Out of my mind…

Written by Colin Saxton

Over the next several months, I will focus this space on exploring our identity as NWYM Friends. A clear message communicated throughout the vision and long-range planning process emphasized our need to relearn and reclaim our identity as Christ-centered Friends. Together, we believe we have something significant to offer the world as we are faithful to our particular calling as Jesus’ people.

Last month, I suggested that our key testimony as Friends is the radical claim that we can (and must) know Christ in our experience—both individually and corporately. A companion testimony, one that is no less radical, is the assertion that we can do more than “know Jesus”… we can also obey Him.

Historically, at least when we have been faithful to our spiritual roots, Friends have emphasized the fact that we are empowered to do the will of God. Both individually and corporately, the people of God are so infused with the Life and Power of the Holy Spirit, we are potentially enabled to walk in holy obedience to the will and leading of Christ.

Now…a good many of us get nervous here…since we don’t know many (o.k., any!) individuals who always live up to the perfect will of God—including ourselves. What is so great, then, about a theoretical testimony if it is never fleshed out in the practice of someone’s life?

Well, what is so amazing to me about this testimony is that it is not about us living up to God’s will…but about God’s life and power being perfected in us through the presence of Christ’s Spirit. This is possible and something I do witness in the lives of Jesus’ people!

Now I have always said that Friends are one of the most optimistic of the Christian traditions. Goodness, we believe the Living God can really be experienced by ordinary people! We believe non-violent love is a more potent power than any bomb or tank the world can construct! We believe the human barriers we have created to separate and divide people can be overcome by a uniting Presence that dismantles any and all barriers!

And, in the case of spiritual transformation, we have believed historically that God is able enough to overcome all our weakness, brokenness and orneriness…so much so that we are able to do justly, live in mercy and walk in friendship with our Beloved Jesus and one another.

And while I love that good ole Quaker idealism…what I find most attractive about it is the healthy dose of grounded-ness to reality that lies below it.

Let me offer an example. Nowadays, many Friends tend to be pretty optimistic about the human condition. Early Friends, however, had a more earthy realism about them. Oh, they were immensely optimistic about God and God’s ability to work beyond our limitations. But like their Puritan contemporaries, the first Friends believed in the strong power of sin and the hold it could have on people’s lives. Similarly, the recognized that the prevailing culture tends to warp our worldview. Left to ourselves, they said, we were rather prone to selfishness and sin.

All that could be overcome, however, but not without a bit of “convincement”—which for them was a fiery process: A “profoundly transformative experience of God” that moves an individual from a “state of lost-ness, emptiness and abandonment” to an “overwhelming sense of Presence,” says John Punshon. Within that process, the newly convinced Friend acquired both the ability to walk in harmony with God and the capacity to see the world through a new set of eyes. Given these graces, a start was made on being set free from conformity to the pattern of the world—as their minds, hearts and lives were transformed and renewed.

Quite often, Friends described this purifying process as “the Lamb’s War.” One writer describes it this way,

“The Lamb’s War you must know before you can witness His kingdom, and how you have been called into His war, and whether you have been faithful and chosen… He that preaches the kingdom of Christ in words, without victory, is the thief that goes before Christ. So take heed that your own words do not condemn you, but mind your calling and how your have answered, and whether you have been faithful to that which your have been called. Christ has a war with His enemies, to which He calls His subjects to serve Him against all the powers of darkness of this world, and all things of this old world, the ways and fashions of it will He overturn, and all things will He make new…The Lamb wars against in whomsoever He appears, and calls them to join with Him herein in heart and mind, and with all their whole might. And for that end He lights His candle in their hearts, that they may find out every secret evil that the man of sin has treasured, even to every thought and intent of the heart, to cast out the enemy with all his stuff, and to subject the creature wholly to himself that He may form a new man, a new heart, new thoughts, and a new obedience, in a new way, in all things to reign, and there is His kingdom.”

What a vision! There is a Lamb’s War ready to be waged within us in order that we might be loosed into the world—free to live in the power and light of Christ. The war of the Lamb, you see, is not just for individual transformation. No! The Quaker vision is so wonderfully shocking and vibrant—believing that Christ’s reign in our lives has personal, communal and social implications. God’s work of cosmic renewal, inaugurated in the life, death and resurrection of Christ and empowered through the giving of the Holy Spirit, is underway. And now, for those of us who are willing to live into it, we have the joy of helping the world gain a foretaste of heaven.

Next time we will consider more of how we experience this and what might be some of outcomes for us and the world if we do.

Blessings and Joy!
Colin Saxton

December 2006 Out of My Mind