So, what comes after surrender? What comes after the recognition that “I am not sovereign and You are?”

No doubt about it, things can get messy right away.

There is a widely-held belief in Christian circles (and by non-Christians looking in) that once we surrender, that’s it. This has many variations but here are the basics: If I submit to God (for Christians this means buying into a reality that Jesus is actually God and he means what he says), then we will be given eternal life. It is common to believe that that eternal life is experienced in a place called Heaven, wherever and whatever that is, and is definitely not in a place called Hell, wherever and whatever that is. In this telling, we are Saved by Jesus’ Redemptive action (especially on the cross) and that he beckons us to follow him into perfect eternity. I don’t mean to make light of this piece because there is a lot of evidence that something like this is the real deal. But, it’s not quite so simple, I’m afraid.

What I just described is a very cursory definition of the theological term called Justification. It’s a big fat idea that, through Jesus and our surrender to him (and despite our sins and fallen nature), we are “justified” or made whole in the eyes of a Holy God. Our individual set of scales has returned to the created balance. There are some Christian denominations that believe that our job is to continue to work to earn God’s favor (this is Good Works theology). I am not a fan of this for a number of reasons, primarily because God cannot love me anymore than he already does and I can do nothing to earn his favor. (I’m a big fan of the theology of Grace.) For those who believe that, once justified, our job is done, I will object and here it gets a little tricky. Because if we believe that we can’t work to curry God’s favor and we’re already “saved” by the redemptive act of Jesus, then what is left to do? Some Christians will say, in effect, nothing.

Thousands of volumes have been written through millennia to address this issue. A huge part of the New Testament bible is dedicated to it. In other words, after surrender (and Justification) what is left?

In my own experience, having lived thoroughly in that immediate Justification phase, I didn’t emerge thinking, “Well, that was nice. Now that God showed me a glimpse of eternity and my place in it, I’m all set. Hit the cruise control.” No, it wasn’t like that. Instead, there was a massive urge, greater than any instinct I’d ever had, to grab ahold and and hang on for dear life. Everything had changed and now my job was to learn, make sense of it, and see what partnering with God would be like. I was in for one heck of a ride.

When Jesus said, “follow me,” he was actually setting out to show them how things had changed and what that meant for how to live the rest of their lives. Let’s not forget that Jesus was, by profession, a teacher, a rabbi. He certainly didn’t spend a lot of time saying, “hey folks, let me tell you exactly what heaven looks like and what life will be like for you for eternity.” No, he spent a ton of time trying to get people to understand that the “Kingdom of God is at hand.” It had burst through into the present earthly reality and by fully understanding what that meant, individual people could be completely transformed, from the inside out. (That last piece about the inside coming first is a huge deal.)

The operating principle is Transformation. No, we are not going to be transformed into angels upon death. Sorry. But, by submitting to God and by following Jesus, we can be transformed in the here and now into something more closely resembling Jesus himself. (I wrote thousands of words a year or so ago in answer to the question of why the world is not filled with people who really behave like Jesus, given the billions that profess him as God. It’s an excellent question but I’ll let my former answers stand for now.)

As I just said, Jesus was and is a teacher. In fact, he is the Teacher. And a teacher’s job is to get one’s students from here to there and it doesn’t happen by waving a magic wand or saying an incantation. It takes effort. It takes discipline (hence the word “disciples”). The plan for each of us, therefore, is for us to become disciples, attaching ourselves to Jesus so we may learn and grow with the help of the Master. If any of you who are reading this can remember a single teacher, coach or adult, who you can point to as almost singularly bringing out a transformation in you, then you’re getting a small glimpse of a major reason why Jesus came.

The theological term for this growth towards more “Christlikeness” is Sanctification, wherein we can slough off the old and put on the new. One of my two or three favorite theologians said basically, that if one had followed this path with a singular purpose, then it is possible to glimpse heaven on this side and one may not actually know the moment of death. The phenomenal nature of reality with God is available here and now.

I know one or two things about transformation and I’m not just speaking of personal or spiritual transformation. I spent my entire professional career in the service of transformation. First, as a teacher of students and, later, as a teacher of teachers (the most important job for a principal, in my opinion). I also did significant graduate-level work in the field of epistemology, or the philosophy of knowledge. Together, I acquired a pretty keen sense of how and why people get from this level of understanding to that level. To put a fairly generalized lens on it, that transformation requires a thing called metanoia, the Greek word for “changing one’s mind.” This can come via a lot of hard work or may occur in a flash of insight. Whatever, we discard the old and wear the new. Now, maybe this is something so relatively trivial as solving a math problem that then opens up new realms of possibility. Or, it can be coming to grips with the fact that a lack of maternal love should no longer hold sway over how this adult lives his life. In this latter sense, to recognize that a childhood voice is no longer a representation of what is true. Regardless, transformation is a part of all of our lives and, whether it arrives easily or after a massive struggle, we always emerge changed.

Christianity is about that.

This raises two scenarios.

The first is that an old way of thinking was that, by following a long list of rules, we could curry God’s favor. In other words, rule-following is the point. The only truly transformational dimension to this is whether we behave as active rule-followers or rule-avoiders. The followers please God and the avoiders cause him displeasure, to put it mildly. This creates a completely binary system. One is “justified” by the effort put into nailing the rules spot on. Should one deviate, there is, perhaps, hell to pay. Thus you have the ins and outs. The clean and the unclean. Many Christians and most non-Christians who have an opinion of Christians buy into this narrative.

On the other hand, Jesus ushered in a new narrative. It really wasn’t (and isn’t) about following rules. Certainly, by following rules or precepts, God’s favor is not curried. He doesn’t want our minds burdened by judgmentalism as we parse and parse away, nitpicking and nitpicking to discern the right way of living. No, he wants our hearts. As I’ve said many times, really there are very few rules, with the most overriding one being to live within the ultimate reality of Grace.

Oh, the mind-blowing nature of this. In order for society to function, we all learn rules. Rules and more rules. (There is nothing wrong with rules. But there is something seriously wrong if we think that the manufacture and keeping of rules is the preeminent goal for our lives!) But grace is the anti-rule. It is flipping the concept of justice, a thing ingrained in all of us, on its head. To continue with the mind-blowing, the fact is that Justice and Grace live side by side. Justice is people getting what they deserve, good or bad and grace is giving something to someone who is definitely undeserving. (Grace is not to be confused at all with Charity.)

The transformation that Jesus sought in his followers and all of us is to leave behind a false reality and move into a new reality that is truly reflective of the nature of God and what he intends for us. When Jesus taught variations of “The Kingdom of God is at hand,” this is what he meant. “You’ve lived under false assumptions and pretenses. Cast off the old and put on the new and I’m here to show you what that means and how to do it.” The Gospel is exactly that. Discarding the old and putting on the new. The Good News is that the key is available to one and all.

Transformation (or its theological expression, Sanctification) is the process whereby we can look around and see that we’ve been missing the point. We can open our eyes to the shimmering vitality of all that is and learn to see all of it through God’s eyes. This does not mean to judge … in fact it’s the exact opposite.

But, theres’ a catch. Actually, there is more than one but we’ll start with this one.

And the catch is that this is not a mind game. It’s a heart game. Knowing a thing is not the same as absorbing it into one’s being, expressed in feelings. When we are immersed in either deep love or deep fear, we are not just processing attractions and threats in a calculated way. Our bodies are reacting viscerally, instinctually, meta-cognitively.

This is what Jesus taught and this is where we shift from postures of judgment to ones of grace. It begins with the heart. And, the way to unlock the heart, freeing it up so the eyes can truly see (eyes of the heart), is to point our attention inwards so as to expose the ways we’ve gone in the wrong direction.

(This is not the same as eastern meditation or self-actualization, which are traditional methods by which people seek to lose their individual consciousness and merge with the Great Consciousness, thereby transcending this reality and going to another. This world is very real but we are looking at it with cloudy lenses and the goal is to reorient our perspective so as to see it through God’s eyes.)

Let me use a classic example. Probably Jesus’ most famous set of teachings is from a long sermon he gave on a hillside overlooking the Sea of Galilea. It’s often called the Sermon on the Mount. It’s long and very detailed. You could say it’s where Jesus gave all of his hundreds of listeners a primer on how the Kingdom of God is different from the reality they’ve been living by. To say that it was a radical picture would be an understatement. No one had ever spoken or taught like this. At the beginning of this teaching is a piece that is referred to as the Beatitudes. (It should be noted that many people who do not profess Jesus as God, really like this stuff because it contains strong messages in support of the poor and oppressed.)

Well, part of Jesus’ practice is to set one common narrative up (a narrative that has typically governed people’s thinking and behavior) and then shoot out a zinger that explodes that original narrative. (I did this a lot when I taught history, trying to open students’ eyes to a much deeper and more realistic view of a thing of some import.) Early in the sermon, after the Beatitudes, Jesus let loose a zinger that said, in essence, “You know there is a law against murder.” (Referring to one of the foundational commandments handed down by God). To which they would all have nodded and thought, “Yeah, of course.” “But,” Jesus continued, after setting them up, “I’m here to tell you that if you hold anger against another, that is the same as murder.”

What the …?”

I am certainly not alone with wrestling with this. Every Jesus-follower I know has wrestled with it. What’s going on?

Well, in my view, there are only two possible explanations. Either Jesus is telling us we’re all truly guilty of murder (a very, very bad thing) or he wants us to think of the concepts of murder and anger differently. I firmly subscribe to the second one.

Where he is going is a heart thing. He is telling us that the same motivation that goes into a murder is in operation when we let anger get control of us. In other words, letting anger reign is setting up the conditions by which murder, ultimately, becomes possible. Left unchecked, anger transforms to contempt and once contempt gets a firm foothold, we reduce the other person to an object to be despised. And, God despises no one. In fact, he loves everyone equally. Put differently, we are rapidly moving away from seeing others as God (and Jesus) sees them, creating a false reality that is the opposite of love, which is the essence of God.

Sanctification is the process of transformation whereby we move away from our fallen nature into the light and truth of God’s nature and plan for us. It is not a one-stop confession and promise to do better, to behave more appropriately. No one ever stopped contempt by a sheer act of will. The source of that contempt has to change. The perspective needs adjusting. This is the perspective of seeing and treating people differently, a perspective only gained through a melding of mind and heart through practice and with God’s help.

I was in a group of committed Christians one evening a couple of weeks ago. About 20 or so, only a couple of whom I really knew at all. I was there as a kind of observer and guest, invited by the leader. The purpose of that evening’s discussion was to hone away at the meaning of the Gospel. Now, this would seem pretty simple for a group of committed Christians but, as I expected, it wasn’t. It was challenging and a lot of people did some excellent thought work and discussing as they processed the topic. I bring this up because part way through the sharing, one man confidently said something to the effect of “We can’t forget the Law.” It was hard for me to refrain from being judgmental but I didn’t think he was referring to the two “commandments” Jesus put out: Love God and love others fully, etc…. To which, I couldn’t help but reply, “Jesus said he came to fulfill the Law. And, by fulfilling, he meant breaking into this reality with the overwhelming love and grace offered by God and through him.”

This is the plan for us. To absorb what it means for us to participate in this kind of fulfillment, to admit that we need transformation and the help to bring it about. We need someone to share with us, “This is what you’ve heard it said but, I tell you …”

As I move to conclude this segment, I want to say that there is nothing blind about this. There is nothing here that should not be subject to examination. I fully realize what a tremendous leap it is for people to accept what I’m describing as actually the real deal. However, it does hold up to scrutiny as many people will attest after setting out to prove it wrong.

So, what is God’s plan for us? It is for us to be actively engaged with him in the Restoration of the world. To be his human eyes, ears, hands and heart as we team together. This is a glorious life. An incomparable life. Maybe I’ll conclude this series with one last post next time.

Thanks again for listening.