I hear the phrase “politically incorrect” used a lot these days. In our culture there are things you are just not supposed to say or do, and if you cross the line, you become “politically incorrect.” Most of us have been classified that way from time to time. I know I have.
There is a parallel, more subtle practice, within the Christian community. Here we are expected to adhere to certain acceptable doctrines and behaviors, and when we cross over the line, we are looked down upon by some believers and considered to be “spiritually incorrect.”
The older I get the more I seem to be finding God in all the wrong places - in supposedly spiritually incorrect places among spiritually incorrect people.
I remember the first time this happened. I said “Wow, Lord, I didn’t expect to find You here!" And somehow I seemed to picture Him looking at me with sad and yet loving eyes, and saying, “Why not, you're here?” My Lord, who is always spiritually correct, was with a group of people whom many in the church today consider spiritually incorrect and look down upon. Christians sometimes say, or infer by what they do not say, that someone “really needs to get himself together!” as if they believe their own lives are “together” and that Christianity is composed of folks who have gotten their act together and “arrived” spiritually.
Henri Nouwen, a Dutch Catholic priest, authored forty books on the spiritual life with titles like “The Wounded Healer,” and "The Way of the Beloved." I love his books and have been richly blessed by his life. After nearly twenty years of teaching, he left the academic world to spend the rest of his life taking care of mentally handicapped people at the L’Arche community in Toronto, Canada.
Once, when he was still teaching, a young man came up and asked him if there was any chance that he could ever become like Nouwen, since he had doubts about his faith, dry times in prayer, and struggled with certain sins in his life. Nouwen responded, “...Christianity is not for ‘getting yourself together...'”
That young man thought about what Nouwen said and later wrote a book in which he referred to that incident and said he had learned that “Christianity offered a journey that was not just sweetness and light but thundering darkness and doubt, thorns as well as roses, nails as well as doves...and that when, in spite of all my efforts I still hadn’t 'gotten my life together’. I realized that it didn’t necessarily mean I wasn’t a Christian.”
I am 67 years old. I was a pastor for over 36 years, and I still have not “gotten my life together” and arrived at some advanced (or even somewhat acceptable) level of spirituality. At times I still stumble home at night with mud on my face, thorn scratches on my legs and arms, filled with doubts about many things, and wondering what life is all about anyway. But, as you know, it is not spiritually correct to admit that, especially if you’re a ex-pastor!
But it’s okay because I have met God “out there” -- out where the muddy, scratched, confused and rejected and spiritually incorrect doubters live. And when I venture out there, I am no longer surprised when I see the Lord there too.
A couple years ago I was reading Psalm 18, and when I came to verse 19, my heart was filled with a strange and urgent desire. The verse says, He brought me forth also into a broad place; He rescued me, because He delighted in me. I prayed, “Lord bring me into this broad place! I want to live only within the boundaries of Your love and Your will. Free me from my self-made conservative fences and help me to love and accept all whom you love and accept."
I never dreamed what that prayer would mean and where it would lead. It has lead to more joy and more pain than I can ever remember experiencing, and to a loneliness and sense of isolation that, to be honest, even the Lord himself can not diminish. I feel a bit like Abraham must have felt when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went (Hebrews 11:8).
There is a parallel, more subtle practice, within the Christian community. Here we are expected to adhere to certain acceptable doctrines and behaviors, and when we cross over the line, we are looked down upon by some believers and considered to be “spiritually incorrect.”
The older I get the more I seem to be finding God in all the wrong places - in supposedly spiritually incorrect places among spiritually incorrect people.
I remember the first time this happened. I said “Wow, Lord, I didn’t expect to find You here!" And somehow I seemed to picture Him looking at me with sad and yet loving eyes, and saying, “Why not, you're here?” My Lord, who is always spiritually correct, was with a group of people whom many in the church today consider spiritually incorrect and look down upon. Christians sometimes say, or infer by what they do not say, that someone “really needs to get himself together!” as if they believe their own lives are “together” and that Christianity is composed of folks who have gotten their act together and “arrived” spiritually.
Henri Nouwen, a Dutch Catholic priest, authored forty books on the spiritual life with titles like “The Wounded Healer,” and "The Way of the Beloved." I love his books and have been richly blessed by his life. After nearly twenty years of teaching, he left the academic world to spend the rest of his life taking care of mentally handicapped people at the L’Arche community in Toronto, Canada.
Once, when he was still teaching, a young man came up and asked him if there was any chance that he could ever become like Nouwen, since he had doubts about his faith, dry times in prayer, and struggled with certain sins in his life. Nouwen responded, “...Christianity is not for ‘getting yourself together...'”
That young man thought about what Nouwen said and later wrote a book in which he referred to that incident and said he had learned that “Christianity offered a journey that was not just sweetness and light but thundering darkness and doubt, thorns as well as roses, nails as well as doves...and that when, in spite of all my efforts I still hadn’t 'gotten my life together’. I realized that it didn’t necessarily mean I wasn’t a Christian.”
I am 67 years old. I was a pastor for over 36 years, and I still have not “gotten my life together” and arrived at some advanced (or even somewhat acceptable) level of spirituality. At times I still stumble home at night with mud on my face, thorn scratches on my legs and arms, filled with doubts about many things, and wondering what life is all about anyway. But, as you know, it is not spiritually correct to admit that, especially if you’re a ex-pastor!
But it’s okay because I have met God “out there” -- out where the muddy, scratched, confused and rejected and spiritually incorrect doubters live. And when I venture out there, I am no longer surprised when I see the Lord there too.
A couple years ago I was reading Psalm 18, and when I came to verse 19, my heart was filled with a strange and urgent desire. The verse says, He brought me forth also into a broad place; He rescued me, because He delighted in me. I prayed, “Lord bring me into this broad place! I want to live only within the boundaries of Your love and Your will. Free me from my self-made conservative fences and help me to love and accept all whom you love and accept."
I never dreamed what that prayer would mean and where it would lead. It has lead to more joy and more pain than I can ever remember experiencing, and to a loneliness and sense of isolation that, to be honest, even the Lord himself can not diminish. I feel a bit like Abraham must have felt when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went (Hebrews 11:8).
May God bless YOU today as you walk with Him as a pilgrim in a lost and darkening world.
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