace or freedom or liberty to mostly involve Christians trying nervously, desperately to "balance" all of that stuff.  To put a guardrail around it all and keep kids from playing there.  To toss in stuff about responsibility and duty and obedience. Safe stuff.  Structure stuff.  Stuff that we like.
  Just like how my dad, every time bible discussions involved too much discussion of God's love, always needed it "balanced" with a bunch of talk about God's light, His divine wrath and judgment.    He needed to hear a lot of talk about responsibility, and mostly he wanted to hear about Separation. (The Christian duty of not living a life, so as to be seen as separate from people in This World.)  

  You want to make church people nervous?  Tell them Christians are free.  That Christ died to set us at liberty.  And so we are free now.  For reals.

  Oh, but should we go around doing whatever we want, even if it's clearly against scripture?  

  I'm not even going to have a conversation like that anymore, if it's going to be wholly theoretical.  I'm not going to argue about rainbows with blind people.  Not going to waste my time.  If it's with people who are enemies of Christian liberty.  If it's with people who are terrified and uncomfortable to even have a discussion about liberty, let alone try to accept any.

  Here's a very hard statement: Christians are at liberty, or they're not Christians.  Christ came to lead captivity captive.  If people who call themselves Christians think they need to be bound in all kinds of shame-based, peer-pressure, bullying, competitive piety stuff, that's them negating the work of Christ.  Paul is very clear on that.  

  When I see Christians getting press, they're always trying to limit others.  Leave that up to God, I say.  It is no more our job to limit others than it's our job to die for them and rise again so they can rise again with us, new creatures unbound by what once was our situation.  There is a limit to how much "warning sinners" is a good idea, before you become Fred Phelps.  And without actual love, the real deal, and not just the actions or semblance of it, the warnings are as intelligible as someone smashing a cymbal right in your ear in a kind of Morse code you've never heard of.

  But, I mean, do you have to sin to be free?
  What a ridiculous idea.  Yet it's kind of the main argument used by Christian-haters-of-liberty.  We don't want to look free, do we? People might think we're sinning!  Or they might want to be freed too!

  One thing I know: if you call yourself a Christian, and you tend to hide a lot of your self from God, due to shame, or to try to keep a tiny corner of freedom and identity to yourself, then you haven't even progressed in the biblical narrative to the point in the story where you get kicked out of the Garden, let alone to getting liberated from Egypt, and certainly not to the point of having screwed up your relationship with God by repeatedly cheating on Him with idols, and certainly not to the point where Jesus came to fix things, at first for the Jewish nation, and then with the coming of Paul, to broaden things out so that us gentiles had a hope of being grafted into it.  No.  You're still hiding, naked but for your leaves, behind some bush somewhere, feeling that pleasing God is about dutifully feeling the shame.  I not very humbly submit that you have mistaken God for other people.  Church people, usually.

  Stand before the God who made you.  Take your licks.  Stop hiding.  You will find that He's not going to mock and judge you for your nakedness, but will clothe you.  You will find that He won't take away your freedom and identity, but will give you a frightening amount more of it.  He made you.  He will not unmake you.  He will continue to build you.  And you will be more you than you have ever been.  Because He's like that. He felt the world needed a totally gratuitous number of completely different beetles, for instance.  And birds and berries.

  The Fruit didn't just make us now able to have stupid Facebook arguments about ethics, about right and wrong.  It didn't just give us a conscience so we could feel shame, which always and only divides us from God.  (I know.  We love our shame.  Well, you will have to lay that aside if you want to go talk to God, butt hanging draftily out of that leaf apron as it is at this point).  The Fruit made us know what was Goodness, and what was Evil, and it made us able to know that we aren't Done.  We are very unfinished.  And when we see that, we can go to God about it.  Poor, naked, wretched, blind.  He works on that.  Often He waits to see if we notice we need Him.  Once we admit what we already feel and know and can't do, He makes things better.

  And He keeps working.  And He fixes things in the way and time He wants.  He ignores our views on what needs to get fixed first. ("First I'd like a flatter tummy...") He also leaves stuff that He's designed into us on (mysterious) purpose, that we very much want gone.

  Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.  Time to stop being a crabapple tree doing its level best to grow crabapples that look kinda like oranges because people like oranges, right?  Time to let God build us, instead of other Christians, and their churches.  Time to let go self-improvement and do-it-yourself fixes, and go to the Dealership instead.