Thoughts About Christianity {My Relationship With God}

Re-Learning My Relationship With God

The closest analogy of “progress” with my relationship with God would be that as a man climbing a ladder to a roof of a house. Every day that would pass where I wouldn’t lose my temper or didn’t indulge my mind in lustful thoughts would be the equivalent of moving up a rung on the ladder. When my guard fell, as it did, it would be the same as a man falling off the ladder, back to the ground and not just down a rung, where the whole hopeless task would start over again. On my best days I would pray the God would give me the strength to merely make it to the next rung. On my worst days I would give up prayer all together. For the other days I would just pray that he would help me by placing me on the roof, thereby forgoing me the trouble of the struggle.

There are two things very wrong, and one point very missed with this line of thought.

The first, and maybe to some the most obvious, way in which I was wrong was the simple fact that I was already on the roof. My visions of climbing the spiritual ladder may have been appropriate dealing with some other religion, (either by obtainment of enlightenment via reincarnation or Buddhism) but belief in Christianity, simple put, is that my getting to the roof is an act of charity. The devil was no doubt very pleased with my disillusion and all the nights I would torment myself with feelings of guilt and unworthiness of my own professed belief when I was merely trying to stand a rung higher.

An Off Topic Note About Charity: This can be a very hard issue to deal with as most men, myself included, can have a difficult time accepting charity. No amount of merit or effort will entitle one Christian to any more salvation than the next. No number of good works will make us deserve a bigger portion of God’s grace. In effect we are all on the roof already, hopefully being thankful that each one of us is not getting what we deserve.

Secondly, my perception of the level of danger these debilitating sins presented to my soul was completely wrong. The fact that I was falling to the ground with each missed step conveys wrongly what a true debilitating sin could be. This is not to say that God wasn’t concerned about my control over my temper, or of the thoughts in my head, but looking back at this time in my life I clearly see these were merely symptoms of a bigger, more serious problem.

My over all attitude in life was one of haughtiness. “Holier than thou” some would say. As this sin slowly was reveled to me and I began to work on it, consequently, I was taught (and by every extent am still learning) self control. Learning self control was (and still is) at the heart of the issues for me. My sins of unjust anger and lust where brought under foot as a result of learning self control. In short, the old adage in medicine can be true for spiritual matters as well. That which I perceived to be the real issues, more times than not, were only symptoms of some other thing.

I’m sure the devil was quite content to have me distracted and cradling my broken spiritual bones while the real issue of spiritual cancer went unnoticed.

And finally, the point that I completely missed was that as a Christian our struggles have a purpose. Taken at face value, it is easy to think that if your struggles have a purpose it’s mere physiological satisfaction that functions as a form of comfort. In reality it reduces thoughts and ideas to little more than false hope. There either is a purpose, or there isn’t. I know from personal experience that no amount mental trickery or conditioning will make you feel better about your struggle when you are knee deep in it.

A fair question to ask might be, “If struggles have a purpose, then what is the purpose, and how do I find it, for my given struggle?” There, of course, is no concrete answer to this question as circumstances are so variable. What I can say is this, ultimately the primary purpose God has for the Christians is that they would become like Christ. When you are presented with a struggle and are looking for purpose within it, if you start off in that direction I can almost all but guarantee you’ll find the specifics along the way.