Dummy me

I read this this morning. I thought it was funny.
"The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly... Christian scholarship is the churches prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Oh priceless scholarship what would we do without you? Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament."
Soren Kierkegaard; "Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Kirkegaard"
Of course by posting this I realize I become the biggest hypocrite. I seem to imply that I do understand the words of the New Testament in their entirety, which I don’t, nor do I believe I ever could, and then I also seem to claim that I adhere to them, which I most obviously fall painfully short of. But I am reading this book "Irresistible Revolutionary" Shane Claiborn which is where I got the quote from in the first place (I know I did not notarize my quote properly or whatever you are supposed to do, Oh well). It’s not a new message it is actually pretty old. He talks about… well ok I am only maybe a fifth of the way through it so I’m not entirely sure what his actual message is, I’m not sure he even has one. But he tells lots of stories about really getting down and dirty to show love to other people. He talks about sleeping with the homeless on the street or in abandon church buildings. He went to Calcutta and worked with Mother Teresa and the Sisters Of Mercy, hung out with Lepers and generally did stuff most of us think is nice but would never actually do ourselves. He describes this stuff in the light of his own search for authentic Christianity not as a means of making us that don’t feel guilty. I don’t think anyone I or anyone I really know is disingenuous about their faith nor do most of them believe in a faith without works. But I have been a Chritian my whole life and I am still always searching for, and am at the same time incredibly fearful of, and shy away from, a faith that really sets me on fire. I know all of my excuses for not doing this stuff, safety, finical, lack of opportunity/experience which are all rubbish. And I realize dreaming about this stuff because you read it in a book is also very foolish. I guess I am just struggling to understand why I idealize these things and have no gonads to move on them. Its frustrating really, I feel like a fraud teaching kids discipleship when I really don’t follow the path that Jesus walked myself. I know a lot about the path, I admire it, I teach about it, but I don’t walk it, then I thank God for his grace and keep on dreaming. This sucks. And what does it help to write about it? I don’t know. It just makes me feel like an even bigger dummy.
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