Barneyisfat

"If you think you've "arrived" in your Christian faith ... well, you probably need to go stand in the NOT section."

We're still talking about the chapel I didn't go to. Not that I go to any chapels; I'm far too dissolutioned with chapel to perhaps ever attend again. But in one particular chapel people were asked to stand and congregate where they felt they were in their faith. Hot, What?, or Not.

This weird categorization system can only show two things. How emotional you are about your faith or how much of your faith depends on you. If your faith is entirely emotion - then you can fool yourself into thinking that you are living the perfect sinless life. Ultimately you can control your emotions ... and whether you admit your shortcomings or not is the only determining factor to keep you away from the HOT section. If you feel that you need to earn your salvation by doing good things, and feel that you have succeeded at this sufficiently to stand in the HOT section ... well, you probably need to move over, far over.

The people who truly deserve to stand in the HOT section (ridiculous terminology) deserve to stand there because they don't feel worthy to stand there. How cruelly ironic for the people proudly standing in the HOT section, proving once and for all, that they think so highly of themselves that they don't deserve what they so desperately want. The first shall be last and the last shall be first.

I heard that a humble few went and stood in the NOT sectin. I'm proud of them. I don't know if I would have had the courage. Blessed are the poor in spirit. This speaker kept pointing at those people to demonstrate where people shouldn't go - how they shouldn't act.

And what about the center? It shouldn't exist - at least not so poorly phrased of a center. We are all on an equal footing with other Christians. The ground is level at the foot of the cross (yes, I realize that Jesus was crucified on a hill and this statement is wrong, but I like it anyway). Our Christian walk is filled with mountain highs and valley lows. We grow as Christians in those valleys. Our faith is proven to us by a God of love who sends us into a valley just shallow enough to not be deep enough to kill us.

I was in a valley for 7 years. I prayed so long for a mountain top experience. Just long enough to realize that I don't need to have a mountain top experience for God to be real in my life. It took me 7 years to realize that truth. I thank God for those 7 years in the valley.