At church this morning, the pastor preached about the miracle of
Jesus changing water into wine, and he said that Jesus performs miracles
when he transforms people.
Does Jesus
change people? I don't rule it out. Or let me say this: I wouldn't be
surprised if there are people who change with the assistance of a power
greater than themselves. Is this an experience in which they are
passive, or active? Well, I can't rule out that there are people who
experience a passive transformation. Whether that's long-term or not, I
don't know. Maybe it is for some people, but not for other people.
In
twelve-step groups, however, transformation seems to be presented as
something that occurs after hard work, even though a higher power is
said to play a role. A person takes a moral inventory, shares it with
someone else, and gets feedback. A person meets with a sponsor to get
advice or simply another person's perspective about what he or she is
experiencing in life. A person makes amends to whomever he or she has
harmed. And God puts the person in situations in which he or she can
grow. Or, at times, it is recommended that people place themselves into
situations in which they can grow, such as social settings.
It
takes work, not to mention bravery, for people to be so vulnerable.
Many shy away from it. I'd prefer to do that sort of work within an
accepting environment rather than a setting that puts me down, and it's
good when one can find such an accepting environment. But change, for a
lot of people, still takes work. I wish that I could be passive and
wait for God to zap me, magically transforming me into a person of
character!
I have another point to make: I
can easily say that God has made me loving or patient, if I were in a
setting in which it's not particularly difficult for me to be loving for
patient. But am I loving or patient in all situations? Personally,
it's not something that I want to stress out about, for I don't think
that me beating up on myself is all that productive of an activity. I
wouldn't even feel less-than if I did find it hard to be loving
or patient in certain situations (which I do)! But, because that's the
case, I have a hard time bragging that I have arrived, in terms of
character. I fall way short of perfection. That's not me patting
myself on the back for my humility. It's the way things are. And I
should remind myself of that so that I'm not so quick to judge other
people, who themselves fall short. We're all loved by God.