Today is my 50th birthday. I wouldn’t be so self-indulgent, but surviving 18,262 days on this earth has given me a little bit of perspective. So, for my big day, let me share some of what this completely imperfect follower of Jesus has gleaned from making it this far down the road.
First, you have an inner child. Nurture it. Paul seems to admonish the child in each of us where he writes, “When I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways” (1 Corinthians 13:11), but there is a difference between childishness and your child-self.
When we’re children, we have unorthodox ideas, endless curiosity, and immeasurable creativity. But just as Adam and Eve were suddenly ashamed of their beautiful nakedness after the snake told them that they could and should be something other than who God dreamed them to be, shame chides our inner child for daring to dream big, to resist perfection, and to prioritize unconditional love. It’s not childish to nurture the gifts that sparked in your life when you were younger in order to carry out that utmost call of loving others as you love yourself.
Don’t be ashamed of the child in you. Second, we are meant to have abundant life, not everything in life. The Son of God saying that he came for us to have life and have it abundantly (John 10:10) isn’t a license to pursue our every desire in Jesus’ name.
Such self-absorbed interpretations are what led to the Doctrine of Discovery and Manifest Destiny then, and to Christian Nationalism no.
