A Good Lesson in an Unlikely PLace

I took a moment the other day in the local Christian bookstore to briefly peruse Donald Miller's book "Blue Like Jazz." The general content of the book was no real surprise to me. It represents so much of the worst that the Emerging Church Movement is bringing with it. The book emphasizes the exaltation of emotions and passions to the exclusion (not just diminishment) of propositional truth. It oozes with the bizzarre and outright foolish, and if you were to drop the book...well, let me just say it would be best not to step in it!

However, the book did include a story that made me think. Miller tells of a friend seeking out prominent religious figures to ask them what Jesus meant to them. The answers that he got did not really click with him. It is obvious that the replies were far to objective, and stated too much propositional truth. However, one encounter was different. When he asked the late Bill Bright (founder of Campus Crusade for Christ) what Jesus meant to him, Bill was so overcome with emotion that he could not even reply. Now, I know that Campus Crusade has some very major problems. I also know that Bill Bright has not exactly been the shining example of what a Biblical separatist should be! I also know that loving Christ does not necessarily mean that you dissolve into sniffles when questioned about Him! I know all of the these things. However, I believe that Bill's answer demonstrated a true and moving devotion to Christ. And so the late new evangelical made this young fundamentalist stop and think. Does the liberating, life-giving truth that I know of my Saviour cause me to have a true passion for Him? Or better, does my Saviour Himself call forth my entire being (mind, soul, strength, and heart) to exalt and rejoice in Him?

I decry the modern search for personal meaning by following the latest existential zap. I see the quest for individual significance that only follows the dictates of pure emotion as eternally harmful. But I also know that our relationship of worship with our God and Saviour is in "spirit and in truth," that is with both proper heart attitude and a Christ-centered, Scripturally grounded grasp of truth. Yes, the proper heart attitude is contingent upon humility and understanding before the Word. But what a tragedy to have a knowledge of truth without a passion and love for that truth and the God Who is the Source and Revealer of that truth- that God who became flesh and lived among us, Who so embodied truth that He referred to Himself as "the truth." He is not the truth because of His conformity to a standard of truth outside of Himself; He is the truth because He Himself is the Source of all truth! May God so move in my heart and mind that I might echo the words of the Psalmist, "As the hart (deer) panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after Thee, O God (Psalm 42:1)!"