"Clarity................"

Beth and I spent most of the evening last Friday with an alcoholic friend whose ability to think had been reduced to nonsense. After sitting through two meetings that people attend in their fight with such addiction, we took her to the hospital in hopes of accomplishing the first step toward a recovery; but, no more than we left, she refused treatment and left. Raised in church, one of the teens this old man taught in school thirty years ago, somewhere along the way she wandered too far off course. Now, even though screaming for help, it was a “quick fix” she sought, not a hard journey down the long road back; and it makes me wonder. Within our own group of believers, the Gospel message has always been presented as a sudden transformation, instant victory over all that holds us, the only thing required to achieve it being a man’s faith. It preaches well; and, if reality falls short of such claim, error is always on the individual who fails to muster enough grit to grab the brass ring, never on the church that distorted truth in the first place. Does Christ still heal? Is there actually an Indwelling with whom we can connect and know, not just a peace in the midst of the storm, but a delivery from the human condition? God doesn’t lie! What we do with the Word, however, in teaching our own formulated thinking instead of a resurrected Savior who abides therein, can often do damage when life proves otherwise. I’m not dismissing our own accountability for the choices we make; but I am saying that, while theology is certainly a part of maintaining a relationship with divinity, it ought to be a commodity always under construction, a matter of realizing the puzzle will never be completely solved just because we’ve got a Book…..