I haven't been writing. I haven't wanted to. There's been far too much going on in the world around me and I have been far too busy merely surviving to have the bandwidth to actually write. But someone asked me the other day, "What has God been teaching you recently?" As I thought about that answer, and as I look at the world around me, and as I think about all that I have been reading and learning over the past two years, my answer is threefold and will form a three-fold blog mini-series.
First, I am a foreigner on this earth.
Second, I serve a lot of idols.
Third, I am learning to lament.
So, first, I am a foreigner on this earth. The last two years have made me intensely uncomfortable as a Canadian. Oh, not just in the typical pandemic-living-is-awkward-and-unpleasant way, but more in a I'm-wearing-shoes-that-don't-fit way. It all just feels so wrong, and it's not just about the pandemic restrictions. It's about the attitudes, the rage, the fear, the disrespect and disdain, the deep hostility people are holding toward each other. I've spent the last two years trying to figure out what my response ought to be to all of it. I can't move about as easily as I could before. I can't meet with friends and family as freely as I could before. Costs are rising. Violence is rising. I've had to teach online -- ok at best, but certainly not ideal. Who do I listen to? What news channel do I follow? Is all of this really a deep global conspiracy to overthrow all that is good and light and right? Should I be taking up arms (literally or figuratively) and fighting for rights that have been stripped away? If I do choose to follow the injunctions, am I giving in to a great evil that will soon see me receiving the mark of the beast? Or am I doing the right thing as a follower of Jesus by submitting to the authorities? Are people who throw anti-lockdown protests the heroes because they are fighting for our rights? Are people who quietly roll up their sleeves and get vaccinated the heroes because they are fighting for the common good? Who do I listen to? Who do I follow?
As the last two years have crept by (and they have felt longer than all the other years of my life) I have become more and more convicted of one thing: the reason living in this country feels like wearing a shoe that doesn't fit is because my citizenship is not of this country. My citizenship is of the kingdom of heaven. I am a Christ-follower, not a Canadian. Oh, sure, I live in this country, and I carry a passport for this country, and I pay taxes in this country, and, to this point, I have been afforded certain rights because I happen to live in the borders of this country. But my allegiance is not to this country. It is to Christ. My citizenship is of the kingdom of heaven.
Yeah, yeah, sure, you might say, but what's your point?
Just this: I had fallen into the trap of believing that somehow the rights I have as a Canadian equal my rights as a citizen of Christ.
Let's face it -- it's been pretty comfortable in this country. I have never been persecuted (unless you want to call someone making some fun of you being persecuted, but go tell that to the Christians in Iran or Afghanistan). I've never gone hungry, at least not in the way that people go hungry who are trying to survive on two spoons of maize a day. I've never been prevented from gathering with other Christians (or with other people period, Christians or not). When I got sick, there was always medical help. I've been allowed to go wherever I want whenever I want and no one has ever stopped me. And I have believed that these rights are not just earthly rights of an earthly kingdom, but divine rights. That is, they are rights that belong to me as a citizen of Christ.
But that's a lie.
They are not heavenly rights. They are earthly rights of an earthly kingdom of which I am not a citizen, and as earthly rights of an earthly kingdom, they could be here today and gone tomorrow. And the rights that I have as a citizen of Christ are very, very different.
Blessed are the poor in spirit.
Blessed are those who mourn.
Blessed are the meek.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.
Blessed are the merciful.
Blessed are the pure in heart.
Blessed are the peacemakers.
Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness.
Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.
Pray for those who persecute you.
Take up your cross and follow me.
When I examine my own heart, I don't see a whole lot of poor in spirit, mourning, hungering and thirsting for righteousness, mercy, pureness of heart, peacemaking, or rejoicing in persecution. I see instead pride, complaining, hungering and thirsting for the items missing off the grocery store shelves, hostility and rage, throwing of insults, bristling against restrictions and calling it persecution, self-satisfied smugness and superiority, and on and on. My heart is an ugly, ugly place, bristling against the removal of earthly rights I think I am owed because I happen to live in this country.
God has convicted me. My attitude is not right. My eyes have been on my earthly citizenship, and not on my heavenly citizenship. I have been chafing against shoes that don't fit right anymore when they should never have fit in the first place. It is very easy to think I am poor in spirit when no one pushes on my pride. It is easy to talk about mourning when I am not actually mourning. It is easy to act meek when everyone is polite. It is easy to be a peacemaker when everyone agrees with me. It is easy to talk about persecution when I'm not actually suffering at all in any way. I should always have recognised the upside-down nature of my citizenship. But it is only in the last two years that I've really begun to feel it.
I am not a citizen of Canada. The rights that I have heretofore enjoyed have changed. Maybe they have changed forever, I don't know. But when I am brutally honest with myself, none of that has affected my citizenship in Christ. Nor does it affect the rights and responsibilities I have toward my King. I am still fully free to follow him.
Do the pandemic restrictions make me uncomfortable? Do I wish they weren't so? Do they sadden me, stress me, and make me feel miserable and anxious at times? Do I hate them? Unequivocably yes. But do any of them prevent me from living as a citizen of Christ? Before God, no. In fact, in these days of rage and hostility, my living as a citizen of Christ, should I manage to do it to any degree, could even be a light in the darkness of anger and fear that I see around me. But oh, how it chafes. How the shoes rub with every step I take.
"They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth. People who say such things show they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country -- a heavenly one" (Hebrews 11:13-15).
May that heavenly country come with haste.
No comments:
Post a Comment