Maybe Jesus would drive an El Camino

Well it’s Saturday morning and I just finished having breakfast with some friends. Since I’m up (usually Saturday mornings and I are not close friends) I figured I’d put down a few thoughts for the day.

As I was looking through some past entries on this blog I noticed that I was only about half way through my ten lessons ideas that I posted a while back. I also noticed that I stopped right before the one that dealt with Wesley’s idea of Entire Sanctification - which I know some of you are not entirely sanctified on (Ya I’m lookin' at you Bob!) so anyway here are some thoughts on it.... BTW if you want to see my entire “10 lessons I’ve learned/am learning Click here .

So in the church we have a few things that I think say we believe, but we don’t really believe in such away that it makes our behavior any different. Such as we like to throw around the phrase “Unconditional love” a lot inside our sanctuaries, but in reality there are few places that I’ve experienced more “conditional love” than in churches. The reality is that unless someone conforms to the behaviors, doctrines, and what we consider to be right belief we with hold our love from them. I can’t tell you how many times I have seen church’s destroy themselves because so and so doesn’t believe in the virgin birth or that Job might not have been an actual person, or so on and so forth. I spoke with a woman this summer who doesn’t attend a church community anymore because she saw her congregation refuse to throw a baby shower for a young woman who was pregnant but un married, while throwing three other showers for women who were pregnant and married. Anyway, this is a topic for another blog. But I think there are some things we say we believe but don’t really.

For those of us that call ourselves Methodist, Wesley's ideas about Entire Sanctification is one of those things. I might add I know some non-methodists who have been told not to believe this by their traditions but in reality do believe it and live lives that are examples of it.

So some of you are asking what is this Entire Sanctification deelybob (I bet my spell checker doesn’t know deelybob). Well let me quote Mr. Wesley to start with: It is thus that we wait for entire sanctification; for a full salvation from all our sins, from pride, self-will, anger, unbelief; or, as the Apostle expresses it, "go on unto perfection." But what is perfection? The word has various senses: Here it means perfect love. It is love excluding sin; love filling the heart, taking up the whole capacity of the soul. It is love "rejoicing evermore, praying without ceasing, in every thing giving thanks." [Sermon 43--The Scripture Way of Salvation]

To carry this idea even further it's the notion that loving God and loving your neighbor encompass the entire soul. John Wesley would say (and I would as well) that one's heart and soul can’t be transformed in such away without faith in Jesus Christ and the work of God’s grace. Unfortunately we throw our notions of perfection into the fray. Many have said that Methodist who believe in entire sanctification don’t believe in sin (usually the phrase “liberal bastards” is thrown in there as well just for effect) because they assume that perfect in love means without mistake or limits. I have a friend that talked about perfection in terms of restoring cars. He had a “perfect” 72 el camino. It was fast but he couldn’t take it to Daytona and challenge Greg Biffle for the checkered flag. He could use the little truck bed in it to occasionally move a couch or pick up a big box of something at the store, (and I stress occasionally, actually rarely... really he never did that cause his truck was “perfect” but he liked to say he could anyway) There was no way he could pull up next to a United Van lines truck and haul more materials, or move a family across country. But his truck was still "perfect". It still had to be be resupplied with fuel, still has to have fluids changed, but it was still “perfect”. The reason it was perfect even though there were certain limitations was because someone spent a lot of time restoring that el camino to be and do exactly what it was designed to do.

As I live my life and make this journey of faith I find that things that I once thought were so important to my Christianity, have been slowly replaced with things that are important to my ability to be a disciple of Jesus. I am hesitant to say I have reached that total transformation of my heart and soul to focus on loving God and others, But my life is miles away from where it was in terms of love and faith. God is doing that work of restoring me to what he had designed me to be - a child of God who loves him and loves others.


One last thought - when I was in seminary there was a debate scheduled between a top gun Calvinist from another seminary down the road and one of our Weslyian theology professor. The debate was very civil and informative, and to tell you the truth I don’t even remember the name of the Calvinist professor, but I do remember vividly one exchange between the two. The Calvinist said “Sir, I think you underestimate the power of sin, and don’t take it seriously enough” to which the Weslyian professor replied, "Sir, I think you underestimate the power of God’s grace and spirit, and don’t take it seriously enough”.

I believe our lives can be restored to the point where love for God and love for our neighbors consumes us and transforms us completely and I have seen many display that type of transformation (some of you are reading this blog right now).

So here’s to being perfect in love, here's to transformed lives, and community and the world!