why undone?

so the name is undone. why?
-because that is my experience of God.
-because Ray Anderson always says, "grace must kill to make alive."
-because theology, like the revelation of God to us, is never finished.
-because there's a bunch of stuff I need to finish.
-because God, in his mercy, smashes all our finest images of him.

The line is probably familiar from Isaiah 6:5, "Then I said, 'Woe is me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips, And I live among a people of unclean lips; For my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts.'" I think it's Peter's response too, in Luke 5 when he says to Jesus "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man." It's funny because typing those lines - they look heavy/sound heavy - but they're not to me.

Intense; sure, but not agonized. The presence of God has this way of stripping away all of the garbage the world heaps on us and the garbage we claim for ourselves. All we're left with is the true "me". And while the true you is not as grandiose as we might hope, it certainly is more free, more peaceful, and more content. And more glorious. Getting there is a process of having a lot of core beliefs stripped and reworked, behaviors challenged, and learning to be someone who seems different at first.

Good theology is like that, too. It is, after all, an encounter with the Word of God: it strips and rebuilds our understanding of God with what He reveals. /I love postmodern (hypermodern) tools in approaching philosophical discussions, but I'm sick enough of the buzzword cache I didn't want to mention it./ (doh!).

So at the end of the day, I find myself constantly undone.
thank God.