What matters most IS the secret.

So I’m sitting today in my usual chair at my usual Subway.
As usual I’m reading one my theological periodicals ……quick fix for us wannabe theologians. But today I can’t help but overhear the conversations going on around me. One guy is asking the owner who he‘s going to vote for, making the comment that “if Hillary gets in maybe the terrorists will shoot her …so I might vote for her”; another guy is leaving his business card saying “if I can be of any help to you give me call” – for ‘help’ read ‘profit’. In the corner two guys are arguing over their sandwich selection – not that the sandwiches aren’t good (thanks again Amando for a sandwich par excellence), one wants the other ones sandwich …hello, ever heard of sharing!! A girl has just sat down and is feeding her baby and as usual over in the corner is two High School sweet hearts staring into each others eyes over a meatball sandwich and a Coke …puppy love …..don’t mock it ‘cos it’s real for these two puppies – at least today.

As I read, I’m reflecting on words I read earlier in the day – “what matters most is secret, not said. This begins to be the most real and the most certain dimension”. This is the kind of insight by Thomas Merton that keeps me hunting through his writings for more theological/philosophical nuggets.

I see all this happening, I see the people, I hear some of their comments - but what isn’t being said? What has never been said by them?

Is the most secret – the most real and the most certain dimension?

Another way to think about this is to think about the ‘world within’.

Dallas Willard writes that “thoughtful people through the ages have tried to answer the question of what makes our lives go as they do, and they have with one accord found, that what matters most for how life goes and ought to go is what we are on the inside.”

The most obvious of the world within are our thoughts, feelings and intentions. They reveal themselves in actions, words and priorities but each time they surface they either compromise or adapt to the surfaces forces – others, norms etc. In this way are actions are not truly our real selves …the most real is the secret thoughts, feelings, intentions that was then outworked in a diluted action.

But maybe our thoughts, feelings and intentions are not the most real. Maybe there is something deeper – the deeper source behind our thoughts, feelings and intentions?

If there is something deeper, then that deeper thing would be the most real, because it is the most secret. As these inner, deeper things are outworked – first as thoughts/feelings and then as actions /words - maybe at each stage they compromise and adapt each time denying a little bit of the trueness of the original thing.

If there is a deeper thing …and if it is the most real ….what is it??

Some might call it the heart, others might term it the soul, or spirit ….but irrespective of what its called, down through the ages writers, theologians, philosophers, anthropologists, poets have agreed that we have a hidden depth, a deeper source and that unconscious depth and dimension is the most real - and that most real is designed and created in the image of the most true reality, the greatest reality – GOD.

It is into this hidden depth that one writer in the Bible invites God to enter and search him out.

Our forms of Christianity always seem to focus on God sitting on the surface issues. It involves God condoning our actions or our actions being God’s actions. Our faith seems to be about praying and asking God to guide our thoughts, help us cope with feelings. But maybe we’re doing to God what we are doing to ourselves. Maybe we are forcing him to dilute what he can do, restrict what he’s about – because he is only ever allow one step away from the real me. We allow God into the actions we take or we even allow God into our thoughts - but we never allow him into the core, the hidden depth of our true seceret world - our most real dimension.

Maybe a truly spiritual man or women is a man or woman who is living out from the most real depths of their most inside world.

Listen to how the Apostle Paul wrote about this in the New Testament:

Since Christ lives within you, even though your body will die because of sin, your spirit is alive because you have been made right with God. The Spirit of God, who raised Jesus from the dead, lives in you. And just as he raised Christ from the dead, he will give life to your mortal body by this same Spirit living within you.

Dig deep into your secret world to live the most real - let God meet the real you, not its watered down version!