Tuesday, 5 June 2012

WHAT IS TRUTH?

Unravelling the crisis of the belly.

Biblical scripture summarises the problem of human existence in one word—SIN.  Our first temptation was a temptation of the belly, and the first judgement, was a judgement on the belly.  We are driven by the demands of our bellies, long before Maslow, Paul wrote about the crisis of the belly, Phil 3:19 “Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame.  Their mind is on earthly things.  Our sin may be expressed in many other forms, but every idol we carve is fundamentally related to our hunger spasms.

The challenge of the Mat 6:33 Imperative is to discover God in the old way.  In the Garden of Eden, our priority was not food, but a relationship with God—we were created, not for providence, but for relationship.  The question of providence had been taken care of long before the serpent disrupted our relationship with God.  The charge in the Garden did not forbid eating, but not to eat from a particular tree, Ge 2:17 “but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.”   The tree promised more than what God had given, at least according to the serpent.  God provided for need, and the serpent created the path for greed; and we’ve been hell bent ever since.  The prophecy has turned out to be true, because many who turn the belly into a god pay exorbitantly, and often with their own lives.

Greed is undermining what you have because you envy what you don’t have.  It is never content, because when you have what you didn’t have, your eyes stretch out for more.  This is the point where idolatry is introduced; when we become obsessed with the environment to the degree that our relationship with God is disrupted, and eventually detached.

Is there more to life than what it already offers?  That question is a corollary to a more important question, “What is life?”  How meaningful life becomes for each person, depends on how each one responds to that question; and every answer calls forth another question. 

According to Christ, Lk 12:23 “Life is more than food, and the body more than clothes.”  Christ is not saying that food and clothes are not important; he is saying there is more; and that more is beyond tangibles such as food and clothing.  What could be more important than food and clothes?  Christ sums up the answer in one word; “Life.”  There’s more to life than fine food, human achievement, breathing in and out, or being preoccupied with fashion and design.

It is clear that Christ understood Life on a different level than we do.  For us, it is this confusing and anxious thing we do between birth and death; and to him it is who we are becoming between birth and beyond physical death.  Life on our terms and in our understanding is often squashed by existential pressures, and limited by the grave.  In Christ, Life is unlimited; it marches triumphantly through the constraints of human existence, into a purpose with ever stretching possibilities.

Our natural tendency is to let it go if it doesn’t make sense, and that is where we are caught with our backs against the wall.  Like a dog given a long rope, we end up coiled in the intricate web of our own creation.  The question we ought to ask is, “What did the Christ know about life that we are missing?”

The word “Life” appears in the Gospel of John more often than it does in the Synoptic Gospels.  For Jesus, life was more than this temporal, lifelong thing interrupted by the death.  It was something permanent, eternal, and enabled in us by the Spirit of God.  He didn’t only speak about life, he was Life.  One level is physical and limited in time; the other is spiritual and liberated in time without end, and he called it eternal life.

The pomp of physical life on earth is an aberration of truth, but eventually we are ushered into a rude awakening, Isa 14:11 “All your pomp has been brought down to the grave, along with the noise of your harps, maggots are spread out beneath you and worms cover you.”  When death stares you in the face, that’s when you want nothing but the naked truth; you push and probe for lasting and permanent things.  John 3:16 is all about eternal life, read it and LIVE!

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