March 25, 2010

2 Peter 1

I like the stepping stone list to goodness here. It's very odd. Faith to goodness I get, otherwise faith isn't real. Goodness to knowledge, that's a matter of doing things for the right reason and not just blindly but because of God, so okay. Knowledge to self-control is going back to the first point of putting it back into action. Self-control with endurance I think is just the natural result of self-control. Then there's endurance to godliness, which is a word I confess: I really don't know what it means. But it goes from that to "mutual affection" to love.

Something went wonky in there, but I'm not sure, because I have no idea what "godliness" means in this context. I feel like it's meant a lot of things over time, and I don't know what they meant here.

But I hate to get caught up in all of that. I'm tired and not feeling very clever or inspired at the moment. And usually a verse "we did not follow cleverly devised myths" would send me rocketing off on a comparative study of our version of the Sacrifice of God to the rituals of other religions, but I feel like I've already done that somewhere on this blog anyway.

But there's something I can't get over, even in my current state, about this, "We ourselves heard this voice come from heaven, while we were with him on the holy mountain." And not just because of its reference to perhaps my favorite Bible story. Imagine hearing that, or talking to someone about what that was like - to hear with your physical ears, to see, to be able to reach out and touch...to stand literally upon that mountain in the presence of...

That's the basis of faith we're asked to have. Believing each other. Trusting in the witness of other fallible mortal men. It's hard. And they tend to talk crazy when they come down from that mountain - suddenly the most ordinary words sound so very different on the lips of a newly Christened prophet. Suddenly the whole world can understand their words at once in all the varied tongues but, when they listen, they can feel the words straining to contain what they really mean.

Faith breeds love, but not a fruity "love everyone" kind of nonsense, it's about knowledge and self-discipline and service and taking care of one another that we come to love. Anything else is as cheap as faith without works. Anything else is cheating. It's a hard thing to understand, especially because the people who say it spout off words that don't say enough - something that either annoys us or inspires us - and we end up feeling confused more than anything else.

But you can tell if you're on the right path, if you're approaching love from the faith angle, if you're going about it the right way, by a simple examination of your motives. Are you trying to be a better person or be perceived as one? Are you trying to grow closer to God or win brownie points with Him? Are you trying to help and serve your fellow men or be thought of well by them?

Faith to goodness to knowledge to self-control to endurance to godliness to mutual affection to love.

Not a bad template really.