Just Opposite Of The Mansion

There is a wisdom from God that I pursue.  Many don’t understand it, but still I try.  God’s wisdom is counter-everything.  The more I try to understand it, the more I realize my thinking is just different from my Creator’s.  That’s an incredibly good thing for all of us.  According to James, this heavenly wisdom is given to me in pure, impartial, considerate, sincere, submissive, peace-loving ways — and allows me the opportunity to have a wisdom that operates likewise.

One of the most mind blowing thoughts is that I can know the thoughts of God.  Although His thoughts are most often opposite of mine, I can still know His.  THAT is the kind of wisdom my early morning began pointing me to.

There is a huge, recently constructed mansion just off the beach and down by the sea wall Lucy and I walk to every morning.  For the past few years, my family and I have watched this monstrous memorial to capitalism come to life.  We have wondered what celebrity is holed up behind the commanding front columns.  What business mogul has set up shop there, what did they invent, and how can I meet this guy?  I’m guessing the inside of the mansion is even better than what you can see on the outside, and I really like what I see on the outside.

This morning I asked Lucy about the mansion.  She quickly replied, “Isn’t that the most awful thing you’ve ever seen?  The only place that thing should be seen on is the back of a dollar bill.”  She pulls no punches.  She hated the mansion and it’s invasion on her home seaside turf.  Lucy explained how a  local, big dog chiropractor spent millions building this quaint bungalow, and ticked off the local beach community in doing so.   I kept my own opinions quiet and very close to my Coppertone.  I was grateful Lucy could not know my silent thoughts in the same way I can God’s.

After saying goodbye to Lucy, I walked back to the stately beach house.  I wasn’t sure why I made the trek back, but God seemed to be confirming Lucy’s architectural evaluation.  This mansion was no mansion in God’s booming economy.   God’s thinking was just the opposite of mine.   God was whispering something about how His idea of a mansion made this one a Kenyan shack.  Certainly ironic, but definitely providential, I realized my morning wake up t-shirt sported the Greek word, “prosdechomai” (waiting forwardly).

Waiting forwardly is certainly the opposite of how most think.  Quite often it’s not how I think, no matter how much I wear the t-shirt.   However, on this morning, I seemed to be tapping into a soul-pausing thought about living for another world.  Where does that kind of thought come from?  Where do those lofty, deeper thoughts about life and beyond come from?

In “The Reason For God,” Timothy Keller writes:  “If God exists, we would expect to find that He appeals to our rationale faculties.  If we were made in His image as rational, personal beings, there should be some resonance between His mind and ours.”

Something was stirring and resonating with my mind, and I believe it was God.  His thinking… His wisdom… His mind was at work within mine, and it felt like heavenly wisdom was coming down in the way the book of James was espousing.

Although Keller’s book is a bit slower to read, I have found myself being enthralled on my beach chair with theology, thinking, and practical brain exercises found within my bent and marked pages of “The Reason For God.”

Keller seems to capitalize on how our thoughts, questions, and ways are not God’s.  Most often, Keller points to the exact opposite of culture’s thinking to prove and understand God.  For example, some people believe Christian fanatics prove that there really is not a loving God at the center of all.  Fanatics have brutally pillaged and raped in the name of a purported God.  Keller would claim that those fanatical Christians are actually not fanatical enough.  They need to be even more fanatical!  They have not gone “all the way”past laws and legalism to get to the ultimate tenets of God such as grace, mercy, and love.  That’s some good thinking, I don’t care who you are.   And on and on Keller’s book unfolds in opposite thinking ways.  I really like that.

I really like how thinking and theology is making me hungry for God these past few days.  I want to know God’s thinking, and have the ability to explain it.  I want my brain cells to continue to be stirred like this.  I want the mind of Christ.  I want to stay at the big mansion next year on study break… but that probably just shoots all kinds of contradictory holes through this blog.  Sorry!