Have You Heard?
Does your childhood include a church background? There is nothing automatic about it. Many of the strong Christians I know had no church foundation as children. My family enjoyed Christian life at Grace Episcopal Church, Tucson. I think our activity with the life of the congregation waxed and waned with how much energy my parents had given the dynamics of family life. There were two of them and five of us. It is possible raising us was an exhausting process. I do however remember Sunday school, children’s choir, acolytes, Vacation Bible School, church camp, and youth group, so we had a real connection.
By the time I started college, I was eighteen months into a surge of interest in inductive Bible study, and with faith as a personal relationship with God. I was an Episcopalian on the one hand and pursued a personal exploration into what it means to follow Jesus on the other hand. I dove into a campus organization now going simply by “CRU” but in those days it was Campus Crusade for Christ, International. It is an evangelically centered group started by Dr. William Bright in the 1950s. One of the tools this group used for encouraging others to look into their relationship with Christ was a small booklet. It was a tract, called “The Four Spiritual Laws.” It is strange to think about now: what was a nice Episcopalian boy doing, sharing in an evangelical way with fellow students?
Once, at a college conference in California, they released us at LAX to talk to perfect strangers in the airport. It was just us youngsters and the Hare Krishna devotees milling about with our separate spiritual perspectives to offer. We had no finger cymbals as they had, but we did have our “Four Spiritual Laws” tracts. One of our team came upon a traveler who had already heard the spiel a time or two, and when the student said, “Have you ever heard of the four spiritual laws?” the man coldly retorted, “Have you ever heard of the five spiritual knuckles?” That conversation was very short.
Let me describe this material we used. The booklet began like this: “Just as there are physical laws that govern the physical universe, so, there are spiritual laws that govern our relationship with God.” What followed was an outline that I can interpretatively abbreviate as follows:
1. Promise - God loves you, and seeks involvement with you, guiding you into a purpose within your life.
2. Problem - We do find ourselves separated from God through barriers we put up
3. Provision - God bridges the separation with love, revealed in Jesus, the Word made flesh.
4. Participation – By your own will, you can ask Christ to be the center of your life; day to day you can seek union, dwell within God, and God within you.
I thought of this simple four-part outline of belief because of the Psalm we have coming up for our worship time this weekend. Psalm 107 is a long poem of forty-three verses surveying the whole experience of Israel with God from the time in the land of Egypt to their day-to-day struggles after settling in the land of promise. We are offering only verses 1-3 and 17-22. Reading it, I recognized a similar fourfold pattern:
Promise (This is the stated intent of our life in God.)
Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good,
and his mercy endures for ever.
Let all those whom the Lord has redeemed proclaim
that he redeemed them from the hand of the foe.
He gathered them out of the lands;
from the east and from the west,
from the north and from the south.
Problem (This is where we get off track.)
Some were fools and took to rebellious ways;
they were afflicted because of their sins.
They abhorred all manner of food
and drew near to death's door.
Provision (This shows God’s responsiveness and compassion.)
Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble,
and he delivered them from their distress.
He sent forth his word and healed them
and saved them from the grave.
Participation (This is the joyful possibility of a daily walk with God.)
Let them give thanks to the Lord for his mercy
and the wonders he does for his children.
Let them offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving
and tell of his acts with shouts of joy.
These elements arise in our experience. I don’t believe this is a one-time cycle and we are done. I think these categories repeat in any order whatsoever. Any problems I stir up in the way of disconnecting with God are met over and over again by God’s loving nature which puts forward the promise, provision, and invitation to participate in the abundant life held out to us. This is truly something for us to absorb, and yes, to share. Probably we do not use a pamphlet or tract, but we can share the way that good news takes hold when we look to God for redemptive grace. What a powerful and patient Creator we have. How nurturing and healing indeed is our forgiving Comforter!