Framework
When you think about your life, what’s the biggest framework you would put yourself in?
Is it just your sphere of influence?
Your family?
Your fellow city members?
Your nationality?
Your race?
Citizenship?
Humanity?
or, perhaps even broader, just a participant in the planet’s rhythms?
Whether you realize it or not, the choices you make will deeply effect someone.
Even the absence of your potential can have far reaching effects. Perhaps this is even especially true in light of how we digitally seclude ourselves from others in the 21st century.
And the truth is, we participate in all of these spheres. defined on many levels…but always defined in relation to something else. In this sense, our whole lives are subjective. We understand life through our perspective by relating it to the perspectives of others.
It’s possible that we operate far too often with a narrow perspective, focusing just on us or those immediately around us (and if it benefits those around us it often benefits us as well).
We are citizens of a global community in past, present, and future regards. Even if you don’t worry about how someone in Indonesia is affected (or, conversely, not affected) by the whole of your life, perhaps you should think twice about how the same could be true about your children, or grandchildren, or great-grandchildren.
Hopefully thinking about life (and not just our life) from a perspective that’s big, past and future oriented, and thoughtful will help us stay humble and rooted.
Perhaps the plainest universal understanding of sin would be that we often let ourselves take the place of God or others. This happens in every culture and in every human. It is our nature to ascend in as many ways as possible. We create our own worlds and then we rule with vigor.
The calling of the Gospel, the practice of undergoing salvation, is to let go of our created world and participate in the World as God views it: broken but reconciling, groaning but anticipating something better.
Go and see the world, beautiful and struggling, and get out of your own way.
I'm a runner, writer, thinker, and pastor. I love to agitate people's consciences. I like to spend my time reading, running, and relaxing with family & friends.