the man behind the curtain

Sometimes I find that I have some of the most convoluted ways of coming up with ideas. Some of you who know me more personally probably assume that everything I think, write, say, plan, etc comes from a very logical, structured kind of background or way of thinking. Sadly, this is probably about as far from the truth as can be in many cases. I usually meander my way to something interesting from a topic that only has a glancing relevance to what I end up figuring out. For example, my topic of the day...

Poverty as Blessing -- Matt Ritchie
"I find myself wondering: how would our faith communities be different if, instead of emphasizing God's blessings in providing abundance, we talked about how God finds us in our places of poverty?"

Matt's post really started me thinking about finding God or letting God find me in the places where I am weak and vulnerable. I will never be able to find God by focusing on areas in which I feel strongest, and he is most likely never going to reach me there because I haven't left much room. Actually, I take that back... God could reach me wherever he darn well chose to reach me -- let's just say my attention would be most rapt when I am smacked full in the face with something I am too proud to admit I feel a certain level of inadequacy about. Oddly, even though we should know that God can point out every flaw and every strength, we continue to build up our facade which is held up by an assortment of hacked together beliefs, understandings, arguments, skills and experiences. All of this we keep neatly hidden behind our curtain which we think only God can pierce, and we show off the very hip, cool, and organized facade to everyone we meet in life. At this point is when trouble begins to brew...

The conversation starts off fairly simple - just two people talking about life. However, things suddenly start to turn towards spirituality and while you don't necessarily disagree 100% with what is being said, something doesn't sit right. You realize with great difficulty that the other person seems to know where you stand on a lot of things, but doesn't take the same position and so you jump into action. You start to defend some of your positions and ideals which you feel are being disrespected, only to find you are parried with more information than you've ever had to cope with in a response and none of it truly disrespectful. Each new point in the conversation leads to more frustration with the other person and yourself, it feels like the walls are falling in on you and no matter how fast you react and repair the facade you are losing a battle with yourself.

You see, the other person has pierced through and seen the man behind the curtain, the one scrambling to reinforce the set on stage which is threatening to fall backwards on top of him. It seems no matter how many times you insist they "pay no attention to that man behind the curtain," they continue to find all the weak spots. The moment they peeked behind the curtain, the defense began and the explanations flew wildly so as to explain the reason behind this support beam, that two-by-four, those guide wires, and these patchwork grouping of nails. Only each time a piece of the kludgy framework is defended, you realize how shoddy and inadequate it really is, but you cannot admit you were misguided or uninformed. By now both you and your conversation partner have noticed the creaking sounds, and you are faced with a choice: to listen to this person a bit more and perhaps learn something new which could help you firm up your life and eliminate the need for the curtain; or defiantly stick to your guns and hope you can shore up ye olde facade that oddly seems a bit less lustrous as it was about 20 minutes ago.

So ask yourself, are you certain of your motives and mindset when you are conversing with someone? Are you truly listening, or are you scrambling for a defensive strategy? Personally, I've tried to cut back on grinding my axe and fortifying my ideals behind the scenes, I say let it all topple... its too much work trying to keep up appearances for the sake of someone else's pristine picture of Christianity, or my own for that matter. Why do we feel the need to "keep up with the Joneses" with our faith when in reality we are supposed to be keeping up with Jesus?

I suppose the weeks of infrequent blogging have caught up with, sorry if its feels/reads like a bit of a rant...