anyone up for a sea voyage?

As a preface: these words are nearly completely prompted by a chapter in Don Miller's Searching For God Knows What (you guys are really going to get tired of hearing about him, so go read his stuff, and get a glimpse of what i'm so crazy about) and the presentation of Jesus in the Bible that I've read (that's another thing everyone should go read, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Okay, I'm done providing suggested reading.). So just know that most of these thoughts aren't even mine, but I'm trying to work them out and make them my own. Wish me luck with that. Anyhoo.

I've found myself back in church lately, due to the wonderful influence of a friend very dear to me. It's strange, being back in a community of Christ-followers, because for so long, I've not only been out of that community, but have often been cynical and pessimistic of it. Being caught up with things (as another friend put it, "Jesus is still Lord and the Bible is still the Word of God; consider yourself caught up."), or at least working to understand the spirit of Christ's church, has got me thinking about a lot of things, especially in regards to relationship, both those that people have with each other and those that people have with Christ. As I've tried to make clear in earlier ramblings, I believe that God is fundamentally relational, and that he created people to be relational as well, and that the most beautiful things about Christian spirituality are evident only in relationship. The concept of 'relationship' is an alive and vibrant thing, not entirely tangible, but most people understand what the concept means. Boyfriends are 'in relationship' with their girlfriends. Parents are 'in relationship' with their children. Students are 'in relationship' with their students,' pastors with their congregation, friends with their confidantes, and on and on and on--the limitations of relationship is boundless. The lines overlap and blur and blend into a beautiful cacophony of existence that isn't fully understood but no less cherished.

So what do you do when a relationship feels stress?

I think back to those moments in middle school, okay, not even as far back as middle school. I think back to yesterday, today, an hour ago, and I think about how frequently, and how unintentionally, I looked at someone and drew a comparison. She is prettier than me; he has a nicer car than I do; I look better with that bag than she does; he is smarter than I; she is better at talking to people than I am, she is a more generous person than me; I feel threatened by her; I feel more powerful than him... Most times i don't even notice that I'm drawing comparisons between myself and other people, but I almost always am. If you think about it, all of our society is constantly drawing comparisons. We're always trying to evaluate who is worth more. Who's got the better batting average? Who's got the best GPA? Who's a better candidate for election? Who's more fun to work with? Our question always seems to be "Who is more valuable to me in this moment?"

I cannot come up with a better metaphor than he did, so I'll just use Don Miller's. He said that people are always trying to decide who is worth more, as if we're sitting in a lifeboat together, awaiting rescue, and trying to decide who gets thrown overboard if things get dangerous. In the middle school lifeboat, the people who have the newest clothes and don't have to ride the bus to school are worth more in the lifeboat than the people who have funny teeth or wear shirts from Wal-Mart. In high school, the cheerleaders and jocks are the ones who'll get saved by the rescue team while the dweebs reading anime together are the ones who'll get thrown to the sharks if the boat starts to sink. In college, the sorority girls survive, while the person who belongs to no club and has a mediocre GPA is ignored and disregarded. The "real world" has its own standards of value as well. Nicer cars, bigger houses, vacation homes, high-yielding profit margins--these all earn you seats of honor in the lifeboat. Those struggling on welfare, homeless dudes, drug addicts and criminals are those who are kicked to the edges and are the ones whose fall overboard goes unnoticed or ignored. So who decided the constructs of this unspoken guidebook to lifeboat survival? It certainly wasn't God. I don't know how it started, but I know how it perpetuates: it's our fault. We always try to associate ourself with the 'good guys' in the lifeboat, we want nothing to do with the losers. If we associate ourself with the good guys, we've got a better chance of gaining spots above everyone else, and we're that much closer to surviving. Except God doesn't have a lifeboat.

What's so cool to me about Christianity is that Jesus was never preferential. Now, I know that Walt hasn't been rummaging around in my brain lately, because that would just be creepy, but in both the Sundays he has offered God's word to us, he has spoken a phrase or two that just really captures everything I've been thinking about lately. Last week, he said that Jesus never passed by an opportunity to teach truth to people. Today, he said that even when Jesus overheard people muttering about him behind his back, he was ready to go and used their arrogance as another opportunity to teach truth. This says a few things to me. In addition to Jesus being a really patient guy, it means also that Jesus isn't in our lifeboat. Let me switch it up a bit. If someone had been talking about me, and I heard it, I would do something spiteful or hateful to them. I don't know many people that wouldn't think less of someone else who'd said something hurtful about them, and I know ever fewer people who would be willing to offer truth to them. In our lifeboat, when people are cruel, it means their value to us goes down, and in our minds, they're placed behind nicer people in the "save me, first, line." But Jesus doesn't work that way. When people criticized him, his response was "Okay, fine, you're not too smart when it comes to this God stuff, but okay, here's some truth about God anyway. You'll want to listen because I'm telling you how to spend eternity with me, because I love you and I think you're valuable to me." Jesus said this to everyone: the homeless guys, the prostitutes, the rich bums and Pharisees, everyday joes guys that smelled like fish and dudes who's skin was rotting off. Jesus spoke his truth to everyone. How cool is that? I'm absolutely astounded by that because it means that Jesus' love is impartial. It means that he loves me as much as he loves the chick with a smaller waistline, as much as he loves the alcoholic mother, as much as you. Jesus doesn't even see the same stuff we see, he doesn't care about our lifeboat, he doesn't even understand the concept.

God not having a lifeboat is so amazingly comforting and simulaneously absolutely terrifying. It's awesome because it means he loves me no matter how anyone else has appraised me, and it's crumbling because it means he wants me to give up my lifeboat. I mean, as skewed as it is, my lifeboat is a pretty safe place right now. I may not be in the center of it, holding the binoculars, but I'm certainly not clinging to the edge hoping not to get pushed out. I'm supposed to give up my spot just because the Creator of the entire universe says my theory is null and void? Um, yeah. Giving up my lifeboat means I won't be worth anything in anyone else's. It also means I'm thinking like God, and thinking like God is both scary and impossible. But trying to think like God means that I'll maybe get to see the world illuminated by Christ. I imagine it would be a bit like Eden in that respect, and I can't think of anything more beautiful than trying to understand the world as God meant it to be.