The hope of all

Now what was the sort of "hole" man had got himself into? He had tried to set up on his own, to behave as if he belonged to himself. In other words, fallen man is not simply an imperfect creature who needs improvement: he is a rebel who must law down his arms. Laying down your arms, surrendering, saying you are sorry, realising that you have been on the wrong track and getting ready to start life over again from the ground floor--that is the only way out of our "hold." This process of surrender--this movement full speed astern--is what Christians call repentance. Now repentance is no fun at all. It is something much harder than merely eating humble pie. It means unlearning all the self-conceit and self-will that we have been training ourselves into for thousands of years. It means killing part of yourself, undergoing a kind of death. In fact, it needs a good man to repent. And here comes the catch. Only a bad person needs to repent: only a good person can repent perfectly. The worse you are the more you need it and the less you can do it. The only person who could do it perfectly would be a perfect person--and he would not need it.--C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, ch 4: The Perfect Penitent

For I tell you that Christ became a servant to the circumcised to show God's truthfulness, in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy.--Romans 15:8,9

"Repent" is a word that pretty much everyone even only peripherally aware of Christianity, at least in the West, is aware of--often, because you hear some crazy guy on the street corner shouting it while wearing a sandwich board sign opining that the end of the world is nigh. But it's a key word, perhaps the key word to a believer, as it is the beginning of forgiveness and the birth of hope and faith in our lives. Through repentance we come to love--to experience God's great love for us, to comprehend that this love is completely unwarranted yet offered in spite of ourselves, and through that, to loving God as He calls us to, with every ounce of our being. From that we become men and women who love those around us, even those we don't know, and those who have wronged us.

Repenting is something I've had trouble with since I was a kid, and it certainly hasn't gotten easier as I've gotten older. You have the things you do in life, good and bad (at least by the typical cultural definitions) and over time you start to look at those things as a part of you. The problem is, those things for me stopped being supports in my life--they became anchors, dead weight holding me down, frustrating me, inspiring me to spend lots of time looking backwards at my youth and glory days, and worrying about the future and what it would bring. But the idea of letting go of anything seemed contrary to what I should do to survive. What were those things? Well, there were a lot of different ones, and God is still revealing things to me, but a few big ones: my participation and achievement in the world of drum corps, my continuing education and my career in general, and the big one: my independence and self-absorbtion--or in a simpler term, my pride.

Since I was a kid I've been very independent. I am the stereotypical "first child" (which is good, since that's what I am), charging out headfirst after whatever it was I was pursuing. But it became something I made more than it was supposed to be, and in the end I used it to make much of myself, and little of God. So over the course of several years, God slowly pulled my supports/anchors away from me. My participation as a staff member with a couple different junior corps, which to me was supposed to lead to a fruitful career running a hornline, led instead only to frustration, and I have not felt God move my heart to similar participation since then. I was forced to leave school in a combination of academic and financial failure, leaving me worried about the long-term consequences for my career; my only performing work was coming as a member of a band with a history of turmoil and headed for more--and at that time God began to convict me of exactly how sinful I was. I was somebody who had been brought up with a foundation of Christianity, who understood it cognitively and believed it, but my heart had not been substantively transformed by the Gospel. I was still living in sin.

The biggest realizing in the course of repenting for me has been that you're not simply repenting of a list of actions (though for most it starts there). What I am repenting of is the state of my heart. My heart lives in dire opposition to God, to submission of any kind let alone to Him. It is, as Jeremiah 17:9 says, "deceitful...and desperately sick." And there is nothing of my own strength that I can do about it; even if I manage to be "good" in the sense that I don't do what is culturally or even biblically considered bad, that accomplishes nothing. The law brings only conviction, after all; it does not bring commendation to those who manage not to break it, and in all likelihood doing so would simply make me a self-righteous hypocrite, just as selfish with what God gave me as I would be if I was buried in some other sin.

Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will keep it.--Luke 17:33

Jesus lived, and died, as a man who had surrendered his whole being to God. Of course, he was able to do this because he was God, and therefore was aware in full of the joy that comes with being in His presence. But that is what makes God's mercy a twofold act of righteousness: 1) God is merciful on us because He allowed His Son to absorb His wrath for our sins, and 2) He gave us a model for what it truly means to submit and live for Him. There is so much more to it that I seek to understand, but I do praise Him for my salvation, and for bringing me to a place of submission, to where I could understand that loving my own life above Him was only a guarantee that I would die completely, but in surrendering it to Him I would find real life as Jesus demonstrated in His resurrection. I crave more, I need more, but at the same time I am satisfied that He will show me in due time. I take joy in that longing, in that desire for God if you will, because it is the only desire that leads to the true fullness of joy, rather than ultimate disappointment and frustration.