I’ve listened to this podcast twice, once while walking to work and today with my wife. The hosts, Darin Hufford and Amy Ramos on the “Into the Wild” podcast, talking about; “When You Must Go-It Alone.”
I highly recommend this conversation; it brings to the surface many liberating, albeit painful thoughts in light of what so many have settled for: having a form of godliness, but denying the power of being identified with the risen and resurrected Christ.
So much of what has tried to pass as Christianity is nothing more than our own rendition of the “Emperor’s New Clothes”, a short tale by Hans Christian Anderson. From the get-go there’s been a subtle charming, bewitching and beguiling shift away from learning Christ, to an academic set of steps and principles that have been woven into what we have perceived to be some very fine and fancy apparel, but which in fact has only increased our blindness to seeing what so many plainly see – our utter nakedness.
Our being naked is not anything that we were ever meant to be ashamed of. In the Garden, Adam and Eve were naked, but not ashamed. It wasn’t until they disobeyed God and ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil that their eyes were opened, not only discovering that they were naked, but also that they were shamed. It wasn’t God doing the shaming. Our nakedness was never an issue with Him. I’m reminded of the account of Moses in the wilderness when he approached the burning bush. God admonished him to remove his shoes. The typical explanation offered is that Moses’ shoes were too dirty to stand in the presence of God on holy ground, but could it be that God did not want any barriers separating Him from his beloved child, even a thin strip of sandal leather?
So, our shame is exacerbated even further by substituting what was intended to be a loving Father/child relationship with knowledge about God instead. How much better would it be to allow Him to clothe us from deep within in the everlasting true knowledge of His love? As long as we continue to see ourselves as misfits and screw-ups, we will miss out on having any real and permanent intimacy with God.
This form of godliness is nothing but a hand-woven set of clothes that we have fabricated, weaving the knowledge of scriptures, doctrines and the teachings of men together to try and make ourselves “clothing” presentable to this holy and just God that, to our way of thinking, cannot tolerate our nakedness. When we are down and out and have nowhere else to turn but to God, we experience a disrobing, a stripping away of the fabricated facades we have hidden behind which have in fact only served to imprison us.
Rich
Richard'z Rantz 