SEEK YE FIRST THE CORPORATION OF GOD.
December 2011
NOTE: I originally wrote this about 15 years ago. It later became part of a book called Wreck Your Self. I'm reposting these essays here alongside my current writing. They've held up pretty well- although I've come out the other side with a lot less anger and a lot more peace. I regret none of it.
I see religious people selling God’s love, but not as many buying it for themselves.
What a difference there is between joining God in the redemptive work He’s doing in others, and accepting that we are the “others” who need redeeming.
We are the focus of His unfathomable love, not just peddlers of it.
I don’t think God is calling me to share His love with others so much as He’s calling me into His love, to be wrecked by it in such a way that others can’t help but be sucked inside as well.
One approach has me pounding the pavement as a salesman for God, while the other leaves me feeling pounded into the pavement under the heaviness of unthinkable love.
Not a pounding that says, “If we don’t let God love us, we’re going to hell,” but a pounding that weighs on us, revealing, “We are loved by God, so deal with it.”
If you’ve ever been ambushed by the love of God you know it can be a surprisingly heavy love that bears down on your soul when you least expect it.
It makes you instantly aware of your seeming insufficiency to be the focus of such love, but it sucks you in regardless. With the gravitational pull of a black hole it leaves you reeling helplessly.
Half of you resisting, half of you relieved.
If love is unable to weaken you at the knees it might be worth investigating whether you’ve bought into authentic love or a black-market counterfeit that fell out the back of a truck.
Some would have us believe that God’s recruiting for sales positions as if the world is a cocktail party God needs me to network on His behalf. Like I’m selling Amway or Avon or Tupperware and it’s up to me to expand the multi-level marketing empire known as the Kingdom of God.
The question is: are we seeking first the Kingdom, or the corporation of God?
There might be something more for us than just settling for the “corporate American gospel.”
If the good news of the Gospel boils down to information that needs to be packaged and broadcast, then we need to get off our asses and get this show on the road.
We need a better marketing strategy, more investment capital, and a revamp of our PowerPoint® deck because it’s thousands of years later and we’re still behind the eight-ball on our conversion quota.
But is God really recruiting a sales force?
Can we reduce the redemptive work of God down to a marketing push?
What if we suck at selling stuff?
And what if it isn’t God but me who others aren’t buying into?
If God’s counting on me in this capacity, I’m screwed. My sales are down, my prospects are low, and my TPS report just jammed in the effing copier.
Some might be able to shoulder the weight of redeeming humanity, but not me.
Seven billion people in the world and it’s becoming clear that my target market consists of a single person whose response to God I have any semblance of influence over.
Me.
So I’m through with sales pitches.
And I’m done trying to carry the weight of humanity on my outstretched arms.
It’s time to quit my self-righteous sales job and let myself crash and burn in the retirement of God’s love.
— December 2011
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