Just Words
A number of years ago I came to believe in an absolute kind of way that God Is and that all things exist through Him. Prior to this time, I had believed in a God, sort of. I was somewhat conscientious and observant of my own selective moral code. That is, while I sometimes did the things that I considered morally relevant in the Church’s teaching, I usually did what I thought I could get away with. I went to Church and I said the words. I knew the prayers well enough that I could occupy my eyes and mind with other things. I mouthed them like magical incantations that would somehow bring good things to me as long as I said them like I meant them. While I would sometimes reflect on the esoteric bits of terminology in the mass, more often than not, I would tune them out. They were just words. However, in one moment I came to believe in the God of Judeo-Christian history, the God professed by my parents, the God of a faith that I was sometimes at odds with and confused by (with rules that I found nearly impossible to observe), and everything changed. From that day on, I began to search for meaning in the words, for evidence, first in arguments, then in stories, then in practices of prayer and various spiritual traditions. It was this movement, finding the Spirit that scripture pointed to, that allowed me to understand there was more to our faith than just words.
Words have often been a stumbling block in my understanding of the Faith. For instance, I am not sure when I decided that it was OK for me to talk about Jesus, but it took a while. I am also not sure how I came to the point where I was willing to identify myself as a Christian without being embarrassed to say the word out loud. Even today I am still not one to talk about “my own personal Jesus” or claim that Jesus has “saved” and “delivered” me. Claiming that I know the person of Jesus, not to mention what he would do in a particular situation, makes me nervous. As for being “saved” and “delivered,” well, while I have hope in salvation, I do not have certitude. I mean, while I am certainly not the person I was before I began practicing Christianity in earnest, I find that my tendency to choose to do things that are short-sighted and self-serving still persists. I still need deliverance. Truly, to paraphrase a well-known quote, I am a sinner called to serve. I claim Jesus because I desire to follow, know and love the Christ, not because I have suddenly become a saint. I desire the good, because I recognize in myself a tendency to do otherwise. I live in hope of the resurrection. I live in hope of salvation. These things, they are all bigger than the words we use to describe them. Words alone do not do the Truth justice.
I have known fools, braggarts, drunks, philanderers, liars, thieves, drug-dealers and prostitutes, and I have seen grace in them as they have been transformed, learning to live, and love, in other ways. I have known people who chose to act with kindness and gentleness when they had every “right” to choose anger and vindictive deeds as their way of life. What’s more, others have known me as a failure, and they have still offered me kindness. I have hurt those who I claimed to love, and been amazed by their forgiveness. When I have said harsh things, I have been shown gentleness by complete strangers, and the times when my own belligerence might have been on display, I have been gently corrected. In these interactions, I have been taught another way of living with and loving the people who enter my life. In this way, the message of Christ had less to do with mere words, and more to do with the living witness to the Gospel of compassion and grace. Sometimes words were the tools people used to convey their experience of God, but more often than not it was the way they followed their mighty words with even mightier deeds that revealed their belief and trust in the faith they professed.
Why do I claim Christ? Is it because I choose to believe in the words of scripture like a child does a fairy tale? No. It is because in other’s deeds I have witnessed the graces that the words we profess attempt to describe. These deeds, in turn, have given me the hope and desire to live my own life in a new way. The longer I claim to follow Christ, the more I recognize that it is not what I say, but what I do that matters more. Over time, the words of scripture slowly changed me by changing the way I lived my life. As my familiarity with the words of scripture grows, so does my passion for living them out. I can imagine myself living in them. I can sense the Spirit dwelling in me. Christ was the Word made flesh, and the words that passed through history to change my mind that fateful day so many years ago were not mere syllables to be repeated in endless recitations of prayers in mass. Rather, those words (revelations of the true Word) allowed me to glimpse a way of life that could only truly be witnessed by becoming flesh in me. I know the arguments and I can philosophize all I want, but unless I love, do acts of mercy, and forgive others when I feel wronged, then there is little good words can do. The Word must live in me. By allowing the Spirit of God, sent by Christ, into my heart to enliven my own deeds, I allow Love to speak more loudly than words alone ever could.
Photo: “Just Words” by dbwalker from Flickr (Used under Creative Commons license)
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