"Constriction...................."

Stopping by the assistant pastor’s office on my way to the church gymnasium, I found myself entered into a brief conversation with him concerning final judgment, the two of us discussing the recent loss of another man’s son and he addressing that day when it all comes down to whether or not a man chose to accept Jesus. Voicing my own hesitancy to punctuate our destiny with such precision, believing that particular point in eternity belongs to that One who holds it all in His hands, I left further parsing of the subject for another time. He, by his very position within the church, is bound by its credo. Easy enough to walk therein if your mind is content with a structured box and the limits it enforces. Indeed, it seems to me that Christianity, as a whole, has constrained itself thusly, each division utilizing the same Bible to construct its individual dogma while leaving no option for the Holy Ghost to proclaim God possibly bigger than the box. A G.K. Chesterton quote came to me yesterday afternoon, shortly after the above encounter, perhaps applying to such thoughts as posed. “All roads lead to Rome;” he conceded, before adding “which is one reason why many people never get there.” While preachers most likely would be quick to apply this to the singularity of Christ as our ticket through the Pearly Gates, my own digestion of it determined the statement might well refer to the number of paths available to us, all starting at the Cross, but from there a matter of what we want to believe. While I’m not advocating rebellion (a verse in Proverbs, in listing “six things that the Lord hates”, declares a seventh item, “sowing discord among the brethren” to be “an abomination unto Him”), surely there is room in this to allow that the Creator is more than any concrete image we have constructed for ourselves out of Scripture. The Book was never meant to be a foundation for some mental idol before which we bow down and worship, but an oasis to which we can return again and again, discovering there that same breath of God which originally spoke it into existence. “If there is a wall between you and the world,” that same above author noted, “it makes little difference if you are locked in or locked out.”…..