“Lord, you are Lord and I want to live with you”.

Part 8: Give yourself

“And I want to live with you”. What do we mean by this?

Firstly, if we have met someone who is supremely precious, why on earth would we not choose to be with that person – if such a relationship is on offer? By analogy, who would say, “Oh yes, he’s wonderful and he lives just next door, is always inviting me round, but I don’t ever bother going”. Such a response would be absurd.

What we are saying is that our recognition of the Lord’s worth has “opened our eyes” and transformed our understanding of what life is, what it should be, and what it could be. The values we recognise in God have become the values that we now hold most dear, and our number one aim in life is to be like him. We want to reflect back and express in the way we live our lives what we have learnt from God about what is the supremely precious way to live life. God is life in all its fullness, and as we discover ourselves to be alive, and then, in discovering God, discover that there is an exponentially enhanced way to live life, it is that way of life that becomes our priority. Now, for us, living our life means living in tune with God’s nature and will. So, “being with God”, “living with God”, “serving God”, all, in fact, mean the same thing. In doing so, we also enter into life in all its fullness. There is nothing more. There is nothing else. Many things can be extrapolated from this truth, and they will all be good, but life needs just one recognition, one act of personal commitment, one personal value judgement: “The Lord is Lord, and I want to live with him”.

“Lord, you are Lord and I want to live with you”.

Part 7: The paradox of love: to give is to receive; to lose yourself is to gain everything; to kneel in service is to be exalted

Some people might object to the hierarchy that has come into the relationship – as though that is somehow negative or demeaning and so bad. But notice how immediately this sense of hierarchy – if we call it that for now – has entered the situation. In the very moment of recognising the worth of God, where “God” is used here just as his personal name, we immediately move onto naming him “Lord” as an intrinsic element in recognising his worth. We cannot recognise the supreme preciousness of God’s nature without immediately wanting to put ourself under his will. Putting ourselves “under” his will is entirely right, but in this egalitarian age may still raise some people’s hackles, so let’s continue to address the issue. If I say, “We immediately want to align ourselves with God’s will, to be in tune with his will, to be within his will, this removes connotations of subservience in that it emphasises that we are making a completely free choice, and are in alliance with God. However, I don’t think we should be ashamed to acknowledge the Lordship of God because this is an integral element of recognising God’s worth. We are not thinking of God as someone in tune with me, but a bit more expert, like putting ourselves under the tuition of a personal trainer, we are recognizing that when we appreciated the worth of God it required a response of putting his nature and will first in our lives. God is not like me; I am not like him. We are not kindred spirits. We are not equal. He is different to me, but I want to become like him. This was our free choice, based on our personal value judgement that “The Lord is Lord”. The second part of the statement, in whatever form we want to phrase it, “And I want to live with you” flows seamlessly from this recognition that the Lord is Lord.

“Lord, you are Lord and I want to live with you”.

Part 6: “The glory of the Lord shone all around”

Some people recognise that they have encountered a person of supreme worth. Let’s put every good quality we can think of in a box: love, compassion, forgiveness, justice, goodness, truth. Now let’s turn those nouns into active, personal verbs: loving, compassionate, merciful, forgiving, just, righteous, good, truthful. Now let’s label that box: “God”. This is what we mean when we talk about God, and because it’s a bit of a mouthful to keep repeating the contents of this box, we just use the word “God” as shorthand, to try and explain what we mean when we say we had an encounter with someone who we perceived as fullness of love, goodness, truth etc.

So, this is the ultimate foundation of faith: a judgement that God – the Lord – is Lord. Initially, this stands entirely alone. The response of faith may follow on immediately, but in terms of sequencing of recognising truth and making judgements, initially, there is simply the recognition that, “The Lord is Lord”. What are we saying here? We are making a judgement, not simply that God is a very, very good person, we are judging that in God we have found someone so good that he is worthy of being called “Lord”. Now, the word, “Lord” can have many connotations, but for now, we can simply say that we judge -again, just a free, personal value judgement – that the person we have met has such good qualities that we recognise that he has authority over us. That is, we don’t want to be unmoved by meeting him. We don’t want to take the attitude, “What a nice person! It was lovely meeting him. Now, what was I going to do next? Ah yes, time for a nice cup of tea”. Instead, we recognise that we want to “come under the wing” of this person, or to come “within his orbit”. He becomes the centre of our attention. We want to draw near to him. We want to please him. We want to become like him. We want to honour who he is by changing our behaviour to be in tune with his nature and will. So, God does not impose his authority on us. We do not become subservient in any sense of losing our freedom or autonomy; instead, the recognition of his worth impels us to make the judgement that we cannot carry on as before, and the best thing we can possibly do is to recognise that God’s nature, and his will, which arises from that nature, are supremely precious. In this sense, the word, “Lord” simply means, “We recognise you as supremely precious”.

“Lord, you are Lord and I want to live with you”.

Part 5: It’s what we choose to do with our experiences of God that counts

I think most people have some incidents in their lives that religious people classify as a religious experience. However, for many people these events are very rare, and so very out of the ordinary, that they are extremely difficult to make sense of. One person might say, “Wow! That was weird! Weird and wonderful, but what on earth was it?”. They frankly have no idea, because it is completely unlike anything else they have experienced. They may therefore simply “park” the idea in a corner of their mind, as a strange, wonderful, inexplicable experience, and get on with their lives. It could be many years until they have another experience that they would class as being in the same category. They make the connection, but no pattern is emerging and so they think, “There’s another one of those strange experiences”. So they remain agnostic about them, and are fundamentally unmoved in the course of their life by them.

Another person has a similar experience, but they may be committed to atheism. Therefore, they dismiss the possibility that this could be anything to do with God and give themselves an alternative explanation. Perhaps they may tell friends that they were out walking, feeling great at the start of their holiday, when they came to the top of a hill and saw a wonderful sunset which gave them the most extravagant feeling of elation that they’ve ever had. It’s a treasured moment, but not one that they have to do anything about.

A third person has a similar experience. Perhaps they have previously heard about God, and perhaps inclined favourably towards the idea of his existence and now they put two and two together and realise that this is an encounter with God, just as they had been told could happen. Or perhaps it comes out of the blue, and the person just intuitively knows – sorry, makes the internal judgement – that this must be what it means to encounter God. So, in that respect, it becomes a conversion experience.

The interesting thing about these three people is that they are having identical experiences, but the effect on their lives is entirely dependent on the personal value judgement that they make about the worth of the experience. Now the worth of the experience does depend on the status given to the experience – the way it is understood. The first person classified it as “unknown” the second as “a lovely, natural experience”, the third as “a meeting with God”. However, this judgement about how the experience is understood has a judgement about its worth integrated into it.

See how none of the individual’s judgements can be classified as justified by proven facts. The “facts” such as they are (strictly speaking there are no facts because internal feelings cannot be verified by observers) are things like feelings of elation or meaning or love, which the individual knows to be true within themselves, even though they are not verifiable. The essential part of the process is what the individual chooses to do with these feelings.

“Lord, you are Lord and I want to live with you”.

Part 4: Our framework of understanding is important, but it’ the vibrant, dynamic encounter with God that counts

We have considered the framework of understanding in which the statement, “Lord, you are Lord, and I want to live with you” might be held, so that it is intellectually justified, rather than simply a product of blind faith or wishful thinking. However, this is not the vibrant core of the issue. We have backtracked to check that our value judgements are not foolish, based on emotional fancy rather than reality. However, the statement is being presented as the heart and foundation of faith: the realisation of who God is, and the need to make a response. In a way, the response is automatic, like in the laws of physics, in that, once we truly appreciate that the Lord is Lord, we cannot but help to be attracted to him. However, it is still an act of freewill. We see this in the way so many people do not respond to God. Now, it is difficult to judge this in that we may wish to argue that anyone who truly did encounter God would certainly give their lives to him, so if you have not done that it must mean that you haven’t really encountered God. However, this seems in practice not to fit the evidence, and in principle I think God would not take away our choice to respond to him, for if we had no choice then clearly we have not made a choice. I think the answer lies for most people in their willingness to respond to God – or not. I accept that for some people their lives in practice have not afforded them the opportunity to encounter God, and so they have not been faced with the choice we are about to consider. Perhaps their lives are so unrelievedly awful that it proves impossible for them to hear a call from God. Perhaps the internal make up of some people makes it difficult for them to perceive a spiritual call. However, let’s consider what is a common situation.

“Lord, you are Lord and I want to live with you”.

Part 3: Our personal value judgements cut through the restraints of uncertainty to restore our freedom and our ability to act

I find this to be a very liberating judgement. I am free from all arguments about facts, about proof, about certainty, and about knowledge. However, rather than what is left – namely personal judgements – being subjective, uncertain, unproven, merely opinions, we instead argue that these are the most important things about being human. Facts are just facts; they mean nothing until we decide to do something about them, but personal value judgements are, by definition, the essence of action.

We can support our choices with a consideration of the difference between truth, facts and knowledge. Somethings are true, and we know them to be true, and, because we have knowledge that they are true, they become facts. However, other things are definitely true, but we don’t know that yet, because we haven’t been able to prove them, and in some cases we never will. This means that those truths will never be known, and so never enter the realm of facts. However, that doesn’t stop them being true. So it is with our personal value judgements. It is entirely possible, maybe even extremely likely, that we will never know if we made the right decision in making the value judgements that we have. However, that does not mean that we were wrong to do so; we might well be right – we just don’t know. And, that is precisely what makes our judgements important: we decided by faith and not by knowledge. In relation to God, if it could be proved that beliefs about God are true, then anyone who did not follow God’s way would be foolish, and faith would lose its dynamic energy precisely because it had become a sensible and self-interested opting for the winning side, rather than a commitment of faith in very ambivalent circumstances, that we choose to commit to God’s way, simply believing and hoping that it is true.

“Lord, you are Lord and I want to live with you”.

Part 2: Our value judgement expresses the truth, not just about God, but also about ourselves, as we use our freedom to declare where we stand

However, the statement of faith, “Lord, you are Lord and I want to live with you” is a simple, basic value judgement about the worthiness of God and a personal commitment in response. As such, they are self-standing or self-authenticating in that they need no external support. Each person is entitled to value whatever they value and to give their commitment to whatever they want. This is part of what human freedom means. Of course, we may argue that nothing can be entirely self-standing, in that we must give some reasons as to why we value as we do, or why we are prepared to commit ourselves in this way. If someone said that they valued what everyone else is appalled by, we would question as to why on earth anyone would do that. However, working within the realm of personal value judgements, where there are no verifiable facts to contradict our choice, and plausible justified reasoning to support our view that something is of precious value, in this respect, we are free to make such a choice. We are making a declaration: “In my view, what I have found in the Lord is of supreme value, and I can think of nothing better to do with my life than to follow his way, and try to live in tune with his nature and will”. As such, this is a stand that we are justified in making, even though the whole world were against us.

Thus, I believe we have found a sure foundation in life, in that we are allowed and free to make our own judgements about what is most precious in life. We are not insisting that everyone has to agree with us, or that anyone who judges differently has made a mistake – though we may well feel convinced that others would benefit from discovering the same truths as we have. Nevertheless, this is our prerogative, to make our own decisions about what is ultimately precious. I consider that this is where the philosophical difficulties of proving what is true lead us. The only things that can be known for sure are verifiable facts, but value judgements are not susceptible to verification, and so we can never be sure that our decisions are true, in the sense that we know that this is the best choice we could make. However, we can then turn this around and say that this is precisely what makes our value judgements so important: it is not possible to prove that we are right – though neither is it possible for anyone to show that we are wrong – but we can make our stand: “For me, this is what I hold most precious!”. And, as argued earlier, this personal judgement is within the remit of each person, and is of the very essence of being human.

(A theological reflection in 8 parts)

“Lord, you are Lord and I want to live with you”.

Part 1: The foundation of faith is a recognition of worth and a personal commitment

This is the foundation of faith. I am tempted to say that the foundation is simply, “You are Lord”, but I think a response statement is required, though I am unsure as to what the best statement of response is. “And I want to serve you” would be perfectly acceptable, and is better in terms of being more specific: that the recognition that the Lord is Lord calls us to commit to a particular way of life, which is completely orientated towards doing those things that conform to God’s will, gladly taking on the role of service, rather than self-interest. “And I want to live with you” might sound in comparison to be rather vague – as though you intend to just “move in” with God as some sort of hanger-on, but without any profound commitment. However, these words imply the complete commitment to service for it would be impossible to “live with God” without doing that wholeheartedly, and allowing the reality of living in God’s presence to transform you utterly. In this respect, the commitment to live with God is also a fully comprehensive one, implying a giving of your whole life to God, and including the truthful subtext that it is by being open to God’s presence that we obtain life in all its fullness – that is, to truly “live”.

I call this statement the foundation of faith because, if we have this, we don’t need anything else, for everything else about the spiritual life is contained within it. I like it because it contains 2 elements: the recognition of the truth about God, and a personal response. I think that this is a good place to start the spiritual life. Many people start from the issue of whether or not God truly exists, and incorporate fundamental beliefs about God as creator, or judge, or giver of eternal life. All these things are problematic, at least for some people, because of the impossibility of proving them, and the need to correlate these claims with other things that we know to be true about existence.