What is Essential

I began to thank God today for showing me how unreal my relationship with him was.

It is rare that my faith really gets tested, and even more of a spectacle when I ask the right questions. Maybe it is because I am afraid of the consequences that arise from these questions. Sometimes it is because I have twisted reality so much that I can hardly tell the difference anymore.

When I first became a Christian, I read that Phillip Yancey (one of my favorite authors) went away for 2 weeks at a time and would read the whole bible through. I read that John Piper would also go alone to a cabin and study the bible, pray, and worship God. I always thought to myself, "if I had that kind of time I would do the same thing." I found this to be far from the truth this week. I was almost unable to leave my room this week because every time I left, in order to get back in I needed to call someone that I did not know to let me in. This would take hours most of the time because she would usually not be in the dorm or be asleep. This should have been the perfect opportunity to pray, fast, and spend time alone with God but I never imagined that it would be this hard to actually spend time alone with God. Phillip Yancey and John Piper would spend weeks alone with God, but I could not spend one full day with Him. Then one of those big realizations hit me. What I see so often as ideal in the Christian faith, is actually essential to the Christian faith. What I mean by that is we often look at things like going to a cabin for 2 weeks and reading the bible through, or giving all of our money away, or constantly loving and telling others about the galvanizing power of the cross, or clothing the poor, or sexual purity, or actually seeking what God has called us to do (instead of simply what we are good at or feel like we should do), as ideal and unattainable. Every person has different examples of what they think is unattainable in Christianity. The list ends up stretching so long that soon we have taken out every single essential tenet of Christianity except what is convenient for us.

It was the first thought that came to my mind when I couldn't spend more than an hour alone with God. "Who actually spends time alone with God? Only perfect, ideal people do things like that." Then I thought well that is actually essential... If you can't spend time alone with someone you can't be in relationship with them. Maybe this is my idea of fulminating myself and all American Christians for our lukewarm lives. I'm sorry that it took so much to come to the same conclusion that I always come to. That I can never be a passionate Christian by my own effort, and that I am chief among sinners and least among saints.

see xanga for pictures