This week I hung out a little with a new friend of mine named "J". J is a 43 year old out of work fish aquarium expert who has HIV and has battled through cancer twice. Recently he had his second hip replacement surgery in a year, due to chemotherapy eating away at his cartilage. He's one of the nicest people I've met and is very open to talking about anything and everything. He's completely transparent about all aspects of his life--his homosexuality, his upbringing in the Jehovah's Witness Church, and how that upbringing still affects him even after being removed from it for decades. He will often ask my opinions on faith and he even asked my stance on homosexuality this week. I really enjoy his aptitude for open discourse without an agenda.
However, he said something this week that bothered me a lot. After hearing my thoughts on homosexuality and faith--not just hearing, but
listening--he said that he's just plain comfortable with his lifestyle and with his thoughts on religion (he's sort of a new age relative moralist who believes in some sort of higher power). In a moment, it made me realize why he's so comfortable talking about, and even listening to, thoughts on these subjects: he has no intent of changing. Truth presents no threat to him. I'm beginning to wonder if this is worse than someone who refuses to have civil two-way discourse on deep matters. At least someone like that seems threatened by truth. And truth
should be threatening. The threat is change.
I left thinking, I hope I never come to be this way. I hope I never give up on refining my beliefs. But even as I type these words I feel my hypocrisy. How often do I refine my beliefs only to let the peace of head-knowledge satisfy me--and then leave these beliefs in my head instead of applying them to my life? Am I any better for refining my beliefs if I do not put them into practice?
Does truth threaten me like it should? I fear I've domesticated truth by keeping it in the cage of my head.
And this begs he question, do I really believe the things I say I believe? If I truly believed them, wouldn't they permeate my life more? Yes, I believe them, but there's more to faith than belief. Action must accompany. As James points out, faith without works is dead. It is a lifeless form. A morbid corpse. Yes, we must not ignore the call of truth.
"Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it--he will be blessed in what he does." ~James 23:25
