Becoming More Compassionate

Mitchell, Brody, Shannon, and Shelby,

"Praise God!  Trust in God!  Don't worry!  He's there!  Look at how great God is!  Look at how mighty He is!  Mighty to save!  Mighty to do miracles!  Great and powerful!  Wise and wonderful!  I'm a Bible-believing, prayer-praying, song-singing, Spirit-sprinkled, faith-fulfilled, brightly blessed, saved and serving Christian!"

Please, just...go get your American flag while you're at it.  By now, we've become pretty good at associating a flag, a bald eagle, and a robed man with hippie hair together.

American flag: Grand.

Bald eagle: Grand.

Jesus: Grand.

In these things, we love, and Jesus most of all.  Jesus, the most perfect representation of greatness and majesty.

You know, I was looking through that one website people love to use nowadays.  It's called Pinterest, and I'm not much for it, but I gave it a shot and looked through Christian pages and felt a little...empty.  It disappointed me.  I found a lot of things I liked, a lot of good wisdom, but really, something seemed missing.

There was so much praise, so much encouragement to not worry when God's providing, so much profession in salvation.  It was big.

An explosion.

That's what it was like.  It was like the opening crawl to a Star Wars film.  BLAM!  Pictures of the cross strewn all over, making their way into every other picture.  Glorious and triumphant.

Wait, what?  The cross was triumphant?  Why are we depicting it that way?

Then I backstep a bit, and I sort of figured out what was going on here.  I was talking with my sister recently about this, that something seemed so hollow and empty as I went through these pages.  In some ways, I could put my finger on it, because it's obvious to me when there's not enough Grace.  There was a spiritual issue as I went through and tried to figure out what was wrong with these Christian pages I was going through.  How could I tell that there wasn't Grace?  What were the telltale signs?

I began putting together a page of my own, just for the sake of reflection, and I began putting together pictures that spoke to me on that deep-seated level, that were more than just Christian triusms, soundbites, and quips.  After a while, I think I began seeing a theme.

Mountains.  The planet Earth.  Galaxies.  Then, of course, those animated pictures that show everything in the universe to scale.  You know the ones.  They start with Earth and then zoom out until the Earth is a dot and then the sun is a dot and then there's a red giant that's so big that we can't even fathom it.  I get the picture; God's bigger than that.  These make good sermons, I guess, and they're a bit inspirational.

Don't fault me, though, when all this saber-rattling and boasting in just how big Christ is fails to help me develop an intimate relationship with God.  It feels like I could get the same spiritual high if I visited a planetarium.

See, the bigger you make something, and the more you emphasize how big it is, the more distant it becomes.  Show me a picture of VY Canis Majoris, and the best I can tell you is "Cool."  Knowing that something is big, through, really doesn't change my life.

I began scanning the internet, scourging it for all that spoke to me about Christ.  I discarded the ones that thumped the cross like it was a flag, or depicted Jesus like a lion.  Too triumphant.  It was religious patriotism.  Didn't seem right...

Then I saw pictures depicting Jesus and things that He did.  That spoke to me.  Some of them weren't necessarily preaching anything in particular, and they were just biographical facts.

Oh yeah, that's right.  God became a regular old Joe Schmoe.  A person that I could have touched if I lived in that place and time.  This person wasn't big and grand.  He was small, and humble.

When I place all worth on this Jesus, I find that it humbles me.  All the inspirational pep talks left me feeling a little stranded, but this changes me.

The apostles didn't worship some far-off abstract God.  They had a relationship with Him.  They didn't have to fight in order to create an imaginary relationship, because He became an historical reality.

I can see why disbelief in this caused the Gnostics to become less loving.  If they couldn't believe in a Jesus who was small, then they couldn't really become small.  They couldn't empty themselves.

Once I began thinking about it, and once I began seeing Jesus as a simple, humble servant, once I began treating Him as someone I have a personal relationship with, not just as God but as a man also, I believe that the spirit in which I look at the world changes.  I find that nobody has to preach anything to me, that I simply become more compassionate simply by confessing that this little guy means something to me.  That's the Spirit which I live by.

Sincerely,
John Hooyer