Blog # 347 A Sleeping Genius
What happens when a genius falls asleep? I imagine certain scientists have already tackled that question, and if we were to investigate their research there would be a theory or two as to what the answer might be. But for the ordinary person like me, when a genius falls asleep he or she is then much like the rest of us. He or she might as well not be a genius as far as His awareness is concerned. In a sense we are what we think we are.
Applying this kind of reasoning to our identity as a Christian believer, we are led to conclude that we are really and most fully a Christian believer only when we are actually thinking about ourselves in that capacity, when we are actually conscious of our Christian identity. It is not that our faith is taken away or destroyed during those times when we are not consciously aware of it, no more than the quality of being a genius is destroyed or taken away when a genius is asleep. But it is not active and personal to me until I am aware of it.
These thoughts came to me when I was reading the letter to the Romans, the thirteenth chapter, particularly verse eleven. "It is now the hour for you to wake from sleep, for our salvation is closer than when we first accepted the faith." To 'wake up' as a Christian would seem to mean we are to claim our identity in Jesus and act upon that identity in a conscious and personal way. As a 'sleeper' we continue to be numbered among the seven billion men and women humanly alive on the earth today, and God loves us as such. But 'awake in Christ' through faith and Baptism, we are uniquely related to God, ourselves, and to all of creation, called yet free, to claim officially, in Jesus' name God as our Father, to give sublime meaning and value to any and all suffering, to turn death itself into an expression of the deepest trust and most perfect love. (Jn. 1513). The joys of faith are real and many for those who are 'awake'.
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