Apology

Although, I could apologize for the rest of my life and never have apologized for all the things that need apologizing for. I think that word has been used quite enough times in one sentence, so we'll see how I can manage without it.

Anyway, this week at Kingsley is Mission Focus Week, and the guest speaker is Mary Fisher, who has given some fantastic lectures thus far. She has talked about the missional nature of the church, and the missional message of the church. Both messages were profound and provocative and gave me much food for thought. Her basic message so far is that we need to understand the Bible in its totality - shocking, I know! - and understand how ever since Genesis 4 the story of humanity has been the story of God's recreation of the whole world. Mind you, not just human hearts and souls, but the whole world.

My mind doesn't stop its own internal musings while these messages are going on, and this morning I realized that I have failed one of the Biblical commandments: Always be prepared, in season and out of season, to give a reason for the hope that you have.

If you come to understand the hope that we have as being the fulfillment of this life - as I am fast coming to through my theological studies - in the next life, then the hope for this life must be grounded in the particular and unique person of Jesus Christ. And we must live in relationship with Him to be able to communicate the gospel of His salvation through the Kingdom of God for the whole world to other people. And if we do not, then our faith is dry and bland and empty, like an unused teabag.

So, my apology is this: that I have not taken time to understand and to be able to communicate - much less actually communicate! - the reasons for the hope that I have. I have all sorts of ideas and beliefs about the church, about community, about faith, about life, about heaven. But I very rarely communicate them to anyone. They are left in my own head, like toys in a toybox, never to be taken out and used and shared with other people. I don't often enough allow myself the vulnerability to say what I think about these things to or in front of other people.
The problem is especially highlighted if you were to see me in classrooms. I will very often make a connection with something else that I have learned or experienced, and I will crack up. And laugh hysterically. Tonight I had to put my head between my knees to keep from totally disrupting class - which I'm sure that I've done anyways, at least for some people. But my ideas and my thoughts remain my own, and I don't share them with other people. I don't express them. I don't write them out. I don't allow other people to interact with them, and thus with me. I keep things to myself, so that I can enjoy them, and I rob other people of the ability to enjoy them and think about them with me.

This picture of me paints me as very selfish and self-centered. What is the purpose of my learning and my classroom experiences if I can't articulate and share them with other people? What is the point of being able to connect my classes together, and connect them to my life and to my faith and to my worldview if I don't articulate them to other people?

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to say that I want to parade my ideas around and say "look at me and how much I've learned and put me on a pedestal!" But if I can't and don't learn how to express and share the things that I'm learning, what's the point? I haven't engaged myself in community. I haven't learned in community. I've learned, and been surrounded by other people, but it's most definitely not the same thing.

It's also related to another thing that I've been learning - or at least trying to make much more real in my life. That's how I need to BE, and not to DO. Granted, this is something that I've struggled with and tried to apply at so many times in my life. But to tie up this whole thought process from today, I've realized that for what it matters, I am a student. And as such, I need to relate my identity as a student, and what I do as a student, and what I learn as a student, to other people, and I need to use that as a way to love other people. And if I can't use that to express the hope that I have - or if I can, and don't - what good does that do anyone but myself?