Passion

For years I have lived on passion and morality.  I thought if I was high on emotions and driven by what is right, I was good to go.  It has been a long hard road retooling what has become rusted in place.  In fact, I still question the abandonment of passion and morality as foundations to my living.  I mean after all, what other “reasons” can you have for living the kind of life that God requires?

I first started to question passion when I had the opportunity to look behind my life and see how many harmed and hurting people I left behind.  I was of the school that “doing what is right at all cost” was the very heart of God.  I had the mindset that God and I thought a lot alike and what I had passion to do was His will for me and everyone around me.  Therefor to question me was to question God.  To oppose me was to oppose God.  Honestly, I had this modeled to me by leadership for years.  After about 10 years in the prayer room it sunk in that Moses gave up his right to be right and bowed his knee to intercede and identify with the idol making mob.  Mercy crying out for justice to wait.  Patience ruling over a driving passion to enter the promise land.

Through time and living I discovered that there were very Godly people who did not see things the way I did.  Some of these were “passion and moral driven” too and the conflict was a “I know God’s voice” attacking of one another.  There is nothing quite like the people of God fighting.  How quick we are to assert that “God is for us” and not for the other guy.  I don’t think anyone ever taught me that what I seem may be right, but in great need of what the other guy sees.  I had knew was right or wrong.  I had not matrix for seeing in part.

Moral driven people see every decision as a right or wrong choice.  This means turning on the heater, driving the speed limit, saying prayers, having a dinner together, all have moral consequences.  Sound strange?  Not if you have lived your whole life in a “do what is right” worldview.  Why wouldn’t starting a meeting on time be a moral choice?  Isn’t there a right way and wrong way to treat others and hold meetings?  Should we tolerate people who are late and immorally treating the rest of us?  Shouldn’t we demand our leaders and elders be morally sound people and show up in the time frame I have in mind?

If you are saying “Amen” right now you may be a passion/moral addict too.

So how do you have room for others without belittling who God made you to be?  How do we live together without killing one another?  One of the common ways in America right now is to build a homogeneous church around a missions statement or goal.  If you don’t buy into the mission, you are encouraged to go somewhere else.  In doing this we reduce the number of “distractions” so that we can all be alike (we call this unity) and achieve something.  As if maturing enough until a vast number of different people are loving and kind to one another is not “doing something”. 

So if you are one of those groups that allows “strange” people and those who are a “little different” to have value and honor in your group, “God bless YOU!”  Pure religion involves loving (not just being willing to, but actually loving) those who are different, broken, offensive, enemies.  Should we expect any political divisions to be healed if the divisions between devoted followers of Christ are still open wounds and sources of nay saying and judgment?

So now a discipleship exercise for the struggling passionate moralist.  A while back a guy came to me in love with the prayer room.  He  told me how he loved prayer and found the presence of God in the prayer room so rewarding.  He went on to judge and belittle others who did not have his call and who did not connect to God through prayer as he did.  My suggestion for him on his next fast was to fast prayer.  To give to God the very thing that he now loved so much.  So, taking my own advice and offering it to you, fast passion and moral judgments.  Give it a week or two.  Maybe you can go for a 40 day fast.  Stop looking at the world and others through the expressions of your passion and morality.  Live fully the life that God is asking of you, but without the demands and judgments toward others.   In doing this you will be giving room around you for others who are different than you.  Making room for others is one of the things Jesus went away to do.  Maybe we can live more like Jesus here as we too make dwelling places for others.