Intimacy with God

"I have run to the fragrance of your myrrh, O Christ God,
for I have been wounded by your love;

do not part from me, O heavenly Bridegroom"

     ~Elder Porphyrios

     Jesus tells us that the Kingdom of God is within us.  For most of us who spent our lives in church, there’s nothing amazing about this statement.  It’s been bantered about so much that it’s become cliché.  And, well, even though most people have heard it, very few have actually listened.  But the fact is this: these might be the most important words in all the Bible.

     The Kingdom of God is within us.

     In other words, our soul is made for intimacy with God.  We were created for union with the Divine.

     Within us all is a Living Center.  It calls out for God.  And He calls out for us.

     Our Father doesn’t just call out to us, but he yearns for us.  And the truth is that we yearn for him, whether we know it or not.

     If we don’t answer this yearning, then our lives are incomplete.  Without God, there is a disconnect with this Living Center that dwells within.  And we will try to fill it with all sorts of stuff.

     But stuff will never satisfy.  Only the Living God who desires us because he has made us for Him will suffice.

     Nothing else will do.

     And that’s what this blog is really all about.  It’s about the longing in our hearts, the yearning of our souls, the intimacy that we crave, and the things we need to do in order to embrace it.  And, yes, it’s also about all of the other things that we fill our lives with; things that we fill our lives with in order to avoid He Who loves us, or run from Him, or just because we try to admit that we are ignorant of His longing and ours.

     At the beginning of the world, when man was created, God breathed Life into our souls.  Our souls are the part of us that are immortal.  Our souls were made for God.

Theosis: Let’s Start at the End to Understand the Beginning

     In the Orthodox Christian tradition, salvation is seen a bit different than it is in the West.  In the Christian traditions of the West (whether Protestant or Catholic), salvation is too often based on either believing the right thing (Protestant) or doing the right thing(s) (Catholic).  If you either believe the right things or do the right things, then you will “get saved”—salvation, in this case, meaning that you get to go to heaven when you die.  (Okay, I realize that I’m engaging in a bit of oversimplification.  Many Protestants and Catholics that don’t think in such a manner—but still, there are many that do.)

     Salvation, for the Orthodox, is much more organic than that.  It’s not a black and white thing.  Rather, it’s a process.  And true salvation is called theosis, often translated as “union with God.” (See my post below.)

     (In this case, salvation is actually the end of the journey.  It’s not the beginning, leaving you to then say, “now what?”)

     I love the idea of theosis.  It just makes sense.

     God is Infinite Love Who loves us infinitely.  And because He loves us, He desires to know us intimately.

     And because He desires to know us, because He dwells in us, He wants us to dwell in Him.  So He came in flesh and blood.  He incarnated to allow us to dwell in His Triune Nature.

     He didn’t send a prophet.  He didn’t send a messenger.  He sent Himself.

     That’s a God I can love.  That’s a God that I want to join in union with, to embrace, to know.

     I understand (I’m not that foolish, after all) that many in our world don’t feel as I do.  Many people have been exposed to bad religion, to a poor understanding of God, to other people who are supposed to represent God, but instead make little more than a mockery of Him.

     If you think God is vengeful, spiteful, full of wrath and fury, full of hate, then obviously that’s not a God that you want to love, much less join in intimate union.

     But God is not those things.  God is one thing, and one thing only: He is love.  Love is His Nature.  And It is a love that is without beginning and without end.  (And if He is furious, then it is a fury that He has for me and for you.  It is—as Brennan Manning would have put it—a furious longing for us.)

     The Beatles said it best: All you need is love.  It is love that will lead you to Him, it is His love that will draw you.  It is love that allows for theosis to begin to work its wondrous grace.

     And you can’t fill it with any other substitute.  Only the pure thing will do.