And What Is Courage?

Now is the close of the only season of the year defined by the word passion (passion other than the type that is associated with Valentine's Day, that is!) I looked up the definition. Many components fit the ideas I already had of passion, but this one caught my eye:
the state or capacity of being acted on by external agents or forces
and that is the one that preoccupies me right now.

I know someone who follows a well-established leader. This leader started great things many years ago; he started many souls on the path that leads to heaven, souls that were formerly wandering in the shifting sands. So the person I know loves this leader dearly, almost like a son loves a father. So, I wonder if he could even hear You whispering to him in this story?

David and Jonathan
1 Then David fled from Naioth at Ramah and went to Jonathan and asked, “What have I done? What is my crime? How have I wronged your father, that he is trying to take my life?”
2 “Never!” Jonathan replied. “You are not going to die! Look, my father doesn't do anything, great or small, without confiding in me. Why would he hide this from me? It's not so!”
3 But David took an oath and said, “Your father knows very well that I have found favor in your eyes, and he has said to himself, ‘Jonathan must not know this or he will be grieved.’ Yet as surely as the Lord lives and as you live, there is only a step between me and death.”
4 Jonathan said to David, “Whatever you want me to do, I'll do for you.”

I wonder what this man who loves his leader would think if You convicted him through this story; because right now, he is unwilling even to permit such a test to be run in his own heart concerning his leader's edicts. "I'd know if this were a problem!" he says. I wonder if he would hear You should You say, "As surely as you and I live, there is only a step between me and death." (That is, in this association of the faithful.)

When I heard some of the things this leader says not to watch, not to read...I find some of them I already have read, already have even quoted here. The passion in my own heart for Thee resonates like an overtone to the chord they strike when I read of their passion for You (and passion here by the definition: a strong liking or desire for or devotion to some activity, object, or concept.) I am mystified by the death being sentenced over these texts and small-group discussion videos. I have not been told directly why these things are condemned, but in the more general world, I've heard one argument: that this is a doorway that leads churches astray, to the place where they will not even mention Your name in their services. I know all about this...I attended one for two months, the second month being simply a test I myself ran in amazement, as I could hardly believe a place could call itself a church and yet succeed in not mentioning You at all for that long a time...they succeeded. I understand that argument. Another argument is made that scripture is being phased out of usage, and large chunks of the Bible are being scrapped. Well...I confess. I ran my own test here, and not before hand this time. I went straight to my church office and asked if we had any of the videos that were being professed "unwatchable." I was given three. In one of these, great scriptural support was given to the idea that a person needs quiet, personal intimate time with You--and the scriptural support included a series of I'd say 7 quotes from all over the Bible--Deuteronomy to the words of prophets to the Gospels. I must have been wrong about that side of the argument...because the scripture is there. Maybe it was that idea of You not receiving the laud You are due. So I watched another one. I literally cried as I saw one of the most beautiful analogies made representing Your love for us Your children as being much like a father carrying an infant child through a sudden storm. Sin is the storm that overtakes and becomes the whole reality of us--the terrified infant, yet You have taken us safely through it, comforting our petrified or angry screams with Your love all the way. That this person's message is being classified as harmful causes me to go very still somewhere inside--like a little animal knowing that something in its environment has suddenly gone very wrong. And I ache in my belly. Will I soon be told not to read Nouwen, because I don't have purgatory in my own life-doctrine? Is all of Augustine's work bad--for instance, the evangelistic message found in the testimony of his own conversion--because I find points of disagreement with some of this theology in his Confessions?

I've thought a lot lately about Your words concerning taking up our crosses and following You. One thing I believe about a cross: no one hangs on it alone, not really. To see someone on that cross forces every onlooker to take a stand, even if only in the heart, over whether that one hangs there according to justice or not. It is the point at which grace finishes its work in the hearts of many...as they are forced to take a stand of will. Every cross that follows the afflictions of Christ, if it be a true one, leads to this.

There are people around this man--the one who loves his leader, and they are people that he has respected as Your children over the course of many days, and they are people who are in his world right now, breathing the air he breathes, singing the songs he sings. And, they are people who are recognizing this as You appointing just such a cross to them, a cross in which they cry out, "It's not enough that your Bible isn't dusty. It also has to breathe!" In my own heart, I'd say these are people whose relationship to You is well-enough established that I find Your Spirit recognizes itself between them and me. They are the ones saying to this man:
"Test the word you are hearing to know if it is of God."

Can he sit at such a banquet as Jonathan sat at with his father for David's sake? My prayer is that he can. My expectation is that he is positioned where he is "for such an hour as this..."