It was interesting to come here and read the last post I made all the way back in January. It was a confirmation that I was and am experiencing a change in my life force. Or more accurately, a revealing of it. I have tried for so long in so many different ways to get past my feelings of shame, inadequacy, and inaccurate perceptions of myself, whether I felt like I was nothing or something special.
So many years of carrying this burden of shame, guilt, and feeling like a poser when someone loved me.
They tell us that Jesus takes it all away but they don’t tell us how to receive that and so we struggle. For years, for decades, secretly, silently, feeling like we just don’t get it. We don’t get the whole Jesus thing because isn’t he supposed to take it away and everyone else must have it right but I sure don’t and doesn’t that mean I have failed yet again….
So we pretend a lot just to save face. Or we withdraw to our addictions. Addictions make us feel separate from our problems for a while. In that way I am grateful for them. But ultimately addictions fail us.
I am too old now to ever think that I have arrived at some ultimate destination of wisdom and maturity. I know better. But there are way markers, landmarks, plateaus, vistas, that can tell us we have gotten somewhere. We are definitely not there and we can count on not getting there but we can change for the better. Our perspective can turn, turn, turn, click, shift, awaken just a bit more.
As we turn, a little bit more light shines to help us see.
I see Jesus more better now.
I think I understand better now what he’s been trying to tell me for so long because I see the man differently. His words in Scripture are easier to plant in my heart and I see them take root and grow and change me. My desire to read and absorb and understand is once again made new. All through a few slight changes in perspective.
Through a realization that I came to Jesus through someone else’s understanding of him. I have come to Scripture in the past with a borrowed lens. This is understandable. Here we are on the planet seemingly only having other humans to guide us. We trust, we believe in things that have been passed down through the years, handled by some wise men, some evil men, some fools, some too trusting, some too cynical. Some kings with political agendas. Nothing can change who Jesus is, but the way we see him can be perverted by good and evil intentions.
Interesting enough, I have come to my new perspective on Jesus in part because of the heinous and almost unbelievably dystopian activities of world figures near and far. Because of how I have seen masses of people completely subscribed and committed to things they should be independent from. Because of an agenda of the elimination of critical thinking that began almost as soon as the ink dried on the Constitution, organized by nefarious entities who also happen to be extremely patient. Because I saw the deception happen to me too, and when I realized it I recoiled and repented, horrified at how I had allowed myself to be taken in by hysterical lies. I know what evil people are capable of and I know how easy it is to deceive people who are distracted.
I am following Jesus in a new (for me) way and imitating him in a new (for me) way. I’m letting him lead me to the Christ. And along the way, things are falling away. Mostly judgment that comes from the remnants of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil I have in me, and unforgiveness toward myself. And I am gaining tiny new bits of understanding about my true nature as a son (daughter) of God.
He was the true Light, which doth enlighten every man, coming to the world;
in the world he was, and the world through him was made, and the world did not know him:
to his own things he came, and his own people did not receive him;
but as many as did receive him to them he gave authority to become sons of God — to those believing in his name,
who — not of blood nor of a will of flesh, nor of a will of man but — of God were begotten.
