Becoming Like Jesus
Becoming Like Jesus
In a recent dream, I saw an extremely old woman, clothed in the very latest and "brassy" fashion...wearing make-up more suited to someone 70 years her junior. She was holding-forth (pontificating) loud and long, railing against the new President of the United States of America. She was virulently opposed to him, as his election did not measure up to and conform to her political specifications and expectations.
The Trappist monk, Thomas Merton (Gethsemani Abbey, USA) once said that the Christian faith "enables, or should enable, a man to stand back from society and its institutions and realize that they all stand under the inscrutable judgement of God, and that, therefore, we can never give an unreserved assent to the policies, the progammes and the organizations of men."
"To do so is idolatry," he said, "the same kind of idolatry that was refused by the early martyrs who would not burn incense to the emperor.
"The policies of men contain within themselves the judgement and doom of God upon their society, and when the Church identifies her policies with theirs, she too is judged with them - for she has in this been unfaithful and is not truly 'the Church'."
Much Christian culture in New Zealand and the United States is interlocked...especially the infantilism (arrested developement) which automatically and without any serious consideration attributes righteousness to conservative parties, and likewise demonizes their liberal opponents.
At best, such behaviour is childish (but nevertheless still dangerous); at worst it is idolatrous!
"You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate Me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love Me and keep My commandments." (Exodus 20.4-6)
It is not the Church's mission to bring the world around it into submission to itself and its own fragmentary (and usually distorted) vision of the "perfect" society. Rather we are called to be conformed (individually and collectively) to our Lord Jesus Christ.
"For those God foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brothers." (Romans 8.29)
"And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the Man from heaven." (1 Corinthians 15.49)
"And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into His likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit." (2 Corinthians 3.18)
"But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Saviour from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables Him to bring everything under His control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like His glorious body." (Philippians 3.20-21)
"Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when He appears, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as He is pure." (1 John 3.2-3)
"But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; and the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare. Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming." (2 Peter 3.10-12)
"For when I name the name of Jesus, I call to mind at once a man meek and lowly of heart, benign, pure, temperate, merciful; a man conspicuous for every honorable and saintly quality. And also in the same person, the Almighty God, so that He both restores me to health by His example and renders me strong by His assistance." (Bernard of Clairvaux 1090-1153)
