Growing up when homes were adorned by one television with three channels, rabbit ears and sitting two feet from it was the norm, my family had a saying, “I can’t see through muddy water!” The image resides in my Smithsonian mind.
The waters are muddy. Our human psyche is an imperfect lens blurring feigned attempts at living the Christian life. Amongst the cells and tissue, fluids and sinew, guts and bones we call a body, one hears the fracture and clamor and clatter of dissonant minds and sober contempt. In our momentary bonds, we forget eternity.
I have lived long enough to look back, an exercise using an imperfect lens. As Groucho Marx said, “Please accept my resignation. I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept people like me as a member.” Mankind is a club with people like me, looking through an imperfect lens.
If observation holds validity, indignance demands significance. We engage unequally under equality’s guise. The romantic ideal that relationship is a two-way street remains true only as a selfish one-way demand. The street is two-way if it points in my direction. Our conversational tone belies our superficial empathy and respect. We are either unequally equal or equally unequal. Pick your nuance.
“We must believe in the real God in every way, except he does not exist, for we have not reached the point where he might exist,” says Simone Weil. Unintended by Weil, I take this to mean we must humbly see beyond our trifling embarrassments, bruised egos and self-righteous beliefs and strive to live in God’s perspective, a lens of love and forgiveness before self or as a part of self. We must greet most folks, not as mal-intended, just imperfect in execution. It is how the true Christian must engage. Not so easy, is it?
Nature’s cycle seeds and grows as blossoms strain toward light, and then the flowers wilt, the pedals fall, strewn and tossed about, fading to ash. The days and the seasons are short. We’re born, we live, we die and in between, we dream our memories through muddy waters.
Searching the firmament, as I search the existential question, as I perceive God’s wonder and awe, his love for the sparrow, I contemplate my attendant insignificance. When I face a homeless man, my chiseled cultural belief halts me. I waffle. Then, Jesus screams at me, “help the man!” Do we engage all relationships through such a selfish lens? Eternity turns its mirror on me and tells me I am homeless, too.
If I am to reach the point where God exists, lives within me and through me, I must look beyond the immediate, the muddy water of bone and sinew and my demand for significance. Christians are homeless people wandering in his service. He exists when we respect each other as the same, equally unequal.
“Those who have ears to hear, let them hear” (Matthew 11:15).