Research has always interested me, while the logistics of carrying out solid research have always repelled me. However, it is clear to those of us who study the unquantifiable that, despite the paucity of answers available through even the most painstaking and principled of research, without it there are no answers that may be communicated. I may hold any beliefs I choose about "the way things are", but without an appeal to primary research, I have no basis on which to offer my beliefs to others.
My life's thesis, that God is Love, must too be tested and subjected to experiment under varying conditions if it is to be communicated. It seems that Paul had the same idea about the responsibility of the apostles:
"For it seems to me that God has put us the Apostles last of all, as men whose fate is death: for we are put on view to the world, and to angels, and to men." I Corinthians 4:9
He saw the apostles' lives as a spectacle, a display - living, breathing experiments of their great hypothesis, Jesus Christ the Savior of the world.
If I live true to my own hypothesis, it will be tested. My life will become an experiment in which the reality of God may be tried and the results displayed to anyone interested enough to watch.
One of the great medieval biology experiments on the effects of rest and exercise on digestion was one ordered by a cruel emperor. He had two of his servants fed well for a month. After each meal, one was forced to rest; the other was forced to exercise. At the end of the month, the servants were brought before the king and disembowelled to determine which lifestyle was better suited to healthy digestion. Obviously, the knowledge gained in this case hardly warranted the brutality it involved. But the results were clearly more to be trusted than reams of arguments on the matter.
Whatever it cost me, may I subject to the necessary tests my life's hypothesis. Let me prove amid the rigours of life's inevitable weariness and bewildering unfairness and absorbing variety and strange, surprising happiness, who is that One who is more dear than solace and more beautiful than joy. Let me not speak with smooth, swollen words of such deep, darling, powerful, and pure things as God and love. Rather, let me eat them. Let the bowels of my self be ripped apart, that the precious results may be displayed to those who wonder.
5 comments:
This is reality! I am sure that in using you to show His beauty to others, you will deeply enjoy that beauty for yourself.
"Let me prove amid the rigours of life's inevitable weariness and bewildering unfairness and absorbing variety and strange, surprising happiness, who is that One who is more dear than solace and more beautiful than joy."
It is He that shall prove it. It shall be His great work in our lives, not because, but despite us.
"Through those who are near me
I will show myself holy, and before all the people I will be glorified." - Leviticus 10:3
"They shall ascend with acceptance on My altar, And I will glorify the house of My glory." -Isaiah 60:7
You are much braver than I.....and He knows our hearts, the desires of our hearts even better than we.
paul k,
It is comforting that the work of revealing God is not ours. And yet, if he reveal himself in my life, I must choose and it must cost me.
bjk,
Please don't think I am brave. I can speak boldly only because God knows my weakness and he is merciful.
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