stepping back and slowing down

I am away for a two day personal retreat at a cabin near Reedsburg. Over the next two days my goal for the time is to read Contemplative Youth Ministry, come up with main points for coming talks and rethink our ministry leadership structure.

Already my time has been refreshing and challenging. I am only a couple hours into it and there exists the urge to watch a movie, turn on some music or have a discussion. Silence is hard.

On the way here I listened to a program on NPR where the guest discussed his recent book on the Religious Right and its supposed desire to create a totalitarian state. The guest’s rhetoric seemed to match that of which he was speaking out against and it hurt to hear Evangelicals painted in such a negative light. On many levels I agreed with him but it made me wonder what could be done by those of us who call ourselves Christians to understand Jesus and his followers in a different way.

I look forward to the next couple of days as Lord willing I am open to listening in silence to what it means to be like Jesus and lead a community of students that does not create God in its own image but instead is transformed by a truth that exists independent of us.

It is all too easy for me to become angry at a subsection of Christendom for making the Jesus they ‘worship’ into a tool they use to justify their purposes and then turn and do the same. I believe it is possible for us to know a truth apart from our immediate cultures and experiences for if we are not then relativism truly wins the day.