The Mirror or the Looking glass?

I want to take you way back to when you were 13 years old.  You were likely squirming in your chair trying to maintain your concentration on something very important Pastor was trying to communicate. You may have been battling against the thoughts and distractions like when you were going to get your homework down or that cute girl or boy at school.

Pastor was telling you about the 3 uses of the Law.  An important set of ideas that if are not given the proper attention and balance have led to many pathologies in the church.  To Curb the individuals behavior and give order to the world, To Mirror or show us our sin and futility rightly pointing us to the Cross and Christ’s work, and to Guide that shows Christians how to lead a God pleasing life.  Now, I do not intend on going too deep into any one of these, but one.  Because, I am sure, you remember most of this from your hormone driven and confused days as an adolescent, but I do want to remind you of the damage that is done when humans use the law as a hatchet or machete to chop off at the knees anyone who is not living up to their own personal standards.

Instead, I would like to talk to you about the third use and my own understanding and conception of it.  The Guide to a Christian life.  My imagination began stirring on this concept while reading the Pslams of Moses, that has been echoed many times throughout scripture.  but his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night(Psalm 1:2).  Now my thoughts on the are heavily informed by David’s use of the statement on occasion someone we all now to be a broken man and far from a legalistic Pharisee.

The Ten Commandments as a looking glass.  I know when we think of the Ten Commandments it is easy to see them as a concrete set of ideas, 2 dimensional and inscribed on stone.  Today, in my conception of the law I see a natural transition from this mirror to guide principal when meditation on the law, just as my imagination takes me deep into the mirror or looking glass.  This is the place where the theologists will hop out of their seats steaming, puffed up, arguing the weakness of my upcoming analogy.  With all the patience I have I will so kindly say please sit back down, and if you will please move your chair to the corner.  My expression is only a practical understanding of the uses that allows for me to love people more.

Without sounding to Post Modern I would like to suggest my looking glass is much like a lens that refracts and reflects light.  With much a dew mi punta de vista.  When I say the looking glass is like a lens for my imaginations, what I mean is this.  Take those commandments for example that say not to steal or kill.  You have to do some real intellectual back flips to suggest stealing or killing from someone is an expression of love.  There are many antinomians out there, and new age Christians, whose modalistic interpretation of God is love, a true statement by the way, lends to some form of moral relativism.  For me however, without a guiding set of principals, in spite of all the love I claim to have for my brothers and sisters, have found myself on occasion in situations of conflict hurt and hurting both physically and emotionally apart from any consideration of the law, with a very carnal understanding that what has happened was wrong.  If I lust after a woman, am I really showing love and respect for her husband or even her brothers, father and mother?  This type of dismissal of consideration for them is dehumanizing, by my own definition the dismissal at its core a form of hate.  If I covet my neighbors things, greedily defining their gains as somehow unjustly attained, instead of celebrating their achievements and even self-sacrificing to protect him and his house, how can I say that I love or know a God who is Love.

Now I could spend all day and all night articulating the spectrum by which violating or failing to follow the guidelines set down by the infinite refractions of the Ten Commandments is a failure to love God and Man.  However, I think you get the point.  Back to David and his meditations.  When you lift the Ten Commandments up off the table and bring them much closer.  When they become transparent and you begin to see the world through them I think we begin to see at least one way how David was a man after God’s own heart.  Furthermore, when we reflect and confess our failings we can have a new perspective and motivation on how we have failed and be refreshed by the power of Love how it is we intent to correct our behaviors.

Thank you, Lord for freeing me from the bondage and burden of sin and providing me through your perfect expression of Law and Gospel a way by which I can love you and my neighbor better.  Thank you for writing the law on my heart and giving me a Looking Glass by which I can comprehend your righteousness.  Thank you for the free gift of bestowing that righteousness on me, in spite of my failings.

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The Train Has Stopped Before the Station!

Suicide-

On the subway in Santiago, I was forced to confront a set of ideas no one wants to meditate.  For the second time in a week I was faced with a problem many of us want to ignore.  Suicide.  Our train was stopped.  Society was forced to recognize the suffering of one of our constituents.  Someone nameless had brought the lives of thousands to a standstill by throwing themselves on the line in front of us.  I was told by my guide this is a regular occurrence in Santiago.  But this was not the first suicide that week I was apart.  On the second day in Valparaiso I had gone to a funeral for a young woman who had perished.

On Monday in Valparaiso I attended a funeral for a woman of the Gonzales family who lived in the neighborhood of Pastor Juan Pablo my team member in Chile.  The family was not part of the Church he presided.  And like many people in today’s urban sprawl, this family did not have a regular Pastor to offer the hope of the Gospel over their daily lives.  Plain and simple most of us are unconcerned with the Body of Christ in its many forms until we are confronted with death.

On Friday what felt like an eternity but only a few days later here I was on a train in Santiago.  Wondering how now we were going to be able to continue our commute.  I was trying to not think about the inconvenience to our plans as we learned it may take up to a half an hour to clear the tracks. And instead was rapt to the idea that I was a part of someones death and I did not even know their name.  As mentioned before this was a regular occurrence.

It is a regular occurrence and not just there.  It has been happening so often that It does not even register in our conversation from day to day.  We all know someone who has turned to this.  A star, an idol, a friend, a brother.  I asked myself would I know the signs.  Of course I do, I took a class covering the symptoms in college.  In addition, who has not entertained thoughts of suicide.  Or, maybe not.  I tell you what though, not a single symptom I learned about could be easily gleaned from Facebook.  You know that place we go master our delusions of self.

Our virtual communities are failing us in this sense.  Nothing can replace the genuine body of Christ.  Our moral therapeutic deism, our “No drama” attitudes, and our arrogant efforts cut all the negative people out of our lives, is not only inconveniencing us on our commute, but leaving us unprepared and questioning God when the death of a loved one comes knocking at our own doors.  Think about that the next time someone calls you and you text back.  “What’s Up?”  More often then not the reason they give you for the call is not the real reason they are trying to connect with you.

I hope this experience colors my ministry in Chile.  I hope it informs it and directs my ministry.  This is just one of the ways my discovery period has redirected my assumption about how I may be able to serve in Chile.  In conclusion, I pray it reinforces for all who read this the necessity of us all turning away from our current interpretation of the Body of Christ, and forces us to focus on the incarnatioinal nature of Christ’ s ministry here on Earth.  Pray with me today, that we take the time to see the signs of those suffering around us, and that we not delude ourselves with our astute practices of image management, and self delusion, that everything is O.K. and there are not people dying of loneliness as the Body of Christ is losing its emphasis in the world around us.

“If Satan Can’t make you Sin, He will just make you busy!”

-Via Dr. Jacob Youmans

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Hello Y’all!

Please read my most recent News Letter http://This is my Mathew 28!  – http://mailchi.mp/4ab4c23e8c68/this-is-my-mathew-47555

Here I am sitting here this morning on a Saturday morning with a cup of coffee.  Like the beginning of most great blogs. This is my first.  My best guess is my truly great blogs will come later, so I appreciate you following me.  However, I have made some pretty epic rants on Facebook so please send me a friend request at https://www.facebook.com/aaron.farrow2

At this juncture of my path where I am beginning the formal planning of my mission I have many things overflowing in my heart. Ideas that have been developing for almost eight years as I have worked and planned preparing myself for this mission.  Many things that I imagined myself saying to the Body of Christ, in my desire to explain what is driving me to go halfway around the world.  Thoughts such as why me?  Thoughts about what I see in the Word.  Thoughts about, what does my story communicate to others?  How will my mission serve both those I am going to and those who I am leaving behind.  I look forward to writing about some of those things later.  For the time being I would like to quickly reflect on the mystery that is the Body of Christ.

It is a diverse body with many parts.  The mystery is how God can use many different people often times in ways that seem completely uncoordinated to bring the Gospel to just the right place at just the right time. I fight the temptation to be melodramatic and speak in grandiose terms here.  Let me keep it simple for the time being.  If your reading this.  Thank you for being a part of this mystery.  I pray you continue to follow my blog in the future while I unpack what I see we are capable of achieving stewarding the gifts and talents the Lord has given us.  In return for your faithfulness I pray that whatever I learn from this experience and what ever blessing I receive while serving in Chile, that these blessings edify you as well.

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