Waiting in the terminal.

Center Church is a massive and daunting read – akin to dining at the all-you-can-eat buffet serving only meat and potatoes – and I am not one who likes to take small bites and chew methodically.  Instead of taking theologically-dense works like this one and breaking it down into manageable portions, reflecting, and responding, I usually end up reading it twice in a row. After the reading, I sit there like a gluttonous mass of over-stuffed Christian and go into a catatonic state of digestion that will last days, weeks or months, depending on how much I was challenged, convicted, brought to repentance and empowered with boldness. 

I may have to read this one three times.

I really liked the picture that Keller created in my mind with this airplane analogy.

…keep in mind is that it is not the quality of the faith itself that saves us; it is what Jesus has done for us. It is easy to assume that being “saved by faith” means that God will now love us because of the depth of our repentance and faith. But that is to once again subtly make ourselves our own Savior rather than Jesus. It is not the amount of our faith but the object of our faith that saves us. Imagine two people boarding an airplane. One person has almost no faith in the plane or the crew and is filled with fears and doubts. The other has great confidence in the plane and the crew. They both enter the plane, fly to a destination, and get off the plane safely. One person had a hundred times more faith in the plane than the other did, but they were equally safe… Saving faith isn’t a level of psychological certainty; it is an act of the will in which we rest in Jesus. [1]

I am the wary passenger every single day of my life. 

Let me be totally clear with you: if it were not for the Holy Spirit literally lifting my doubting, hesitating legs and helping me take those precious few steps between “boarding” the plane and “on” the plane, I would not be on the plane. 

The decorum it takes for those of us who have a fear of flying to hold it together while waiting at the terminal at the airport really cannot be described. 

What I try to look like on the outside:

I’m only mildly interested in the journey I am about to take. I’m an old veteran, really. See me with my headphones and my games on my smart phone and a casual eye on other waiting passengers? I’m just half-listening to the flight attendant on the intercom. You can tell I do this so often that I don’t need to actively listen to hear my row announced. I just intuitively know. I’m in no hurry to get on, so I’ll just relax here casually while those uptight travelers crowd the counter waiting for their “MVP Gold” boarding call.

What’s actually going through my head:

There are two men under the aircraft with clipboards comparing numbers. Something must be wrong. Are you a terrorist? Are you a terrorist? Are you a terrorist? I see plenty of room under that jacket for a bomb. I don’t know much, really, but is there any way we’d survive a crash from 28,000 feet to even be able to use those flotation devices? I’m going to be up in the air. Miles into the air. Slides over the wings won’t do jack for me. Perfect time for me to remember the nightmare I had about colliding with another airplane midflight. Will someone please show me the results from the most recent safety checks on this craft?

Not exaggerating. I have so little faith that I will land at my destination when I board an airplane that even after I am at cruising altitude, beverages are being served and I’ve found a suitable distraction for the next hour, I’m still eyeballing the other passengers suspiciously and jumping at every change in the sound of the engine.

Praise God that this plane’s ability to land safely at its destination does not depend on my confidence in the plane, the crew, or the people I’m traveling with, or we would have crashed before we’d even made it through takeoff.

The problem arises when we try to perfectly comprehend, from an intellectual standpoint, Jesus and the Gospel before we will lay down our sense of control, our doubts, our lives. 

Let’s take the 737 for example – my vessel of choice flying to and from college in California years back.

I was, and remain, terrified of flying. I had two choices if I wanted to get home to my family each break: to either accept my doubts and fears and board the plane nonetheless, realizing that my fear did not gain me any more control over the plane than if I perfectly understood and trusted it, or to never board the plane in endless pursuit of total confidence in and understanding of the technology that was going to get me into the air and back down again in one piece.

I could have studied engineering and aerospace, read all the manuals on how a 737 operates and is piloted, interviewed the entire crew and reviewed their full list of qualifications and credentials. I could have meticulously inspected every nook and cranny of that plane. I could have, in some twisted and unlikely scenario, performed background checks on every other person who was going to be traveling on that plane with me.

In doing so, I would have missed the bigger issue at hand, which is that I actually believed all these things would have given me peace about the flight.

It’s not the plane with the problem. It’s not the crew, or the passengers. It’s me.

Dear friend, don’t get so tangled up in checking the wiring on the plane and examining every detail that you miss the journey of a lifetime.

You have two options. Get on the plane, or spend your whole life figuring out a reason not to get on the plane.

Whether you’re sweating and shaking uncontrollably, or calmly walk onto the plane with your head held high and pretend to have absolute certainty of your destination, the plane will do what it was intended to do.  And when you get on the plane (because I know you will) recline your seat, put in your headphones and rest.

Rest, rest, rest. You need it.

 

 

[1] Keller, Timothy J. (2012-09-04). Center Church: Doing Balanced, Gospel-Centered Ministry in Your City (p. 36). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.