Often I get really deep theologically. I’ll sit and be reading Athanasius, Torrence, or some such theologian and start to ponder the depth of what I have been reading and coming to understand. But this post, like the last, is more about musing over something seemingly simple that just doesn’t work the way I’ve been told it should.

For example, I wrote my most recent blog on how a relationship with Jesus the way most Evangelicals live it out is not a relationship at all but, I don’t know, a system? Love doesn’t exist systemically. You can never say A+B+C= love. Therefore, since love is the core foundation of relationship you can’t systematically produce a relationship, which is really going to deflate the egos of some Christian writers who have written books and the like to teach you the 7 Tricks to a Great Marriage or some such stupidity.

Relationship can only happen when two or more open themselves to one another for discovery and then grow to trust one another. Trust is the key link in the chain. It can be its strongest or weakest, however. I’m stealing a line here from another blog, though not its content or context. I just thought it a cool and really eyeopening line. So our relationships are only as strong as the trust we have for the other person.

If you’ve ever been to one of those discovery camps that help you grow together as a group by going on zip lines or rock climbing or other obstacles that have to be traversed together, they try to teach you to trust your partner. It is as if by some magic spending a day or two with someone you work with is actually going to cause you to really trust them. That kind of induced trust is like when you were in school. You learned, more like memorized, what you needed to know, regurgitated it on a test and promptly forgot it all. At those camps you do what is necessary because that is what they are asking, but you’re not growing in relationship. Sure I will catch you when you close your eyes and lean back. But I am doing it for two reasons: 1) I really don’t like to see anyone get hurt and 2) because I’ll look like a real jerk if I DON’T catch you. No relationship there.

In our personal Christian reality do we really trust Christ with everything or do we just say it like the answers on an Algebra test? We don’t want to look like heathen jerks so we repeat the mantra and all is well, until it isn’t.

Here is a confession of sorts to explain: I have been really struggling with a particular sin issue in my life. I prayed that the Lord would work in me to transform me so that sin wouldn’t rear its ugly head again. I could see all the exit signs for getting away from it. For days I took the off ramp and ran as far as I could from it.

Then I fucked up. I know that some of you have now been offended and may never read my blog again. But what do you call it when you decide willfully and deliberately to do that which you have been fighting against?

The frustration and guilt that swelled over me threatened to tear me to shreds emotionally. It was like the first time I got pummeled by the West Coast surf as the tide came in. It was a helpless feeling of being slammed to rocky, shell-filled floor only to be lifted up and slammed again.

Then I got on Facebook. That’s random, eh? On FB I saw that my friend had posted a link to a blog. Now the blog was specifically about evangelism and how burdens of conditional salvation are placed on people leading them even after conversion to wonder about whether the salvation experience they had had actually took, was it real or would God take it back.

What Jesus did he did once for all. Jesus did not come to die for our sins only. He did not become some sort of super-man who was not really one of us. Jesus entered into our darkness, our pain, our fear and lived in our humanity and did what we cannot do: live it sinlessly.

That is where trust comes in. If I really believe he loves me. If all that I have grown to know about this man is true, then he forgave me before I could say, “I fucked up again.” By the way, he’s ok with you expressing it that way. Jesus is living his life in me confronting me with my weaknesses and my doubts all the while saying, “Trust me.”

If you are struggling with trust issues like me examine the link. I think you’ll be surprised by something. It is not our link of trust that this relationship is founded on. It is his. His trust, his faith is what keeps this relationship together. That’s why the Apostle Paul could say in Romans 7, “Who shall save me from this body of death? Thank God Almighty, through Jesus Christ.”

Advertisement