What It Means To Be a Child of God

Matthew 10
8 "...Freely you have received, freely give. 9 Do not take along any gold or silver or copper in your belts; 10 take no bag for the journey, or extra tunic, or sandals or a staff; for the worker is worth his keep.

11 "Whatever town or village you enter, search for some worthy person there and stay at his house until you leave. 12 As you enter the home, give it your greeting. 13 If the home is deserving, let your peace rest on it; if it is not, let your peace return to you. 14 If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake the dust off your feet when you leave that home or town. 15 I tell you the truth, it will be more bearable for Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town. 16 I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.

17 "Be on your guard against men; they will hand you over to the local councils and flog you in their synagogues. 18 On my account you will be brought before governors and kings as witnesses to them and to the Gentiles. 19 But when they arrest you, do not worry about what to say or how to say it. At that time you will be given what to say, 20 for it will not be you speaking, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.

21 "Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child; children will rebel against their parents and have them put to death. 22 All men will hate you because of me, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved. 23 When you are persecuted in one place, flee to another...

24 "A student is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master. 25 It is enough for the student to be like his teacher, and the servant like his master. If the head of the house has been called Beelzebub, how much more the members of his household! 26 So do not be afraid of them. There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known. 27 What I tell you in the dark, speak in the daylight; what is whispered in your ear, proclaim from the roofs. 28 Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell. 29 Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father. 30 And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. 31 So don't be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.

32 "Whoever acknowledges me before men, I will also acknowledge him before my Father in heaven. 33 But whoever disowns me before men, I will disown him before my Father in heaven. 34 Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35 For I have come to turn 'a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter in law against her mother in law.' 36 'A man's enemies will be the members of his own household.'

37 "Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; 38 and anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. 39 Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. 40 He who receives you receives me, and he who receives me receives the one who sent me.

41 "Anyone who receives a prophet because he is a prophet will receive a prophet's reward, and anyone who receives a righteous man because he is a righteous man will receive a righteous man's reward. 42 And if anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones because he is my disciple, I tell you the truth, he will certainly not lose his reward."

If you have been with MoltenThought for very long, you know that I come from a rather interesting religious background. (See: Heroes Aren't Hard To Find: Part I, Part II, Part III, and Part IV.)

The long and short of it is basically, I grew up in a tiny rural Presbyterian church and never really paid much attention. But I knew I wanted to please God. I asked Him into my heart when I was 8, actually. I didn't really grasp what that meant, I just knew I wanted it. But since no one at home read the Bible to me, talked to me about Jesus, or made much mention of Him at all, (unless you count extremely brief prayers at suppertime, with extensions on major holidays) I grew up a bit foggy about Who God is and what He's all about.

But in 1998 my "knowledge" crystallized. Someone met me where I was and told me about Jesus. They didn't try to change me, they didn't come to me yelling and screaming, they simply pointed me in the right direction and let me figure things out for myself. And when I made the decision to become one of God's kids, it wasn't in a church or in the presence of anyone. No one prayed with me, no one blessed me, no one helped me along except the One True God. I told Him I was sorry, that I believed in Him, that the Bible was the truest thing ever written and that I would really like to come home. And bam! It was like lights went on, the fog cleared and I was truly awake for the first time in my life. Although I was a "new creation" I fumbled along at first, trying to know what to do, but then began to pick up steam as God re-invented my external life.

I then began attending a charismatic church. *Sigh* (See the above post archives for further information... I just don't have the energy.) But briefly, I left that church because it was a Mafia in miniature. The code? Don't question, don't buck the system, don't challenge authority -- even if it seems corrupt. You will be taken down. This church demanded my total allegiance, mocked anything Catholic, Presbyterian, or worldly. We were sinners if we missed a service. Sinners if we failed to participate. Sinners if we chose our family's needs over church obligation. Sinners if we bled.

And so I took the quiet route, and ended up in a church that is decidedly more gentle. The liturgy is beautiful and imparts meaning -- contrary to what I was taught -- and I even participated in Lent this year, something I would have been excoriated for previously. I began to decompress. To breathe. To appreciate what was available to me. And to love the person God loves, while still acknowledging and repenting of my sinfulness. Two remarkable things came about.

First, I began to understand that it was God Who was keeping me in right relationship with Him -- not me. There was no church that could threaten me into deeper understanding and thirst for the Lord unless He was already there, tugging at my heart. The militant adherence to the Law (don't let them fool you, it still runs rampant in the modern church) gave way to walking in Grace. A scary proposition. There are no boxes to check, no lists to tick off, simply a bending to the whispers of the Holy Spirit. It has been incredibly freeing, but at the same time, terrifying. I can see why people hold on so tightly to the Law. Grace is a gray place. Unable to be contained by writ.

Secondly, I saw that the Pastor at my old church was wrong. His church was not the only one. There were hundreds, THOUSANDS of faithful churches out there, serving people and helping humanity. That was a REAL eye-opener. WOW. They may not have raised their hands and hollered, but they loved the Lord and served Him well. Jesus was everywhere. And He wasn't yelling. And even more strangely, He looked different. He wasn't a fundamentalist tongue-speaker anymore. He was Baptist, Presbyterian, Anglican, and yes, even Catholic. So many children at one table. So many hands and feet. My community went from a bucket to an ocean overnight.

And I started reading forbidden things -- mythology, philosophy, history, theology, Biblical studies, writings about St. Thomas Aquinas, Augustine, Martin Luther King, Jr. (my old church sincerely thinks that King is in hell for adultery), Gandhi, Tolstoy, Chesterton, Dillard. It opened the shutters on my mind and mysterious light broke in. That, coupled with conversations I've had with pro and anti-Catholics surrounding the death of the Pope, has left me somewhere in the wilderness. I started asking deeper questions; Pondering things I had never thought of before. And while my faith is still in Christ, and my foremost goal is to do His work, I have begun to wonder what that work is, who it benefits, what it all means, and why.

I wouldn't say I'm disillusioned exactly, just humbled. When the Biblical debate begins to rage, and camps settle along clearly defined boundaries, I find myself with nothing to say. I feel like a tiny missionary handing out cups of water to passersby and saying, "God bless you," then shrugging. I don't know what that means exactly, I just know I must be a part of it. Not because someone is forcing me to, because I can't live with peace in my soul if I am not serving others and representing Jesus to the weary.

But it's become a very quiet mission. Where there used to be shouting and wailing, now there is a quiet greeting on the road. "How'ya doin'? What can I help you with today?" Is that enough? Does that please God? Sometimes I wonder. Is He pleased when I serve without knowing why? When I serve imperfectly? When I serve without speaking? When I serve and get no response? When I try to baptize and am cursed for spilling water on the ungrateful? When I serve not representing a church, denomination or doctrine but simply a Person -- even when I am unsure about the particulars of Who that Person is?

Growing up, my Christian example was my grandmother, the only woman I knew who truly lived the Gospel out. We spent weekends and summers with her and loved every minute. She read Bible stories to my sister and me at bedtime and never failed to show us what love in action was. And she made it look effortless, like the most natural thing in the world. It was part of her nature to love because a new nature had been imparted to her. She wasn't perfect. Every word was not godly. Every action was not Christlike. But she never failed to love, even in her final days. And though she has been gone since Christmas 2003, I still look to her guiding example.

So while the bombs are flying past my head and people are taking offense, plotting schemes, rearing gossip, hurling accusations, and trying to make their own ways, I will stay crouched, pouring water. It's all I can do. I don't know why I am driven to. I don't know if it will ever come to anything. I don't even know if it's appreciated within the bounds of immediate family, but I know I cannot stop now. I have to keep going. God is not going to be less "God" if I stop. The world will not be less "world" if I stop. But I will be less me. I will be another thing. An unintended. A nothing. A waste. And that is not what Christ died for.