Seeking and Finding

What do I truly seek? That is the question foremost in my mind. For we generally find the things we seek, though all things but One we find other than we anticipated. And yet in that One Thing which we ought to seek (if we knew our duty and our desire best) we find room to experience all the other good things we might otherwise have sought. “Further up and further in” leads us not only to new heights, but to new breadths, as well; in a turned-upside-down kind of way, as we climb closer to the Summit we find not a peak but a vast and limitless tableland, where infinity awaits. Though the way is narrow and the gate small, the Destination is expansive…and though there is only One Way to the Father, in Jesus Christ (and in this way the gate is small), the Gate Himself is impossibly broad, too. For there are a host of choices that lead to destruction, and One that leads to Life: yet within that one choice, that one surrender, we find true freedom. It is in the bottleneck of yielding to Christ that we find life abundant, freedom that is really free, and ineffable potential. And, I believe, just as we are set free by coming to Christ, just as on the other side of Him it finally becomes true that “all roads lead to God” as we come to experience in small part His multifaceted and gloriously abundant Person…on the front side of coming to Christ, we can walk in many various ways, follow many various desires until He shreds away the dragonskin to reveal Himself within us. Christ is the Way; but the way to Christ, well, that may be somewhat more ambiguous.

Some come to Christ through their family, some through the Word, some by Reason or Wisdom (think C.S. Lewis, or perhaps Socrates), some through a particular experience. Some are seeking purpose, some are seeking healing, some are seeking Beauty, some a Father; others are seeking goodness, peace, answers, love, and the list goes on. Some even come through other religions; most, perhaps, come largely against their wills.

And after answering Christ’s call to Life? What then? What do we seek? Still a multitude of things, perhaps, both good and evil, as we learn to live according to His Spirit. Everything is permissible for us, though not everything beneficial—we never do all we ought, but how much is strictly determined by our sense of “ought to,” and how much by desire? Desire, I think, leads us to Christ…does it lead us onward ever-after? I imagine yes, even more so, it does. Yet the Christian still must shed some desires from his old life—and here’s the confusion, for in truth the Christian must shed every desire from his old life: and yet some of those desires, I think, are redeemed along with the individual and are a blueprint of how we should come to seek Christ. The same journeys of desire, once sanctified, continue onward to Heaven. Perhaps, perhaps not, but I believe it so. It is the misunderstanding of desires prior to conversion that is the problem, not the desires themselves; we are all, always, trying to fill that “God-shaped vacuum,” and so even pagan desires are at heart a hunger and thirst for the Creator. Once that vacuum is filled, it begins overflowing…and so are the deep desires that helped position one for the “filling” still relevant during the “overflowing”? I think so. Paul’s zeal for God, horribly misunderstood and misapplied before Christ, became a singular zeal to realize Christ in everything post-conversion. Lewis’s desire for knowledge and understanding and answers before Christ became a desire to share his passion and understanding of the wonderful truth of Christ with others. Sheldon Vanauken’s lifelong affair with beauty and the transcendent became, after Christ, a desire to better realize the true Beauty and Sublimity of God.

I began writing this just to get some thoughts in black and white, and I didn't intend to post them. Especially as they don't seem to be leading anywhere surprising or insightful. But, I suppose my curiosity concerns the familiar idea "Ask and it will be given to you, seek and you shall find." Also, I'm reading Lewis's "The Pilgrim's Regress," all about one's journey to knowing Christ. It seems to me that we either have trouble accepting the diverse, sometimes-tragic, often-beautiful, inexplicable complexity of how Christ calls and leads people to His feet (and how He leads them afterwards!), or we fail to stand firm on the absolute, without-exception necessity of surrender to Jesus in order to find a life of goodness, true purpose, love, and freedom. The most frustrating thing about living in a society prone to polarizations is that people honestly begin believing that you must choose "Either-or" when faced with two truths. Or maybe that comes with the territory of being finite creatures with finite understanding...in any event, I hope I learn to devotedly seek all that Christ calls me to, and not merely the essentials; it's always the case that He has more for us, not less.