Today’s picture came from a tumblr link, which was posted on Gab.

We abandon things that are obsolete, useless, or unaffordable. We move from platform to platform electronically. Things change.

And with Christ, everything changed.

It’s one thing for one’s life to be transformed by the power of Jesus Christ. It is real. I have seen remarkable transformations of people’s hearts, character, behavior, and spirit take place in the lives of friends, acquaintances, and strangers.

That being said, I’ve yet to see Christianity do much to transform one’s intellect, one’s height, or one’s intrinsic capacity for empathy or logic

We are still in this world and we still struggle with our sins, our weaknesses: we are still the same height, have the siame intelligence, and the same social skills. But we aim to do things differently and we judge things differently.

For we know all things will be tested, and we will be purified, as the church will be purified.

For you have not come to what may be touched, a blazing fire and darkness and gloom and a tempest and the sound of a trumpet and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that no further messages be spoken to them. For they could not endure the order that was given, “If even a beast touches the mountain, it shall be stoned.” Indeed, so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, “I tremble with fear.” But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.

See that you do not refuse him who is speaking. For if they did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, much less will we escape if we reject him who warns from heaven. At that time his voice shook the earth, but now he has promised, “Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens.” This phrase, “Yet once more,” indicates the removal of things that are shaken—that is, things that have been made—in order that the things that cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.

(Hebrews 12:18-29 ESV)

One of the ways we are purified is by inconvenience. If the world was run according to my nature, nothing would ever happen until after 10 AM, by which I would have had a good walk, bacon and eggs, and three cups of coffee. But the world does not run that way. Procedure lists must finish by 10 because rooms are booked. If I am on a seven am flight to be at a meeting at 10 am, I must be at the airport by 6:15 and up at 05:30. And if I play the viola loudly at midnight, when I am quite awake, I will disturb the neighbours.

And, as Lewis said, inconvenience morphs into pain.

Again, if matter has a fixed nature and obeys constant laws, not all states of matter will be equally agreeable to the wishes of a given soul, nor all equally beneficial for that particular aggregate of matter which he calls his body. If fire comforts that body at a certain distance, it will destroy it when the distance is reduced. Hence, even in a perfect world, the necessity for those danger signals which the pain-fibres in our nerves are apparently designed to transmit. Does this mean an inevitable element of evil (in the form of pain) in any possible world? I think not: for while it may be true that the least sin is an incalculable evil, the evil of pain depends on degree, and pains below a certain intensity are not feared or resented at all. No one minds the process “warm — beautifully hot — too hot — it stings” which warns him to withdraw his hand from exposure to the fire: and, if I may trust my own feeling, a slight aching in the legs as we climb into bed after a good day’s walking is, in fact, pleasurable.

Yet again, if the fixed nature of matter prevents it from being always, and in all its dispositions, equally agreeable even to a single soul, much less is it possible for the matter of the universe at any moment to be distributed so that it is equally convenient and pleasurable to each member of a society. If a man traveling in one direction is having a journey down hill, a man going in the opposite direction must be going up hill. If even a pebble lies where I want it to lie, it cannot, except by a coincidence, be where you want it to lie. And this is very far from being an evil: on the contrary, it furnishes occasion for all those acts of courtesy, respect, and unselfishness by which love and good humour and modesty express themselves. But it certainly leaves the way open to a great evil, that of competition and hostility. And if souls are free, they cannot be prevented from dealing with the problem by competition instead of courtesy. And once they have advanced to actual hostility, they can then exploit the fixed nature of matter to hurt one another. The permanent nature of wood which enables us to use it as a beam also enables us to use it for hitting our neighbour on the head. The permanent nature of matter in general means that when human beings fight, the victory ordinarily goes to those who have superior weapons, skill, and numbers, even if their cause is unjust.

In the same manner, there is only so much we can handle. In our natural selves, we cannot get anywhere near God. We need the ritual, the temple, the holy mountain because the presence of God will destroy us. We cannot handle that much truth: to use Lewis’ analogy, the fire is too hot.

Christ changes this. For with him and in him we find that God is not a consuming fire, but instead that the heat drives us as fire heats steam to drive the pistons that enable a steam engine to drag more than any animal can.

But we remain in this world and of flesh. In time, we grow and we lose some of our bad habits. We become more like we are supposed to be.

Or we cling to such, and fear truth, and fear the fire.

Our society has so much we cling to that it is broken.

So let us reform, beginning with me.