Way up There and Down Here

 

The way it is spoken and alluded, we pray to a God who lives way up there in an indeterminable Heaven located, well somewhere far away from here. As Christians, we seek our friend and savior, Jesus who speaks on our behalf to His Father, our creator.

With these facts, we sermonize constantly from the Bible about the life and times of Jesus, His death and resurrection.  Up to this point, I think all would follow me in terms of this basic theology.

Here is the sticking point.  If I understand things properly, then Christ is not some idea or notion of some 2,000 years ago, through our spiritual rebirth process, Christ is to be living inside of us as Christians through His church.

If this is true, and I believe it is, then this also means that Christ is here on this earth now and is alive through His spirit through us, His body the church.

And since this should be a fundamental tenet of beliefs and catechism, then there also should be full agreement of performing the will of Christ and His commandments today.

Yet, this is where we suffer from our cognitive dissonance.  The reality is so far separate and different from our belief system.  Our real, true belief system supports the philosophy that Christ died a long time ago and is with His Father in Heaven so far, far away and removed from our lives.

So then, this is the challenge:  Somehow or so way, we must merge and reconcile the problem of Christ NOT being in our lives.

This is what transcends reality from fiction:  it is the fusion of our belief system into common ordinary principles and experiences that rule our lives.  It also means that at some point we should be forced to confront our doubts, our faiths and speak in plain honesty in terms of what we actually believe.

I think too this is where the world simply fails to take Christianity seriously for even a child can separate the realness from the fakeness of Christians.  In other words, if we are genuine and real and authentic, then the actual, real realness should be surfacing in our actions to others in concrete terms of service to others through love.  Sadly, the weakness of my own intellectual argument demonstrates the futility of my own words.  It comes back to haunt us for once more, we see God way, way up there.  Christ is lost somewhere in the middle and we wander around scattered way down here on earth.