Adventure or Adversity

Adventure or Adversity (1,108)

April 6th, 2011

Am I just a target or am I here to target things? Good question.

Is my job in life just to react the best way I can to adversity while using my faith in God? Or am I on an adventure to use my faith in God to pulverize adversity? It is probably the difference between the gospel of Jesus and the practice of religion.

Religion acts as a hospice for human beings on a seventy-four-year journey to dying—to comfort us while we await our eternal reward. Jesus came to give us a life that is an adventure, which culminates in the great surprise of an eternity prepared just for us.

This philosophical difference is exemplified in John the 9th chapter—when Jesus and his disciples encounter a man blind from birth. The disciples, like so many of us, try to turn the occasion into a religious discussion by asking whether this man was punished by blindness from his mother’s womb because of his own sin, or rather, because of the sin of his parents. It’s just another sing-song version of “bad things happen to bad people and good things should happen to good people.”

Also, for my Catholic friends, it introduces the question of whether or not there is original sin. In other words, was this man born sinful and before he even got a chance to draw a breath, was punished for his innate iniquity?

Jesus’ answer is one that is often overlooked, for he says, “The man was not born blind because of his sin OR his parent’s sin.” So you see, there goes the doctrine of original sin and the principles of inevitable adversity—all in one statement. For Jesus continues, “The man was born blind that God might be made manifest in him.” Wow. Therefore, his blindness was merely the door to an adventure of the miracle of receiving sight.

Jesus goes on to say, “I work while it’s day because the night’s coming, when no man works.” In other words, Jesus was saying he was on an adventure. It was an adventure of his own making, his own desire, his own passion and his own discovery. Of course, adversity comes—the nighttime. But we will find that it comes much less frequently when we’ve already taken on the adventure of life and targeted areas for change rather than merely allowing ourselves to be a target.

A religion that teaches us that we are helpless to circumstance is not only useless in the everyday give-and-take of the marketplace, but actually hampers us from using our abilities, our minds, our talents and our spirits to overcome the world.

You have to learn the difference between the gospel of Jesus and the practice of religion. Religion keeps people weak so they remain ardently faithful to the need for more of the same. Jesus came to set us free so we could be free indeed.

He closes out his little explanation to the disciples in that John 9 passage with this statement: “As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” Isn’t that powerful?

Matter of fact, it is so poignant that this morning I walked in and looked in the mirror and said it myself: “Jonathan Richard Cring, as long as you are in the world, you are the light of the world.”

Damn adversity.

Let the adventure begin.