My Struggle With Metamorphosis

Sitting next to a lady on a flight from Fort Myers to Ashville, we both exchanged present and past journeys of our lives. During the exchange my new found friend shared her story of departure from her Christian faith to Buddism. She did not leave her faith over a whim or because of some intellectual crisis she couldn't resolve with her dearly held beliefs. She left because her work as an editor of a national news paper had led her into Christian circles where she met some of the most influential Christian leaders and teachers in America. She left her Christian faith, as she told me, because as she had traversed these circles for the past seventeen years, she saw very little evidence of true, Christian transformation of character, values, and lifestyle.

She said what she witnessed was a group of men and women who resembled the world system more than what was taught her as a child and though her young adult life, about Jesus. The dissonance between what is espoused in word and what is clearly missing in deed caused her to doubt the "true" power of the gospel. She went further to say she had found Christianity made little difference in the lives of these Christian leaders, to whom so many look for guidance and example; what difference could it make in her life? 

Yes, at one time or another, I have wrestled with a similar conflict. More often in my calling to the pastorate. I have never walked away from belief or religion as my new found friend did, but I have been stung by disillusionment when a leader, mentor, or friend turns out to have feet made of clay. Moreover, when I hold a mirror up to my own life, I often see very spotty reflections of transformation. If I'm not already discouraged at the lack of transformation in others, I certainly will be discouraged when I take a good, hard look at my own life.

It has caused me to examine why transformation is so hard? And why do I seemingly see so little of it in my life, no matter the conviction or creed? I still lose my temper, I still get irritated at Bettyann, I will catch myself at the discovery of coveting, and at lusting, and I confess being a faithful idolater. For me, a Christ believer, this is especially problematic because transformation is so clearly written into the good news of the gospel: "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come. " 2 Corinthians 5:17.

Yet, an honest comparison of myself and another, like my nonbelieving friend, leads me to wonder exactly what this transformation really looks like.
Perhaps the elusive nature of transformation is illustrated in a conversation Jesus had with his own followers. Jesus asked his disciples: "And why do you look at the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?" Luke 6:41 Jesus suggests that a relentless focus on the foibles of others hinders me when I fail to see my own need for transformation. To use the metaphor of Jesus, the constant straining at specks keeps me from seeing my own Hickory-sized log.

If the hope of transformation, in part,. lies with careful self-examination, it may also be found as I examine the nature of transformation itself. The writers of the Bible anchor hope for transformation in a God who employs less than stellar characters in the work of redemption. Transformation in biblical narratives enjoins God's faithfulness to imperfect human beings. Noah got drunk; Abraham lied twice about Sarah being his sister; Gideon became an idolater; Samson failed to honor his vows; David committed adultery; Paul and Barnabus argued over John Mark and went their separate ways; the disciples of Jesus all left him in his moment of need and fled. The psalmist alerts to the fact that God is not ignorant about humanity's humble condition: God knows what people are made of; God is mindful that I am but dust. Yet in spite of this dusty substance, with the name of Bill Prather, God is at work in and through him. God can, and does, use me despite my fits and starts in following. 

Perhaps there is something further to be gleaned about the nature of transformation from the story of Jacob. Favored by his mother, he schemed and connived his way into receiving his brother's birthright and his father's blessing. He treated his wife Leah with great contempt and ended up taking a great deal of his family's dysfunction into his own family; he, too, favored the children of his wife Rachel. But Jacob had a profound encounter with God one night in the lonely ford of Jabbok. It was this wrestling match with the living God that proved truly transformational. Jacob received a new name, as well as a dislocated hip. He named this place of transformation which means, "I have seen God face to face, yet my life has been preserved." Genesis 32:30 His life had been preserved, but he would forever bear the mark of that transformational encounter in a new name, identity and in his permanent limp.

Father, my Creator, I thank you that I see my earthly journey of transformation, in many ways paralelling and reflecting the similar experience of Jacob's. In the fact that I am following You, The God of reconciliaiton, and the living gospel, my name has been changed and given a new identity in the hope of becoming all that You intend for me. I thank You for undertakimg this work in a way that has left my humanity in tact. I thank You, as well, that my human limp is a gift of grace; a constant reminder of the hope of transformation and recognition of how I must still journey to become more than I am. I ask, now, that while I entrust my limp to You, may Your faithfulness through the Holy Spirit walk alongside me the rest of my life. Amen