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Friday, April 15, 2005
Let's just say that my academic career hasn't been all that distinguished, shall we?
When I was in high school, well, what was most important to me was hitting the ball and chasing the skirts. Now that I think about it, the "hitting the ball" and "chasing the skirts" careers weren't all the distinguished, either.
But I kicked around in all sorts of activities that had little to do with cerebral pursuits in high school:
I was into heavy-metal music which morphed into a punk-rock phase (which, if truth be known, that phase is still more-or-less going on).
When we got cable television, I began to watch hours of re-runs of the Three Stooges, Gilligan's Island, and a new channel called MTV (which, at the time showed about 7 music videos over and over and over). Don't even get me started on the hours of pro-wrestling I watched.
I liked to read, but mostly biographies. The classics bored me.
I liked video games (not the ones on TV, but the stand-up machines at the arcades) and hanging out with my friends.
My friends and I actually had a wiffle-ball league in my backyard. You know wiffle-ball, right? The game four-year-olds play with a plastic bat and baseball. That's right. When I was 15 or 16, me and my friends actually spent hours in my backyard playing wiffle ball and had standings and playoffs and everything. We also had spent the winters in my house playing a table-top hockey game similar to foosball and had a league and playoffs and actually played for a 5-inch tall replica of the Stanley Cup.
"Higher things" and "Brent" would NOT have been something you would've put in the same sentence if you'd known me in high school.
As I got older, and into college, I started meeting friends from all over the country who each had some things they were into (don't get me wrong, it wasn't Algonquinian by any stretch of the imagination) that were of more of a higher order.
For example, instead of hitting the ball, the focus changed to playing the game for fun.
Instead of chasing girls who only looked good, we started chasing girls we might want to take home to Mom.
The heavy-metal music sorta died out and was replaced by a very brief classical music phase (which I've never embraced) as well as the brilliant & soulful Mississippi Delta Blues which expresses emotions like no other.
Cable television evolved into watching news and forming opinions on world events and local politics.
I discovered the classics section at the local bookstore and started reading all those books so much that I decided to major in English for a time (I did minor in it).
I started playing chess seriously instead of Donkey Kong.
Now don't get me wrong. There's still some overlap...which is why I refer to myself as a "pseudointellectual." I mean, my wife laughed at me once when I finished reading Doestoyevsky's "The Brothers Karamazov" and put Dumb & Dumber into the DVD player.
But the point is that, as we grow as people, you begin to search for deeper experiences. More meaningful experiences. A more geniuine experience of life.
And Paul points that out in Colossians 3: 1--4:
"If then you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory."
And that's the 2nd element of walking by the spirit: Remembering the work Christ did for us and who He is. (see yesterday's entry for the 1st element, which is knowing Christ).
The word "if" in verse 1 is actually a first class conditional in the Greek, which means that the answer is assumed. A better rendering in English would be "since." So, "since" we have been raised up with Christ, we should "keep seeking" the higher things. The eternal things, where Christ is.
In other words, since Christ died for us and desires to live through us, we should strive to know and experience the life He want us to live. Not so much the house in the burbs, two kids and a minivan lifestyle (although those things could very much be a part of the higher life that Christ wants some people to experience) but rather to seek out who we are in Christ and how that fleshes out in our life.
We should "set our minds on things above." Think about how our lives are different because there will be certain realities if we do that...you know, the reality that Christ could possibly come back for His Church any second now. That there will be a time that we'll be walking with Christ in His Kingdom and enjoying dinner at His table. That the Holy Spirit indwells us and we can have explosive power to live the abundant life Christ promised in John 10:10 in the here and now.
And this is all possible because, like in verses 3 & 4, Christ did something for us in the past, is working in us now, and will finish that work in the future.
So, remembering the big picture of our lives...focusing on the universe and our place in it...the higher things...should be part of our walking by the Spirit. For today, "how" do you do that in a 2005 setting? Fill us in, and comment away!
Brent 6:48 AM
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