Becoming Whole - A 7 Day DevotionalSample

I am a pastor’s kid. As such, I was expected to be in church every time the doors were unlocked, no matter what. Whenever I objected to these expectations, my well-intentioned mother would say, “You must be an example for the other kids. They need to be in church. You want your friends to grow spiritually, don’t you?” Believing that my entire generation’s salvation rested upon my young shoulders, I did my best to fulfill my awesome responsibility.

Although being the pastor’s kid often  felt  like martyrdom to me, there was one sacrifice that topped them all: wearing a hideous robe and singing in the junior choir in the third grade. And as if that wasn’t enough of a trial, God orchestrated the circumstances so that my older sister was the choir director, putting her in the ideal position to regularly humiliate me in front of my peers. But apparently not even that was enough suffering in God’s eyes, as He gave me the opportunity to earn even more jewels on my crown: my sister made me sing a solo in front of the entire congregation, threatening to report me to our parents if I complained even once. But the height of this entire torturous experience—the thing that made it almost more than I could bear—was that I believed this is what heaven would be like—forever, and ever, and ever. Somehow I had gotten the idea that when I died, my soul would go to heaven, where I would spend all eternity as a ghost, wearing a choir robe, singing in the junior choir, and playing a harp.

I didn’t want to go to hell, but to be completely honest, heaven sounded only marginally better. And whenever I would  sheepishly express these concerns about my eternal destiny, adults would tell me that God would change my heart so that I’d enjoy it. Quite frankly, staying on earth sounded better to me. I liked cheering for the Green Bay Packers, playing with my friends, fishing in the river, riding my bike to the shore of Lake Michigan, and eating bratwurst. I liked being me, fully me, not some ghostlike, harp-playing version of me. And I enjoyed my life, at least when I didn’t have to sing in the junior choir. Although I tried to have faith that God was all powerful, I had trouble believing that even He was strong enough to make me enjoy being a ghost in the junior choir—forever, and ever, and ever.

Like many Western Christians, I had absorbed ideas that are a mix of Western Naturalism and biblical truth. As a result, I had a highly distorted view of God, human beings, and life in general. Some of these erroneous ideas have plagued me well into adulthood, doing considerable damage to me and some of the people I’ve impacted. And I’m not alone. Western Christianity has some deep flaws, flaws that hurt us and that we often unknowingly and unconsciously impose on others, including the poor people we are trying to help. There is a better way of being human in the world, for both ourselves and materially poor people. Unfortunately, we’ve been immersed in Western Christianity’s distorted understanding of reality for so long that we don’t even know what that better way of being in the world looks like, much less how to attain it. We have been so thoroughly influenced by the dominant story of change of Western Christianity that our minds, affections, wills, and bodies can’t even imagine an alternative set of goals or way of achieving those goals. Poor people aren’t the only ones who need transformation. You and I need transformation as well.

REFLECTION QUESTIONS:

1. When you picture heaven, what do you imagine it is like? Do you imagine being a “harp-playing ghost forever”? 
2. List ways in which the culture around you—your workplace, the media, your family, your friends, and so on—is promoting the worship of homo economicus, a self-interested, individualistic, materialistic, consuming robot.
3. Western Naturalism tries to keep the sacred and the secular separate, while biblical Christianity believes that there is One triune God over all creation.  Have you tried to create boundaries between your spiritual life and your regular life?