Matt W Cook

Organized religion has a very bad name. It wasn’t always like that. It used to be that people viewed the church as the stairway to God. Christ’s body on earth. People don’t think that any more. More often than not if you ask someone about their religion they will answer you like this: “I’m spiritual, but I have no use for organized religion.” I can think of two reasons why the church has lost the respect it used to have. One is because through political events the church lost its power. The church can no longer influence kings and nations as it used to. Secondly, people lost a good deal of their superstitious beliefs about the church. An edict of excommunication from the pope used to be the height of condemnation and terror. Who really cares today, though?

I am not sad that the organized church has lost its power. I am a little sad that it has lost its respect, but that’s really her own fault anyway. You know what the real problem with organized religion is? Nothing. Organized religion, if it be true, is great. The problem is the adherents to religion. The greatest problem with the organized Christian religion is people who love it.

The Pharisees had this exact problem. They loved Judaism. They loved it so much they devoted themselves to it day and night. They followed every single law and a whole bunch they made up, too. If Judaism was the door it heaven, they had all the keys. Only one problem. Judaism was not the door. Christ was. They loved their religion. Christ came to stir things up. They hated him.

Christians have the same problem. We love Christianity. We know all the right songs and read all the right books. We show up for every single meeting and faithfully condemn those who don’t. We follow every single law and a whole bunch that we made up. If Christianity is the door into heaven we are set. It’s too bad Christianity isn’t the door.

What is Christianity? Nothing, really. The word is not in the Bible. God does not talk about devoting yourself to a religion. He talks about devoting yourself to a person. The message much of the church needs to hear today is this: “Don’t follow Christianity! Follow Christ!” The Pharisees chose Judaism over Yahweh. Today we are choosing Christianity over Christ. We choose the religion before the Man when we dress up nice on a Sunday and refuse to feed the poor in our city. We choose Christianity over Christ when we listen to evangelical sermons and go home never intending to tell the world about Christ. We love our Faith more than our Father when we follow all the rules without trying to meet the One who made the rules. And this is dangerous. This practice defiles the reputation of Christ and his church on earth. Worse, it jeopardizes your eternal future. He who loves God in Christ will be saved, not he who worships the idol we made that kinda looks like him.

I’m a real mountain man now. That means I’m pretty much just the same except with a really rough Internet connection. I’m trying to get some photos up in this post and maybe we’ll have areal post up in the next few days.

much time later…
hmmm….maybe this won’t work…grrr.

So many times I’ve asked myself (and you readers) why the physical is given power to screw up the spiritual. Why my fatigue level affects my desire to pray. Why the temperature changes my inclination to the Word. Why my body rules my soul. I think I found an answer.

Christ is a treasure. He is the greatest treasure. The Pearl of Great Price. There is nothing you can trade Christ for because he is the most valuable thing in the universe we could ever possess. There is nothing you could ever compare to the greatness of having he who has all things.

But where do we put valuable things? In appropriate containers, of course. Laptops don’t go in cardboard boxes, they go in laptop cases. Diamonds aren’t fastened to car antennas, they are put in jewelry boxes. So where is the greatest treasure of the universe placed? Clay pots. Now that seems strange. The surpassing power of the spirit of the Son of God is put in simple, fragile, cracked pots. Us.

But we have this treasure in jars of clay…

God, in his foolish-looking wisdom, has deemed it right and good to place the spirit of the fullness of godhead into idiot humans who can’t tell their right hand from their left. But why?! This doesn’t make any sense! Humans will abuse the spirit of God! Humans will quench it, humans will dishonor it! Humans don’t even know how to use it! Why would he put the spirit of Christ in us?

to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.

Oh.

Why is my body a clay pot? Why does it break and crack and do things that cause me to stumble? To prove to me that whenever I do succeed and when I finally will succeed the power is God’s. There is no mistaking it at this point: I have no useful power. My power is weakness. My intellect is stupid. My righteousness is crap. Any good that comes cannot be from me, I’ve proved that abundantly with my life. Therefore I know that when I finally do win, and whenever I make steps in the right direction, God is the one holding my hand and gently (or roughly) leading me on to my final home at his side. The surpassing power is his. Excellent.

Here are some shots from our lovely town here in the North. We took a little trip yesterday to the border of Kashmir. We were going to go in but our taxi driver seemed a little nervous. Maybe next week. The border is only an hour and a half away. Enjoy the pics!

Okay, uploading those pics took a total of 47 minutes and 7 seconds. I have more, but you’ll have to wait until tomorrow. Sorry!

It took God six days to make the cosmos. Six days. Six days to throw the trillions of stars throughout the vacuum of space. Six days to design and perfectly place the billions of chemicals in the DNA strand of a housefly. Six days to order countless plants, comets, asteroids, galaxies and other unknown phenomena on their intricate courses. Six days to determine with exactness the millions of creatures to inhabit this little planet. Six days to make the things we have been straining to study ever since we noticed them. Six days to make all that we would ever know while we breathed air. Six days to make the deepest depths and the highest heights. Only six days. What does this say? This says it was all easy. He didn’t even break a sweat. One week’s work and that was it. No big deal. Just flexing his muscles.

But there is another job he has been working on for far longer. One that will have an infinitely more glorious result than the entire cosmos. “I go to prepare a place for you”, said Christ almost two thousand years ago. The universe was made in six days. Christ has been designing the saints’ everlasting rest for about 720,145 days now. Divide that by six days and we could dare to estimate that the everlasting abode of man with God will be 120,024 times more glorious, more pleasurable and more joyful than the beautiful work of art we inhabit now.

These are dangerous thoughts because they are speculative. I cannot dare to suggest what the next life will be like when the prophets themselves could only give us vague pictures. I merely want to bring out this beautiful and deadly point: The next world is inconceivably better in every respect than this one. This world is grand. The pleasures the world offers are amazing, so much that you could spend your entire life toying with the things we find here and never be bored. So much to be explored, just on our little planet, not to mention the amazing wonders that seem to wait on the other bodies flying through space. This world has much to offer. But the next world has 120,000 times more to offer.

And nothing in the next world will hurt or distract. It will all point us to the greatest good. It will all be beneficial. It will all fill us with joy. And not just any joy, but joy in the Beloved. Joy in Christ. Most of the pleasure in this world have been perverted and desecrated by our sinful natures, but we shan’t be able to ruin the pure joy of the New Earth. We won’t be able to slowly kill ourselves with pleasure like we do here. Rather every pleasure will lead us onward to newer and fuller pleasures and every pleasure will be in God.

But why should we think about this? I can think of two reasons. The first is just to sit and employ

The mind and heart to understand
And love the sovereign Lord who planned
That it should take eternity
To lavish all his grace on me.

The second flows from the first. We count all as loss compared to the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus our Lord. For his sake we can suffer the loss of all things and rightly count them as rubbish compared to the prize to be given to us. To own and control the entire universe is a prize to small for me. A place 120,000 times better than this plane will be my house and a creator infinitely greater than that will be my spouse. And so I throw off the world and it’s pleasures like a dirty garment and get ready to change for my wedding.

The religion of God can be summed up in these words, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind. And love your neighbor as yourself.” There is, of course, much more to it than that in regards to necessary doctrine and right thinking about God, but the heart of the practical nature of true religion is this. Love God, love man. Luther is quoted as saying, “Love God and do whatever you please.” The idea is that when you truly love God whatever you desire will be good. When God is the center of your affections there will be no desire in you that is contrary to him. When you really love God you are rendered incapable of sin. That’s right, I said incapable.

And yet sin exists within the lives of believers. Why? Every sin can be traced to a primary problem of disobedience to the greatest commandment. And disobedience to the greatest command is arguably the greatest sin. It is also the greatest tragedy. Unlove to God will always lead us to sadness. We were not made for this world and we have found very clearly that nothing in this world will ever satisfy us. The only thing that can make us happy is the greatest good. This brings us the explanation of why God commands that we praise him. The praise of what we love completes our joy in that thing. God knows that we will only be truly satisfied in gazing at him because he is not wrong in thinking himself the greatest good in the universe.

Unfortunately I’m broken. I’m broken, blind and stupid. My body rules my mind and my affections point in random directions. I hate it. I feel like I want to rip something out of my chest. Like there are physical creatures living in me screwing up everything. Do you ever feel that way? I hate it. I want it to end it. I want to love God. But I can’t. Can you? Can you sustain a constant love to God that guides your heart and your walk? What’s the trick? What’s the secret? How do we win when all the powers of hell are thrown against us?

Did we in our own strength confide, our striving would be losing;
Were not the right Man on our side, the Man of God’s own choosing:
Dost ask who that may be? Christ Jesus, it is He;
Lord Sabaoth, His Name, from age to age the same,
And He must win the battle.

I made it back to Kunri. Cancel your rescue missions. Or, rather, change your rescue missions into visit missions. A few more days and I’ll be going on a bit of a computer fast. Not because I’m overtly righteous or anything, rather because I’m moving soon and I need to give my in-law’s computer back. I hope to be up and running again before long. Wait for me. I’m coming.

I’m in Karachi. I shouldn’t be. Read this.

For now I’m stuck in the city. Everything has shut down (except for this lovely Internet cafe. Last night Ruth and I were staying walking distance from Sharah-e-faisal, the road on which most of this crap went down. Not too pleasant. It was quite hard to find food last night. Buses aren’t running today and likely not tomorrow either. Things are rough. I’m not pleased with the MQM these days. I have a blog post written on my laptop, but I won’t be able to post it until I get back to Kunri. Pray for this country. Those who have influence here do not use it for good.

All is safe now. The only danger was yesterday. Don’t worry about us. But pray for this hurting country.

Ariel

Found this in my wanderings in the web. One sentance gave me a bitter-sweet laugh:

“Ariel may have been hot inside long ago, but it’s cold now.”

Doh!

Anyway, I’m off to Karachi, see you there!