Ever since I first started to be a part of a cell, I’ve appreciated that Circle of Hope does not just misuse the idea that Christianity is ‘a relationship, not a religion’, but that most people involved are really trying to live in that belief, both with God and with others. As a transplant to Philadelphia from an upstate New York suburb, my 20-something mind was not quite prepared for a church where relating to each other and knowing one another was more important than agreeing to abide by the same moral code. Suddenly, being a part of the body of Christ meant something to me and the significance of that has only grown in the past four years, enough so that I sometimes have the perspective that I am a part of the body of Christ before I am whatever I think being Daniel Pilger means (I am hoping to continue on in this and believe it more consistently).
One of the ways in which this has been liberating for me is that I no longer feel that I have an appropriated faith which my parents and youth group gave to me. Thankfully, right from the start I found Circle of Hope to be a safe place to be exactly who I am. In this time of being truly ‘on my own’ from my parents and whatever other construct I always felt had defined me, I was able to form and cultivate relationships with many people that I believed were trying to head in the direction of loving God and others more. How glad was I to be a part of a larger community that seemed eager to offer true friendship to me and allow me to offer what I could back?
However, I got scared when I noticed that my desire to make my own decisions and love this community was distracting me from actually spending time alone with God and following Christ closely. As I am sure that I am not the first person to get caught up in the community/body and (to whatever degree) lose sight of what truly binds us together, it was an upsetting thought that I might love this community more than I was loving God. In any number of conversations that I have had throughout my life, one of the things I find myself consistently dealing with is my tendency to ‘love the gift more than the giver’, to find myself believing so much in James’ declaration that ‘every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows’, that I find myself and my value in those gifts (in this situation, the many beautiful relationships I was finding myself a part of) more than in who I am in Christ. For someone like me that values friendships very highly, all the more so the more authentic and transparent they are, my sense of having found a ‘home’ (or at least a like-minded group of friends) in these people became a much larger distraction from my personal relationship with God than I could have imagined. Over time I began to do meditations every few days in an effort to find myself in a place where I could rest in knowing that God loves me. Forgive me if this sounds painfully basic, but that is the most important thing for me to focus on - to know that God loves me. Through this I found it much easier to be thankful to God, to actually be in a spirit of appreciation towards Him. The differences were not always easy to see outwardly, but there was a newness to the ways that I viewed my relationships; I still spent a lot of time with my friends, but I found myself able to love them individually, not just as a part of this large community I was so glad to be a part of, and to feel more that I was actually investing in their lives.
[I'd like to inject here that I spent a few years feeling like I had no value whatsoever, and this could probably turn into another blog - a book probably - about the importance of feeling, more importantly knowing, that we have any worth at all. I am sure I am not the only one who has felt this same thing, and while I'm sure we could all think of a number of reasons why this could be, I think it is important for each of us to know in a true way that we are valuable to God. Earlier in my life, the thought of trying to 'view myself as God views me' was not appealing because I had no idea how to do it and because I was so used to viewing myself in the way that I had for my entire cognitive life up to that point. Looking back it seems strange that I thought I could love others while at the same time not love myself, but I tried very hard to. All of this is not to say that I don't think I loved my friends in the past, but I believe I was a bit misguided in my efforts to do so.]
While I am still inconsistent with these, I have found the disciplines of solitude and meditation to be essential in keeping myself centered on finding my value in God. In the past months, I’ve questioned myself again and again: am I loving the community more than I am loving God? While sometimes it takes a few days of processing, I still answer yes sometimes and I must remind myself that while I find God among these people consistently, that they are not Him. I am trying hard to be renewed by God each day, to be a part of the forgiveness and redemption that Christ offers me (all of us), and to know that my worth comes from being loved by the Creator of all things, and be grateful for the many chances I am given to share that love with others.