Basics are groundbreaking

Well, summer at Mt. Rushmore may be winding down, but nothing else is. All my ministry team members have deserted me in order to go to school, so my last week will be interesting. I have one Sunday service to do on my own, as well as a few more meetings about the basics of Christianity. I’m starting to realize how little I’ve focused on what happens on Sundays, when that had been the majority of what I was looking forward to before I got here. But here, as in any ministry, so little of the actual ministry happens on Sunday morning. It is, and should be, a lot bigger than that. In our late night meetings about what Christianity is, I’m continually struck by how fundamental some of the questions that emerge can be, as well as how hard they can be to answer.

For example, “What is sin?” Think about it. How do you really answer that for someone who doesn’t know? We have to understand it in order to understand what we’re saved from, but where do you begin? If you get too specific and just list specific sins, you limit our faith to a list of do’s and don’ts. However, if you are too ambiguous, the entire concept is lost. After this topic had come up in a couple of meetings I finally arrived at an answer. Sin is literally falling short, or missing the mark of what were called to be and do. But what is it that we are called to? Jesus summed it up with two commands; to Love God with all our heart, soul and mind, and to love our neighbor as our self (Matt 22:37-39). So, sin is any action or thought or state that falls short of this, including a specific list of sins. It hit me right when I said it. If that’s what sin is, then we are all in serious trouble. I think if we all took seriously how great our debt was, and how much we fall short of meeting God on our own, we would live our lives and practice our faith a little differently. At least a little more passionately.

Conversations like these have helped me comprehend my role in ministry a little more clearly. When we talked about the shepherd who leaves 99 sheep to find 1, or the radical forgiveness of the parable of the prodigal son, a lot of things don’t make sense. That one sheep shouldn’t matter and the son might as well be dead. Even people who have never read the Bible catch this and point it out. Yet somehow we are forgiven and called to represent the grace we have been shown. I can only explain what Christianity is, not how it works. I don’t know why I’m saved or so convicted that God is real and loves me. I don’t know how I ended up at Mount Rushmore for a summer. And I really don’t know why I can push through fatigue and my introverted need to be alone after work to facilitate meetings like this. All I know is the God I’ve encountered and how my perspective and hope has shifted from this life to the next. I am using every bit of theology I have learned, and am convinced no amount of study will enable me to answer every basic question. I have to focus on making accessible the things I can, demonstrating Christianity far more than I talk about it, and just let God do the rest. He’s good at that.