thinking about our underlying assumptions, connotations of words we use, world's thinking... embarrassed at my foolishness

January 20, 2008

….. email notes to a friend: ….

Anyway, I have been thinking and praying about the whole ladies Bible study thing, asking God to show me what to prepare.. and so far I really haven’t sensed anything in particular at all. Well, I really want to be open to His will, so I guess He’s taking me up on that, eh… I just feel like God wants us to get together and learn from Him, whatever He wants to show us when the time comes….

Interesting thing, I’ve been getting this daily devotional email, and you know, there was a time (not long past at all) when I would have been totally thrilled with it, thought it was “right on” … but now when I read it, I keep “wondering” about things that are in it, underlying assumptions and also “Christian terminology, phrases, doctrinal stuff” that I would never have questioned before. And now… well, when I read it, it seems that I hear the Spirit of God asking me if that is really right, if it really matches up with His Word, etc. I mean, a lot of it is pretty much okay, it seems, but some of it just doesn’t quite line up with what I am experiencing in my walk with the Lord, and in what He is teaching me from His Word…

I’m really being hit by the connotations we seem to have ascribed to words, the underlying assumption we have when we use those words… I think (I hope) the writer of the devotional understands these nuances of meaning… but boy, oh boy, when we use these “Christian phrases,” we sure need to be aware of what we really mean… and need to think carefully about what others will understand when they hear/ read them.

Maybe that’s part of those bits of wisdom related to “letting our words be few” and listening more than speaking, and how the tongue is like a spark that starts great forest-fires, and how we should be very cautious about desiring to be teachers because our responsibility (oh, it doesn’t say “responsibility,” does it? I wonder what it really does say… better go look it up!) for what we say/ teach becomes so much greater … (Maybe that’s why I really don’t want to be the “teacher” at our Bible study, but really, really just let the Holy Spirit be the teacher, and learn from Him through what He is revealing of Himself – which is, after all, the core of what we should be teaching and learning, isn’t it???? – through each of His children as they walk in relationship with Him…) Oh dear, here I am repeating scripture… and apparently I’m actually misquoting… oh no!

Today at lunch somebody brought up about the thing going on in Ontario about funding of religious schools… and I said something about how when we accept funding we accept the responsibility to teach the government’s (world’s) curriculum …. and how schools are NOT democratic … (which doesn’t matter because democracy is NOT Christian or Godly or whatever anyway!) … and that a lot of the “Christian” stuff we do in “Christian schools” really doesn’t have much to do with what it really means to be a Christian… and hubby said something about me being a bit of a rebel… and ____ laughed and said it was because I read too much! Which made me think a bit, because I also do NOT want to accept new ways of thinking about things, new paradigms, just because someone wrote them in a “good book” … Boy, oh boy… We just need to be totally wrapped up in, totally abiding in, being totally abided in by, God! And really, truly hearing and understanding what He is really saying….

It just seems like every time I open my mouth lately, I immediately wish I hadn’t … because I am really starting to hear what “I” am saying… and it seems like the Spirit is gently asking me, “Are you really sure about that?” .. and so often I am not… and so often I am hearing what I am really saying, and I don’t like it at all… and I see so much of my own foolishness and the world’s foolishness, wrapped up in it… I’m getting embarrassed a lot! Awful humbling…. I sure don’t know as much as I thought I did… And an awful lot of what I thought I knew is turning out to be… well, yes, so foolish.