I was once 12. My son is now 12. 12 is one of those ages where people are working really hard to figure out who they are, who they want to be around, and how to simply not be the smelly kid. Nobody wants to be that. But everybody is sometimes
Not much changes in life, does it? Maturity is supposed to create a drammatically different human at 35 than existed at 12. But in my experience that isn't really happening. Just flip through your cable channels - Housewives of Whatever God-forsaken-region, Jersey shore, even an average cooking competition is ridiculously...juvenile. It's pretty sad.
People want to know who is in, and who is out. I guess I can chalk that up to some primal urge. People want to take a first impression and never look deeper. People create and stay charicatures - shells of who they could become.
Nowhere is this more obvious and unfortunate than faith. Consider Jesus. Thousands pushed to be taught and healed by him when he was in. Thousands rejected him to be killed when he was out. He was surrounded by perpetual 12 year olds. He was nice enough to just call them - US - sheep.
The good news is there is hope for us to all live differently. We can all have a guide - a shepherd who loves us more than we could ever imagine, who would lead us on a path towards depth, maturity, real beauty and meaning. We just have to agree to it.
But agreeing is scary isn't it? Christians are not exactly attractive as a group. Who wants to become 'one of them!?' So we have to be willing for someone else to tell us we are 'out', lame, a loser, in order to finally come into a real and full life. Maybe that is why faith in America is slipping away. Are we all just scared of being the smelly kid? Like when we were 12...
Not much changes in life, does it? Maturity is supposed to create a drammatically different human at 35 than existed at 12. But in my experience that isn't really happening. Just flip through your cable channels - Housewives of Whatever God-forsaken-region, Jersey shore, even an average cooking competition is ridiculously...juvenile. It's pretty sad.
People want to know who is in, and who is out. I guess I can chalk that up to some primal urge. People want to take a first impression and never look deeper. People create and stay charicatures - shells of who they could become.
Nowhere is this more obvious and unfortunate than faith. Consider Jesus. Thousands pushed to be taught and healed by him when he was in. Thousands rejected him to be killed when he was out. He was surrounded by perpetual 12 year olds. He was nice enough to just call them - US - sheep.
The good news is there is hope for us to all live differently. We can all have a guide - a shepherd who loves us more than we could ever imagine, who would lead us on a path towards depth, maturity, real beauty and meaning. We just have to agree to it.
But agreeing is scary isn't it? Christians are not exactly attractive as a group. Who wants to become 'one of them!?' So we have to be willing for someone else to tell us we are 'out', lame, a loser, in order to finally come into a real and full life. Maybe that is why faith in America is slipping away. Are we all just scared of being the smelly kid? Like when we were 12...