What's in a name anyway.

Prove to me that you exist, you who are reading this.  Pull out a birth certificate, some school transcripts and that will prove that a person with a name was born and went to school.  Will your accomplishments prove that you exist?  What exactly does that word mean, exist.  We aren't our accomplishments.  When we die future generations will know us as the documents that are left behind.  They won't "know" us.  Most of us spend our whole lives trying to know ourselves.  No, future generations will see only my legal name, a name not even my husband calls me, but they won't know that.  They might know about some of my accomplishments, but they wont know ME.  The definitely will not have proof that the documents used to prove that I existed are authentic.  They will trust them though.  They will know me as wife and mother, native of the United States, born in March, died (to be determined).  I am so much more than that.  I was thinking about this on my run yesterday.  I also, of course, applied this to Jesus.

There is the historical Jesus whose existence is proven mostly by witness accounts.  More is known of him than will be known of me in 2000 years.  Actually "knowing" him is different.  There are two German words meaning "to know",  "wissen" means to know a fact.  "Kennen" means to know with familiarity.  In essence German's recognize that we can have two levels of knowing anything, one much deeper than the other.  Grace.  Divine peace.  I can attribute to him.  Not because of any document, but because I am familiar with it.  I have felt it.  Unfortunately, religion's idea of morality can make knowing Christ very confusing.  I know, because I was really confused for a long time.

I felt like if I couldn't live up to the morality I was taught at Church, I wasn't worthy of Christ or God.  I kept my distance from both of them.  Sort of like if your parents put parameters on you that you can't keep, when you fail, you don't want to face them.  If I made cookies and told my sons, "If you eat those cookies it will mean you are a bad boy" they would rightly feel like they were bad WHEN they ate them.  Since they love me and want my approval they would hide away for fear I'd discover what they'd done and think ill of them.  This was my relationship with God and Christ throughout my college years.

Here's the thing.  God knew we'd "eat the cookies" of the world.  He knew we couldn't keep his moral code, but he loved us.  He sent Christ to pay the penalty for us so that WHEN we "ate the cookies" we would be forgiven.  Christ doesn't judge us.  He even says so (John 8:15). Through Christ we are forgiven even before we sin, AND (here's this is what I think is the real miracle) as we own our relationship with Christ it gets easier to resist "eating the cookies". Here's how I know as in "kennen (because that's really the only way to actually know him) Christ exists; when I surrendered and say, "I am imperfect God.  Through Christ help me be who you made me to be."  I felt deep joy, like "the Christmas Spirit".  This joy didn't come from something that happened in the outside world, but from within me.  It won't go away, because outside circumstances didn't cause it.  In a desire to be closer to him I want to rid myself of the desires of the world.  It's a two fold friendship.
 
Now I think of Christ as my best friend, though he's much better to me than I am to him.  He is the only one to honestly show me my flaws, and yet he shows me that he loves me anyway.  My desire to be closer to him makes me a better person than I could ever be on my own.  In my relationship with him, though I am still incredibly flawed, it is easier for me to work to be better.  It's easier because I know, a.) that I'm loved even if fail (because I will at times), b.) I want to make him proud of me.  Unfortunately, I didn't learn this at church.

I almost think that religion should come AFTER the enlightenment, and then we will be led to worship with him in the way that best suits our needs (that's right there is no single right way to worship Christ.  I even believe that there are alternatives where people worship Christ but call him something else.  Naive maybe, but to claim other wise would be to claim to have the answer to ultimate correctness and knowledge of God's workings and that just seems blasphemous to me.  Besides Christ even says, "whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man (himself) will be forgiven; but whoever speaks against the holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come"  God "knows" us, is FAMILIAR with us.  He knows what is in our hearts.  We do not know what's in the heart of anyone else.  Therefore we should leave it to God to decide if someone else's mode of worship - their "higher power" is acceptable to him.  Perhaps, if God wants, they will come to call their Higher Power Christ due to seeing his love, grace, and acceptance in a Christian.  Forcing the issue only alienates people.  Instead, we should work to be a living truth [aka testament].)  What Christ has shown me is that we should love one another WITHOUT judgement, because we are all EQUALLY flawed.  Then he's helping me actually do it.

Where did all of this thinking come from?  My son asked me, "How do I know who a kid is?  How do I know if he would be a good friend?"  I had to come up with an answer.  Again, this blog is my brains dumping ground.  My answer to him was, that we can't "know" anyone except by their choices, and even then they can change.  So, first you have to be friends with Christ, then you will be better able to pick your friends, and better able to be a good friend, because you will have a great example of what a friend should be.