Desiring God

"I don't love God. I don't want to love God. But I do want to want to love God"

I don't who said that, or where it came from, but it's nor original. It's also true. I struggle with living a Christian life. A lot of the time, I don't feel like a Christian, whatever that's supposed to mean. But I follow this Christian life, because it's convincing. The world is broken, and all the supposed 'fixes' out there just seem to make it worse.

That is, except for one. Well, sort of at least. I look at Jesus, and what he says about the world. What he says about social change, loving neighbors, loving yourself, and it makes sense. It makes sense, because I resonate, not because I could have come to that conclusion myself. Left to my own devices, I would probably hate myself, and 99.999% of the rest of the world. Most of the time, I don't even want it to be true, but my heart tells me otherwise. My heart tells me that you have worth, that I have worth, that Saddam Hussein and Adolph Hitler had worth. I don't like what they did, but they were human beings. They had worth to them.

Christ's vision of how to change the world is revolutionary. It's revolutionary because it doesn't make sense to the world. It doesn't make sense to the structures in place. But that is exactly why it makes sense. The world tells us that if we want someone to stop doing something bad (say, killing 6 million Jews) we have to kill him. That's the only option. But Jesus says that there is another option. He doesn't tell us what option is, or how to do it. He does that because our situation is not his. He couldn't have given instructions to a 21st century Christian on how to vote, because that's not what he was about.

Rob Bell picks this up in one of his Nooma videos. In it, he is in an orchestra hall, and he talks about music. How when musicians are warming up, one person will start to play something on a piano. Then as the violinist picks up on the melody, that person will nuance it, and make it their own. The two instruments will blend together beautifully. Then the cellist will join in, and make it more beautiful. Soon a saxophone can be heard, then a clarinet and a flute. Eventually there is an entire orchestra playing together, making something far more beautiful than a single piano could ever hope to be. Rob Bell ties that in with Jesus. He didn't tell us how to live, he showed us how. He wasn't telling us, you have to play this music. But he showed us his music, and invited us to join in with our own music.

That's the life that is compelling to me. That's the life that scares me. I don't love God, and I don't want to love him. But I do want to want to love him. All because he showed me, and the rest of the world, a better way to live.