So I want to change the pace a little bit from my last
series of posts. Yesterday was on a more controversial topic, and I have been
devoting a lot of thought to millennials and the church and theories as to why
they are leaving the church and what could and should be done. This will be my
last new post before the long weekend, and next week I will write a couple of
posts on my vision for the church as it relates to millennials. Before that I
wanted to center myself back onto Christ, with some thoughts on who He is, how
I encountered Him, and how others encounter Him as well.
I don’t want to spend too much on my personal faith journey,
other than to say that I didn’t really become a believer until my years in
college. I grew up in the Catholic Church and I had parents who certainly
taught me to be good and moral and to treat people well, but I had not really
known much about Christ. At the same time, I was in a process of searching for
truth, and had devoted much time to reading many of the famous philosophers and
some of their books.
These philosophers ranged from the early Greek ones, to
medieval ones, to the Enlightenment, to some of the more modern philosophers.
The idea that always jumped out at me was the idea of virtue. I wasn’t as
interested in philosophical process, or debates about meaning or how to know
truth, or some of the other minutia that philosophers entangle themselves into,
I was interested in something more practical. This is why I was so attracted to
the philosophical idea of virtue, something that has been touched on by
philosophers throughout the ages.
Virtue is defined as in some sense as behavior that leads to
high moral character, or the good result that comes from some action/activity.
Virtue in the philosophical sense was something a little bit more expansive.
Philosophers who spoke of virtue indeed talked about moral character and good
actions, but virtue was also a more all-encompassing idea of life. It was
something that people should strive for. There was this Platonic idea of
virtue, a goal, a destination, but also a process of how to get there. (It
should also be mentioned that as good as these philosophers were at talking
about virtue, it didn’t always result in much change in their own life).
This idea of virtue had captivated me and I spent several
years eating it up. I would read books by different philosophers, always trying
to find they meant by virtue. And it was good. It was fascinating. There was
much there to consider, and I ate it all up. But like the philosophers, as much
as my head knowledge was increasing, it wasn’t exactly doing much for my own
actions. I surely wasn’t a bad person as we might think of it, but all of this
study did nothing much more to improve on the great lessons that my parents had
already taught me.
I loved the idea of virtue, and I loved reading these
philosophers, but I always had the sense that something was missing and I
couldn’t ever quite put my finger on it. At least not until college. That was
when I first met some people who took the Bible seriously. Someone gave me a
Bible and I spent two weeks reading the Gospels and I was blown away. I was
blown away in a way that I suspect not many people are when they first read the
Bible. For all the searching for virtue, nothing that I read from the great
philosophers came close to what Jesus was saying. Jesus blew them all away. At
that moment I was pretty sure that nothing I read would come close to the
teachings of Jesus. And I ate it up.
I kept reading the Bible, I had discussions with others, and
I attended Bible studies (though they were still somewhat mystifying to me). I
so enjoyed reading the teachings of Jesus, he was, in my mind, the perfect
philosopher. He had shown an understanding of virtue that no philosopher could
touch. I did everything I could to follow the teachings of Jesus, to become the
moral person that He modeled. Alas, I fell short. I fell into the trap of the
bad trade of Christianity.
I had the answers by I was paralyzed to do anything about
them. This was surely the condition of my soul for longer than I would care to
admit. I thought if I could study harder, pray harder, understand better, that
I would be better off. It went the other way, and sin was that much more
crushing. I called myself a Christian but who was I kidding.
Then, finally, I had the personal connection with Christ. I
had an encounter with Him. I had an understanding of his death and
resurrection, I allowed the life that offers us to seep into me. I found that
the perfect philosopher was not enough, I needed Christ, the Messiah, to have a
chance. I shifted my foundation from the truth of His teachings to the truth of
His crucifixion, and it made all the difference.
I still think that Jesus is the perfect philosopher. I read
philosophy and I enjoy it, but I have yet to find anyone that comes close as it
pertains to virtue. But of course what is truly remarkable about Christ is what
He did when He was done teaching, when He went to the cross. And that matters
so much more. And it is not until you start with the cross that His teachings
reach their full weight.
BLOG ANNOUNCEMENT: This will be the last post of the week,
but I’ll do some re-posts of previous entries. Have a great 4th.
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