Of Truth and Printing...

I am up way to early this sabbath morning going over my notes for today's Sabbath School lesson. I will be guiding the discussion today and I want to be sure I cover some key elements. The subject in question is Truth and we will be looking at the role it plays in the Christian life.

The author of the lesson wrote the following, which I find profound:

"We have to be careful, however, with this notion that all religion means is having a relationship with God. Everyone lives in a relationship with God, one way or another. Folks who deny His existence live in a relationship with Him. Even the devil has a relationship with Jesus - he hates Him. The gospel is not a call to have relationship with Jesus but to make a commitment to Him."

While the truth of this statement is not new to me, I love how this is worded. Although I am no theologian, I have grown up in the church and can probably hold my own in a discussion on Christian belief and doctrine. By doing so I guess you could call me religious. And I have shied away from that label.

Instead, for quite a while I have preferred to be called a spiritual person who is interested in spiritual things. I have also stressed that a relationship with God is the most important thing. This is God as a benefactor, mentor, counselor and friend. But the idea of commitment takes things to a whole new level of meaning for me.

Commitment is defined in one way as steadfastness despite arduous circumstances. It means that, though the sky is falling, you will endeavour to be there in whatever capacity you can be. In fact, it means that you consistently explore ways of being there in a greater capacity, than you were in the first place, and indeed aim to be at that next level. Not at all dissimilar to falling in love and progressing from being boyfriend (girlfriend) to husband (wife) to father (mother) etc and embracing each stage with all your might... although God still remains your benefactor, mentor, and friend... this progression is characterized by the ultimate realization that He is your Savior and Lord.

Reversing things a bit. Not realizing the keys to commitment is a reason why all relationships fail. Our humanity defeats us. We don't even make it to the "arduous circumstances" bit. We give up way before that and we fail to realize that the reason we don't feel fulfilled and begin looking elsewhere for "the spark and the heat" is because we are not interested in giving this level of "steadfastness" to anyone often, not even ourselves.

Thank God, He loved us before we even loved ourselves. (John 3:16; John 4:19)

Anyway regarding the article I grabbed from CNN and reposted on my Facebook profile which talks about unplugging to enjoy the sabbath: The Sabbath Manifesto. I agree with the sentiment that anything that distracts you from connecting with your fellow human beings and experiencing the sabbath to the fullest should be removed. If this is my beloved BlackBerry, then so be it. I do set it aside for my wife (who ironically grabs my attention by BBm'ing me on hers to come spend time with her!)

But let us remember that technology is largly responsible for why any of us are Christians today. When Gutenberg invented movable type in 1439, the first book to come off the press was the Bible. With that single stroke of genius a new era of the passing of information was introduced. The Word of God was returned to the common man. Our iPhone's and BlackBerrys are direct descendants of this event.