Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the young German pastor who was executed in 1945 for his participation in the resistance movement against the Nazi regime, said,

“When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.”

And Bonhoeffer practiced what he preached, ultimately sacrificing his life by taking action against the evil he saw being practiced by the Nazis. He took seriously what Jesus had said,

“Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 

For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.”

He had been a major force in establishing the Confessing Church, whose pastors openly spoke out against the attempts of the Nazis to replace the gospel of Christ with the dogmas of Nazism in the German church and who passed laws to exclude Jews and other “misfits” from German society. However, he grew increasingly disappointed in the Confessing Church’s failure to take more aggressive action, to go beyond merely professing (confessing) the Christian gospel. He took to heart the words of the apostle James, who said’

“What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? …

In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead. 

But someone will say, “You have faith; I have deeds.” Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by my deeds. 

The Nazi regime with all of its horrors may be long gone, but the racial hatred and social injustice that it preached are still alive and well in our society today. And there have been and will be those who oppose it, not only with words, but also by their actions. One such person was Martin Luther King, Jr., who, like Bonhoeffer before him, suffered martyrdom as a result of his words and actions. Dr. King demonstrated his faith by his deeds, for as he said,

“Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right.”

His emphasis was on not only saying the right things, but of doing them.

A major aspect of Christ’s ministry was his focus on highlighting and opposing the social injustice in the society of his time. But there is a deeper aspect to his call to follow him by losing our lives for him. That is the pathway by which we receive the abundant, everlasting life that he promises us.

That is not a one-time dying, as in martyrdom, but an ongoing process through which God transforms us, who are created in his image, into his likeness. That is, not only in form, but also in thoughts and actions. God wants us to see the world and each other as he sees us and to act in the world and toward others as he acts. That transformation takes time and patience, both on our part and God’s.

Jesus began his public proclamation with the call that is usually translated as “Repent.”  The Greek word was “metanoia” meaning a “change of mind” and “regret/remorse.” The challenge was to let go of our egoistic, self-centered mind set and to look at things from God’s perspective. As the Apostle Paul said.

“In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:

Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.

And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross!”

In order to accomplish this, Paul said, “I die daily.”

Richard Rohr speaks of surrendering (and dying to) our False Self in order to discover our True Self in God. He quotes Cynthia Bourgeault as saying,

“Jesus teaches the art of metanoia or “going into the larger mind.” Underlying all his teaching is a clarion call to a radical shift in consciousness: away from the alienation and polarization of the egoic operating system and into the unified field of divine abundance that can be perceived only through the heart…

Jesus was not a priest or a prophet in the usual sense of those terms. Rather, he was a wisdom teacher. He stayed close to the ground of wisdom: the transformation of human consciousness…

How do we put on the mind of Christ? How do we learn to respond to the world with that same wholeness and healing love? That’s what Christian orthodoxy really is all about. It’s not about right belief; it’s about right practice…

The hallmark of this awareness is that it sees no separation—not between God and humans, not between humans and other humans. These are indeed Jesus’ two core teachings, underlying everything he says and does…

“Love your neighbor as yourself”—as a continuation of your very own being. It’s a complete seeing that your neighbor is you…

We come into existence with a binary egoic operating system already installed. We can make the choice to upgrade to a non-dual operating system…

Everything Jesus did, he did by self-emptying. He emptied himself and descended into human form. And he emptied himself still further, “even unto death on the cross.”

Rohr sums this up by saying,

“I often say that we do not think ourselves into a new way of living, but we live ourselves into a new way of thinking. I’m not suggesting that theory and theology are unimportant; but I believe that faith is more about how we live on a daily basis than making verbal assent to this or that idea…

At times our evangelical fervor has come at the cost of spiritual formation. For this reason, we can end up with a church full of believers, but followers of Jesus can be hard to come by.

My personal take on all of this is reduce Christ’s call on my life to

“Surrender and die.”

And I am striving to do this on a daily basis.

As I draw ever closer to the end of my sojourn on earth (my mortal life), I find myself developing an eternal perspective. Or rather, I find God developing it in me. We human beings, bound as we are by the shackles of time to the present moment, can only look to the past as we remember it and try to envision what the future will hold for us. The latter is a futile exercise as we cannot accurately predict what lies ahead. We find ourselves constantly amazed by what befalls us. God, on the other hand, is not only always with us (and in us) at the present moment, but also outside of time in the eternal realm where he has always dwelt. He is thus able to see the end, as well as the beginning of time, so knows exactly what the future will bring us. As a result of this he chooses to view us as the person he has created us to be, and is in the process of transforming us into – that is, a creature in his own image (how we look) and likeness (how we act). So when he looks at us he sees the image and likeness of himself, clothed in robes of his own righteousness. That is how he can lavish his unconditional love on us, regardless of what state we currently find ourselves in. He sees who we will be, not what we have been and are now. I don’t know about you, but that is very comforting to me as imperfect as I am.

That also challenges me to see other people as God sees them (that is, who he is making them to be). Since God loves all of his creation, I must also love all of his creatures, no matter how imperfect they appear to me in the present moment. I must share in God’s eternal perspective.

And that brings me to another point. Time is but a temporary construct that will one day come to an end when God’s plan is completed. (Revelation 10:6, 7) We will all then be in the eternal realm together. In the meantime most of us will pass through death into that realm beforehand. There is therefore no reason to fear death. It is merely an early passage from the temporal to the eternal state. That too is a most comforting thought.

To summarize then, developing an eternal perspective prepares me for eternal life by showing me who we will all be when we are together in that realm, and challenges me in the present moment to live my life as if we were all there already. That, dear friends, is the kingdom of God in the midst of us on earth.

The deeper my experience of God’s love grows, the more I find my perspective broadening and becoming more inclusive, rather than exclusive. I am beginning to appreciate more why the Apostle Paul said:

And I pray that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled with the measure of all the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:17-19 NIV)

As Paul says, this love surpasses all knowledge. I am finding you have to experience God’s love to even begin to understand it. It’s not something you can reason out in your mind. As Richard Rohr has said:

God refuses to be known in the way we usually know other objects. God can only be known by loving God…To love God is to love what God loves. To love God means to love everything…no exceptions.

So I am on a journey of learning to love God by loving who and what God loves, which is everyone and everything. After all, God created everything to reflect his glory and majesty. Mankind is even created in God’s own image. In this process my understanding of God’s wrath is gradually evolving also. I am beginning to believe that I have had a serious misunderstanding of it.

For instance, when God told Adam and Eve not to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil because they would die, he was not saying “If you do that I will kill you”. He was saying “If you do that it will kill you”. More like telling a child not to touch a hot stove. It’s not that the parent will punish them for touching it, but that the hot stove will burn them.

So when the Bible says, “The wages of sin is death” in the King James Version, it doesn’t mean that God will slay you for your sin. It means more like the way the Complete Jewish Bible puts it, “For what one earns from sin is death; but eternal life is what one receives as a free gift from God, in union with the Messiah Yeshua, our Lord”.

Jesus died on the cross in our place to pay the price of death that sin (not God) demanded of us. And Christ’s substitutionary death was not in response to Adam’s fall and the death which was released as a result. No, God knew from the beginning that if he gave mankind free will they would make bad choices. So he made provision for correcting our mistakes before he created us. Jesus is the “Lamb slain before the foundation of the world”. His love for his creation was so great the he paid the wages of sin himself on our behalf.

And that’s not all. Jesus was incarnated in human flesh to demonstrate to us God’s true nature – that is Love. For God is Love. So when Jesus invited us to follow him, he was inviting us to imitate God’s love by our love for God and for all of his creation. That is why he told us to love even our enemies – because God loves them as well as us. And we should also treat all of God’s other living creatures, as well as the earth itself, with love and respect, for God loves them too.

As I said, I am gradually learning to love people who are much different than me, including those who have beliefs that are sometimes at odds with what I believe. And not only are some of my beliefs changing as a result of listening to what others believe, but in examining my own beliefs I am sometimes gaining a better understanding of why I believe them.

Now, as my perspective is broadening and becoming more inclusive, you can argue at me if you wish. But I will not argue with you. If you ask me, I will tell you what I believe now. But I will not try to impose my beliefs on you. It is up to you to decide what you believe, so that you know the reason you believe that.

My wife Mary and I had an exciting and adventurous life together for nearly 53 years. It began in January 1965 when we were married after dating for about 18 months. At first our lives were not much different from other young couples of that time. Things began to change, however, beginning on the weekend of our 5th wedding anniversary. While attending a program at our church led by laypeople much like us, we noticed a difference in their lives. They had a joyous and energetic approach to life that they attributed to their commitment to the lordship of Jesus Christ and to following his will for their lives. We were captivated by their enthusiasm and wanted what they had for ourselves. So we both made our own commitment to Christ’s lordship and began to seek his will for us also.

The only immediate change was a sense that our lives had a purpose beyond what we had previously imagined. Gradually that sense led us to more earnestly seek what plans God had for us. Although we were making small changes in our approach to life, our first big challenge came three years later. My chosen profession in the aerospace industry was rapidly losing its allure due to cutbacks in government spending and company consolidations throughout the entire industry. At the same time, Mary was completing the requirements for a PhD in Marketing and began receiving offers from out of state universities regarding a position on their faculty. After long and prayerful consideration, and with the encouragement of our pastor, we decided that I would terminate my employment and we would move from north Texas to south Louisiana so that Mary could begin her academic career as a member of the Louisiana State University faculty.

That was the first step in what proved to be an exciting and rewarding series of adventures that took us from Louisiana to Virginia and back to Texas and through a series of careers in several different industries for both of us. In the process we learned that our talents, skills, experience and God-given gifts could be applied in different ways in many diverse situations. All that was required was a willingness to go wherever God led us and to do whatever he asked us to do. In the process of so doing we learned that God had a plan for our lives that was more challenging that our own plans, but also far more exciting and rewarding. In the process we were afforded opportunities to go places (including all 50 of the United States and some 60 foreign countries) and do things that went far beyond what we had expected for ourselves.

Based on our life experiences as a married couple with dual professional careers, Mary and I developed the concept that we call spiritual entrepreneurship. The challenges we faced in fulfilling the requirements of two separate careers without neglecting our family obligations led us to the principles and practices of this concept.
For the full story of what spiritual entrepreneurship is and how Mary and I came to discover its principles our new book, “Spiritual Entrepreneurship – Fulfilling Your God-ordained Destiny” is now available in both paperback and Kindle versions on Amazon: http://amzn.to/2yFVBYM
P.S.
Mary passed away in December 2017, three months after the book was published. She is continuing her journey in the heavenly realm. In the meantime, the earthly adventure continues for me.

I am currently reading “The Collision of Grief and Gratitude: A pursuit of sacred light”, a book comprised of 366 daily Facebook posts by author Rosanne Liesveld, beginning a week after the sudden and unexpected death of her husband Curt. Her first post was to express her gratitude for her son, John, who came to her side following his father’s death and said, “Mom, I will be there for you for anything you will ever need.” She followed the next day with a tribute to her daughter, Anne, and then over the next few days she expressed her gratitude for Curt’s family and the colleagues in her workplace. Other people were thanked in subsequent days.

Rosanne said she felt better after writing each of these short messages and soon realized that she needed to “look hard for some gratitude each day, no matter how miserable, angry, weak, or confused” she felt. She knew that “when I communicated my deepest and most authentic feelings, I ended up feeling better.” Even more she said “when I searched for the grain of gratitude I could face the day. Day by day by day, that revelation of grief and the hunt for gratitude changed me.”

Then she discovered that it changed others too, many of whom suggested she put these Facebook posts together into a book. Which she did. The posts for many days are full of gratitude for people, places and things that brought comfort and joy to Rosanne. On other days the posts mostly express the grief, fears and exhaustion she feels. But in any event they were therapeutic for her.

As I read her words I understand something of what she is feeling. I, too, have feelings of sadness and a sense of loss since my wife Mary’s passing last December. Her passing, while not as sudden and unexpected as Curt’s, was nevertheless traumatic for me. I screamed and cried when the realization first hit me that I would see her no more in this mortal life and that I was left alone, totally bereft of her companionship. And it has been quite cathartic for me to express my feelings and experiences in these blog posts.

It has been nearly six months now since Mary’s passing and I am settling into a new routine that occupies most of my time with pleasant activities. These activities, for the most part in the company of my family and the friends who have come around me in support, leave little time for outright grief. There are still days, however, when that grief catches me off guard. Today has been one of those days.

I was enjoying a turtle pecan cluster Blizzard (Mary’s favorite) at Dairy Queen, prior to my going down to the Dallas Theater Center, where Mary and I have had season tickets for a number of years, to see the last play of the 2017-2018 season. Although I was looking forward to the experience, I was suddenly blind-sided by a tidal wave of grief and a deep sense of loneliness. These hit me occasionally when I am at or near a place that Mary and I enjoyed going to, although it doesn’t stop me from going there. I was at a loss at that moment for any feeling of gratitude, even though most days I can find any number of things to be grateful for.

And then I remembered the totally unexpected blessing I received straight out of the blue last Wednesday. It was haircut day for me and I was just leaving Plano Barbers on 15th Street in downtown Plano, where James Russell, Jr. has been cutting my hair for some 30 years. He now does the best he can with what little I have to work with. Anyway, as I stepped out of the barber shop onto the sidewalk, I noticed a group of three middle-aged African-American (pardon me if that is not PC) ladies who had met and were laughing and exchanging hugs with one another. They were occupying most of the width of the sidewalk, but as I approached them, rather than saying “Excuse me” and trying to slip past them, I found myself saying something like “Where does the line form for hugs?” They looked at this old white dude for a second and then the lady in the middle of the three said loudly “Group hug!” and the three of them embraced me warmly, as we all laughed. As I stepped back I shook my head and said “Ye have not because ye ask not.” At which the middle lady said “You got that right” and gave me a high five.

As I started on down the street toward where my car was parked, I looked back at them and said, “Thank you ladies. You just made my day!” And indeed they had. Continuing on down the street I felt that I was joined by the Father, Son and Holy Spirit in my happy dance. Surely that heartfelt expression of companionship and joy from total strangers was a little slice of what heaven will be like. Remembering that elevated me out of the slough of grief and self-pity. Thank you, Father! I am once again filled with gratitude.

When we observe the atrocities committed by terrorists such as those of ISIS or note the continuing string of mass shootings in our churches, schools and other public places, we often ask “Where is God while this is going on?” or “Why does God allow so much evil in the world?”. The answer, however, lies within us and not with God. We should be asking “Why do WE allow so much evil in this world?”. After all, God created humankind with free will, the ability to make choices. And why would he do that? Perhaps because he loves us deeply and wants us to love him in return and he knows that we cannot truly love someone (that is fully commit ourselves to them) unless we have the ability to choose whether to do so or not. If we were compelled to love God our love would not be true love. And perhaps also because God knew that we could not really appreciate goodness unless we had experienced evil.

So God placed Adam and Eve in an idyllic garden in the midst of which was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and told them not to eat of its fruit, because if they did they would die. He wasn’t saying that if they ate of the fruit he would kill them. He was warning them that if they did, it would kill them. (He of course knew all along what would happen and set in motion a plan to restore them to life.)

All was well as Adam and Eve enjoyed an intimate fellowship with God there in Eden, remaining innocent children, fully obedient to their heavenly father. Until, that is, the snake told them that God wasn’t being honest with them, because he knew that they wouldn’t die from eating the fruit, but would become like God himself. It was a bald faced lie, of course, a lie that we still too often believe, that if we become knowledgeable enough we can become godlike. And so, sure enough, they ate of the fruit and suddenly lost their innocence, becoming ashamed of their nakedness. And they became estranged from God, hiding from him in fear. Not wanting them to then be able to eat of the tree of life and so live in this condition forever he then banished them from the garden. In essence he kicked them out of home and told them they would have to fend for themselves from now on. They had made a decision to disregard his advice, so now they should use their newfound knowledge of good and evil to make their own decisions. He of course would still be available to counsel them if they asked him to, but it was entirely up to them.

Within one generation mankind experienced jealousy that led to hatred and murder and a journey began that has continued to this day, plumbing the depths of evil and depravity, as well as soaring to heights of goodness expressed in love for others, sometimes including self-sacrifice to the point of dying so others can live. And because God’s plan was executed in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we have also discovered that we can be born anew into eternal life and enjoy fellowship with God once again. However, choices between good and evil remain with us. We make them every day of our lives.

So when evil occurs we can either blame God, absolving ourselves thereby of responsibility. Or we can ask, “Why does mankind allow such evil to exist?”, still absolving ourselves of responsibility. Or better yet, we can ask “Why do I allow such evil to exist?”. As Rabbi Lawrence Kushner says in his book “God was in this Place and I, i did not know”:

“God’s ubiquity (omnipresence) does not mean that God is therefore in the business of causing, intending, or even tolerating human misery. Correcting those things is the business of human beings. That is why God made human beings in the first place.”

I have written before about giving thanks always for all things (https://spiritual-entrepreneurship.com/category/mythoughts/page/3/) but I have recently been faced with another challenge to that with my wife Mary’s passing in December. Although I have recognized that she is still with me in spirit (https://spiritual-entrepreneurship.com/2018/03/10/) and that life goes on for me (https://spiritual-entrepreneurship.com/2018/02/06/), I am still in the process of accepting, with thanksgiving, this new phase of my life. We were recently counseled in the grief group I participate in that we should relinquish our grasp on the past (or rather that the past has on us) in order to reach out to the potential for new relationships (and, I would add, new adventures). As we discussed, this does not need to be immediate, or as they say “cold turkey”, but it does eventually need to be complete. In other words, we need to be unbound from the past and let go to the present and the future.

Now I relinquished my responsibility for caring for Mary’s well-being and needs when I realized it was time to let her go. That happened when the doctors at the hospital on her final visit informed me she had told them she was “ready to meet her Maker”. It was not easy for me after having borne that responsibility for over 54 years, but I realized it was in her best interest to be in the presence of Jesus, so I let her go. I was able to accept the reality of this, and with thanksgiving that her pain and suffering were over. I have not, however, relinquished my memories of our life together, and frankly do not believe that is possible, or even necessary for that matter.

I now am beginning to realize that I must relinquish any wishful or wistful thoughts about a prolonging of my life with Mary. That time, as wonderful as it was, is passed. There is no turning back the clock. That means that I must fully accept my present circumstances for what they are, as well as whatever glimpses I have of what the future may hold. That is the reality of my life. And as the days go by I am finding I can do that with thanksgiving. New vistas are beginning to open before me that promise challenging and exciting opportunities. I am beginning to appreciate what the Apostle Paul meant when he said “For I would that all men were even as I myself.” because he no longer had (if he ever did) any responsibility for a wife and family and was free to go wherever God led him and to do whatever God asked him to do.

So I am increasingly thankful to be at a similar point in my life where I will be able to experience whatever adventures God may have in store for me with nothing to hold me back. As I grow nearer to the finish line of my life I want to be able to say that I expended my last ounce of energy and my last breath fulfilling my God-ordained destiny. After all, as has been said “”Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body,but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming — WOW– What a Ride!”

I am now beginning to realize the vast difference between trials and tribulations and loss. In this life we all experience trials and tribulations. It is, unfortunately, a normal and expected part of life. Although for some of us these can be quite severe and traumatic, for most of us they are troublesome, but not life changing. For instance, my wife Mary and I encountered trials and tribulations throughout our 54 years together. These occurred continually, but not continuously; that is, they were not constant, but recurring. As I have described before, Mary dealt with health problems all of her life, beginning in her teenage years and continuing until her passing into God’s eternal kingdom last December. These I consider to be tribulations, things that were disturbing and over which we had no control. We learned to live with them, however, knowing that God had control of our situation and would bring us through, which he did every time. Even her eventual passing away was a blessing in that she was finally relieved of all her maladies and ushered into a realm where sin, sickness and death do not exist.

As to trials, we also encountered many of those. Some were to be expected, as we attempted to combine two people with very different backgrounds and temperaments, as well as skill sets and interests, into a unified relationship know as marriage. Fortunately God led us in a way that proved to be mutually advantageous for both of us, and which allowed us both to utilize our gifts and talents to pursue our dreams and achieve fulfillment. In the process, however, we were presented with many challenges which required us to make sometimes difficult decisions and created trials of our faith and patience as a result of those decisions. Once again, though, God provided us with a way through them, sometimes bearing scars, but always ultimately with a deeper understanding of God’s will for us and a greater appreciation of his loving care for us.

Now in all of these experiences there was one constant factor. Mary and I always experienced these trials and tribulations together. The decisions we made were always joint decisions. And everything we experienced, we experienced together. The end result of each one was a deeper love and appreciation for each other and for God. All of this changed, however, when Mary passed away.

I am still trying to deal with the great difference my loss of her has occasioned. Unlike all of our previous experiences, this one is completely irreversible and final. I will never again see her, hold her or gain insight from her wisdom in this life. The thought of that would be unbearable if I did not have the sure knowledge that our relationship will resume when I, too, enter the eternal kingdom, although in different form. That hope somewhat mitigates the pain of my loss. But it does not alleviate me of my present dilemma. I must continue on in life, facing whatever trials and tribulations may come, without her companionship and support. I must make decisions on my own without her sage advice. The positive aspect of this is that I am learning to listen more constantly and attentively to the Holy Spirit and I am ever more aware of God’s never failing presence with me every moment of every day.

Nevertheless my loss of Mary has proven to be much more traumatic than any of the previous trials and tribulation that we shared. That has proven to be a vast difference.

My understanding of purpose continues to evolve. As I have documented earlier, I have learned that God’s plans for me go far beyond my mortal life in this present universe. His long range purpose for me on this Earth is to prepare me for the role I will be assigned in the kingdom of God on the new Earth when he “makes all things new”. That purpose never changes. Also, since I became a part of the Body of Christ I am involved in God’s revelation of himself through the nature and actions of the Body. If we who constitute the Body of Christ on Earth conduct ourselves in the manner that Christ modeled for us during his earthly life, we accurately reflect God’s nature. If we do not, we sully his name and give the world a false impression of who he is. In that sense, our purpose is to surrender ourselves (our bodies and our wills) to God and to allow him to work what he wills through us. That purpose, too, never changes.

While I am still here, though, his short term purpose for me changes over time. When I married my wife and then became a father to my daughter, my purpose included providing for their needs to the point of giving them priority over my own needs. I confess that I did not always do a very good job of this, although my behavior in this regard improved over time. When my daughter married, her husband took over the responsibility for her well-being that had been mine. My responsibility for my wife’s well-being then became my sole primary responsibility. In recent years this required more and more of my time and energy as her health continued to deteriorate. My purpose in life centered more exclusively on her until her passing into the eternal realm last December.

Immediately after her passing, I was at somewhat of a loss for a time as to what my purpose was now. However, I have gradually come to realize that my area of responsibility has broadened to include more of the family of God outside of my immediate family. And since I now have more time and energy available I need to expend it in a wider circle. Although I do not yet know exactly what that will entail, I am eagerly anticipating God’s revelation of his new purpose for me.

I have had a most exciting and rewarding life up to now, but I firmly believe the best is yet to come. Bring it on.

I am still trying to digest and assimilate all that I have experienced in the last few months. The one thing I know for sure is that my life will never be the same. I am moving on to a new phase of life that has yet to be fully defined, but promises to be exciting and richly rewarding. In the short term I am watching and waiting while God works behind the scenes. But when he says “Go”, I will be ready to start out again on the journey of life. (Praying for patience)