Reconfiguration

When I was a child, I couldn't understand why some of my parents' vinyl records said, for example, 'volume 2'. Besides the fact that the ideal sound level would vary dependent on background noise, some record players had no digital display from which to read the volume at all... That wasn't something I remember talking to anyone about, and I'm not sure when I learned what it really meant.

Another of my childhood observations became a source of great amusement to others. I'd watched the ladies at a village gala serving ice cream, so the first time I used my own ice cream scoop (as a newlywed 22 year old), I prepared a mug of milk (straight from the fridge) to dip it in! That one was easily rectified, though it took a while to live it down.

Of course, misunderstandings can have more significant or ongoing implications. I'm reasonably good at being roughly orientated in a place, but for quite a number of years, I found it very difficult to navigate out of a local city. When leaving Preston, I repeatedly ended up getting on the motorway a couple of junctions further south than intended, and although I didn't visit very often, I couldn't understand why this kept happening. One day, we were travelling home from further afield, my husband was driving us up the M6, and for some reason had left the sat nav on for longer than needed. As we passed Preston, I looked at the moving map, and there was the city floating past to the WEST of the M6! I had always assumed that on exiting the motorway from the north and turning left, I was travelling eastwards into the town.

That map revelation was a game changer, but I couldn't instantly reconfigure my brain to the true location of Preston. It took several visits, consciously overriding my instinctive understanding of where I was in relation to the motorway and to the North, before I could reliably orientate myself. It's like this for anything that we mistakenly believe. Whenever we learn something that challenges an assumption, even when we acknowledge a new reality, it's so easy to slip into old patterns of thinking.

I wonder what has been or is 'upside down' in your understanding? Maybe your worldview doesn't take account of Jesus Christ. I'm guessing most who take interest in this blog wouldn't consider themselves atheist, but for many it's much more subtle. Perhaps you think of God as a distant deity, maybe pulling a few strings, and probably frowning at us, but generally uninvolved in our lives. On the other hand, you may be comfortable with the idea of a spiritual presence somehow guiding you from within, but question the relevance of Jesus.

Either of those types of perspective is challenged by the idea that from the beginning, God has been and is intimately involved with creation, and that Jesus is the ultimate expression and embodiment of that reality. What might it mean for your life if God loves us—loves YOU—so extravagantly as to take on our humanness? This central claim of the Christian faith has much bigger implications than the relative location of a city to a motorway.

Here's the thing, though. It would have been easier for me to adjust to a whole new city to the West of the M6, replacing Preston altogether, than it was to turn it the right way up in my mind's eye. Some of us have mistakenly believed all sorts about Jesus, and these ideas have shaped our approach to life. For example, you may want to affirm that Jesus was a good man, but reject the suggestion that he is God. Or, you may doubt certain elements of his life, or even that he existed in history at all. On the other hand, you may believe that Jesus is God in human flesh, and in what he did, but have more subtle misconceptions, not recognising what this means for our Christian hope.

To reconfigure our understanding of Jesus from a deeply ingrained upside-down-ness is life-changing. If you've thought that he died to make it possible for God to love us, you may see God as primarily angry with you. However, the extravagant love of God is why Jesus came! Perhaps you've missed seeing that Jesus' resurrection and ascension tells us that he has a new, everlasting body? Because of this, we can know that the gift of eternal life with God is not for floating about just as souls, but for renewed bodily life together. What might this mean for how we live in our bodies here and now? Maybe you have assumed that Jesus looks more favourably upon people who observe certain rules, or who are particularly religious or committed to church-related activities, than those who come to him knowing that they have no merit of their own. That's upside down too.

I wonder whether in some ways it's easier for those who have not heard of him before to adjust to following Jesus, than for us who have so often taken on warped ideas about who he is and what he has done. I guess there's always room for more reconfiguration, as we learn to orientate our lives and attitudes to the truth revealed to us. Lord Jesus, turn our vision of you upside down where needed, so that our lives may better reflect the wonder of all your good news.⬦

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