Inner
Voices
“It
is even more useful to realize that we each carry a Jesus and a
Nicodemus within us, that is, we each have a divine inner voice that
opens us to truth and a mediating social voice that is reluctant to
show its truth to others.”
Mark
Nepo (The Book of Awakening)
The
story of Jesus and Nicodemus in the Gospel of John (3:1-21) tells the
story of a Pharisee who comes only at night to see Jesus
and to ask questions that probe his own doubts. “How can one be
born again?” His curiosity about this man Jesus compels him to
listen and ponder. He senses there's a deeper spiritual truth in the
strange things Jesus says, and he wants to understand. But Nicodemus
has a problem; he has high standing in the Hebrew community, he's a
leader at the temple, a learned man. If he becomes a follower of
Jesus, or even begins to think the way Jesus does, he risks loosing
all that. No doubt he is quite tormented by his choices, so he operates under cover of darkness.
We
are not Nicodemus, of course, but we sometimes are faced with the
same choices. If we were to live like Jesus, open and accepting of
all, generous and kind, we might offend the people around us who hold
a hard line. If we were to look into the eyes of, say, an immigrant
child, a refugee, a homeless person, and know that he deserves to be
treated with dignity and respect, there's a chance those around us
would label us “socialists,” “unpatriotic.” We might lose our
friends, our standing. So we call ourselves followers of Christ,
while we travel as far away from Jesus, and “let the little
children come unto me” as possible.
We
have these competing voices within us—the one that opens us to
spiritual truth, and the one that speaks of social convention. We
must decide to which we will listen.
In
the Spirit,
Jane
No comments:
Post a Comment