Most of you probably recognize the title of this entry as the title of a U2 song.  From the first time I heard it nearly 20 years ago, I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For has struck a deep and vibrant cord in my soul.  It’s been part of the soundtrack of my life.  But so has most of U2’s catalog.

I can already see many of you rolling your eyes at those last two sentences.

What always struck me as strange about how many Christians responded to this song was that many of them considered it to be borderline blasphemy.

How can Bono call himself a Christian and say he hasn’t found what he’s looking for? Was the commonly asked question.

How can you call yourself a Christian and say you have?  Was usually my quasi-obnoxious answer.

Since my early 20’s I’ve been an odd duck among my evangelical brethren in this regard.  The party line among us born-agains is that “Christ is the Answer” – which inappropriately implies that you shouldn’t ask any more questions.

That short sighted-thinking exists on an intellectual and spiritual level.  Mark Noll’s The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind is recommended reading for understanding the anti-intellectual bias that persists among us born-again Christians.

One of the best statements I’ve ever read about our lack of spiritual quest-ioning is found in A.W. Tozer’s The Pursuit of God.  In the opening sentences of his classic Tozer tells us that when we put our faith and trust in Jesus “It is, however, not an end but an inception, for now begins the glorious pursuit, the heart’s happy exploration of the infinite riches of the Godhead.  That is where we begin, I say, but where we stop no man has yet discovered, for there is in the awful and mysterious depths of the Triune God neither limit nor end.”

Tozer continues, “To have found God and still to pursue Him is the soul’s paradox of love, scorned indeed by the too-easily-satisfied religionist, but justified in happy experience by the children of the burning heart.”

“Children of the burning heart.”  When was the last time you looked around the room during Sunday morning worship and that phrase came to mind?

The Apostle Paul said it this way:

I have not yet reached my goal, and I am not perfect. But Christ has taken hold of me. So I keep on running and struggling to take hold of the prize. My friends, I don't feel that I have already arrived. But I forget what is behind, and I struggle for what is ahead. I run toward the goal, so that I can win the prize of being called to heaven. This is the prize that God offers because of what Christ Jesus has done. All of us who are mature should think in this same way. And if any of you think differently, God will make it clear to you. But we must keep going in the direction that we are now headed.

                                                                                                Philippians 3:12-15 CEV

No matter where you are in your journey, there is always an element of “not yet.”  We will always be incomplete in this life.  Which is why we have to keep going, growing and, please don’t stone me for saying this – evolving!

But if we don’t hold our spiritual and intellectual lives in complementary tension we’ll never make the progress God desires for us.  Any overly spiritualized faith collapses into an ineffectual piety and an overly intellectualized faith eventually becomes wooden and hollow.

When I look back over the past few years of my life, I can see a direct correlation between the near-stagnation in the intellectual and spiritual development of my faith and the near-fatal amount of weight I gained.  Just as your intellect and your spirit do not exist in isolation of each other your physical well-being is also an essential part of being a whole and holy person before God.

Now, I’m not suggesting that everyone who’s in shape physically is in shape spiritually - the relationship is much more complicated than that.  What I am trying to challenge you to think about and hopefully act on are the symptoms of your own intellectual and spiritual stagnation.

My symptoms were obvious to anyone who saw me - I was 5’6” x 6’.  I’d always wanted to be a six-footer, but I never thought it would be in width! 

I confess that I was fat because I was using Papa John’s, Ben & Jerry’s and Shiner Bock to ease the pain of my disconnected relationship with God.  That isn’t self-loathing, it’s truth telling.  And the truth will set you free.

Since March 6 I’ve been getting back on track.  I’m doing better and feeling better than I have in years.  I have a sense of hope and excitement about the future that is intoxicating.  But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.

I hope you haven’t either.