Elected To Suffering?

THURS., JAN. 23, 1992, 6:23 AM
FARM, STUDY

The study of Peter’s first epistle has begun, and it promises to be a lively experience. Peter’s message to a scattered “remnant” of early Christians was that they, in a fashion like unto the original Jewish people, had been chosen, and were now God’s “real” elect. They had accepted the good news that the suffering and death of Jesus on the cross was of great advantage to them. Yet he knew that their “feeling acceptance” of this was shaky. They suffered because there were not enough of them, and the opposition to their beliefs was everpresent.

You wonder how you would feel if you were the kind of Christian you are in a culture that did not accept… even opposed… you and the few like believers. You remember your unwillingness to really consider membership in the Makicki Christian Church, where you would have been a minority haole family among mostly Japanese. It would not have been suffering for your faith, but only for your race… and you were not willing to give it a try.

Your culture, for you, is not one that persecutes. Yet you know that there are people who feel, from experience, that it is such. Now you suspect that if you did loudly proclaim the knowledge about eternal and everlasting life, that I have given to you, as a belief every Christian should have there would be opposition, and you might suffer from such proclamations. Thus, you seldom share the good news that I have shared with you – that life of the spirit is continuing, that this earthly life is just one sojourn (even as it is an important one), and that the goal for all of these “lives” is a return to become “part” of Me, the Holy Spirit.

This is NOT orthodox Christian doctrine, and even good, loving Christians might turn away from you. And you are not willing to risk that. Also if you asserted that this knowledge came through these Teachings their credibility would be lowered, and you’re not willing to risk that.

I call you, and you are occasionally, with a few people, willing to call yourself, a Christian mystic, because you receive these Teachings in this way. You don’t “make a big deal” of this, for, again, it could isolate you from Christian fellowship. There are a few whose views of life are somewhat like unto yours, and this is comforting, but you are not willing to suffer possible ostracism for this belief, assured by Me. Fortunately for you, I don’t command you to make this known, so that you would have a suffering experience.

While you feel very comfortable in the “bosom” of your church you must realize that some in that congregation feel lonely and unrelated, and this is a form of suffering. Your reply to this could easily be that it’s easy to become involved, and involvement tends to bring fellowship, and the acceptance that accompanies. Yet you cannot be firm in your assertion that this is a matter of free choice, for you cannot deny that you have been elected to be as active as you are, while others have to “do it on their own.” Since you accept that you have been chosen, you can never be sure what you decide solely and what has been “prepared” for you. You just can never know how much free choice you really have.