Becoming All Things
“I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might awaken some.” 1 Corinthians 9:22
When one becomes all things to all people, they are often misunderstood by those who want you to be one thing, to be easily defined and categorized, usually so one does not have to think very deeply. Humans love the appearance of control, and thus, they maintain appearances; maintaining their fear of the other through some self-righteous sense of knowing. Yet, becoming all things to all people is connected to one thing, so big in its oneness, it includes all.
How hard is it for us to include all?
It’s always easiest to include only those who think like us, dress like us, live like us, love us, or like the same things we like, but oh to go deeper to become all things to all people! To include those not like us because we realize they are. We realize the deepest likeness of the Image in whom all were made and we enter into the various expressions of humanity in such a way as to reveal the diversity found in genuine oneness. Oh that we be one as Jesus and God are one, the very prayer of God’s heart expressed in longing for us to know in the inner communion of Life.
To the cowboy I become a cowboy. To the wanderer I become I wanderer, or possibly, one who is found. To the lover of music, I become a listener of their heart and songs, to what they are hearing in their soul. To the weak I become weak, to the strong I become strong, even knowing my weakness is to reveal the non-reality in the appearance of strength that is only a veil, a cover of genuine strength. It’s like Jesus revealing a God who does not demonstrate the misguided strength of man, in Him whose weakness reveals a better Way even though its foolish appearance seems too weak to accomplish anything, yet accomplishes everything. To become all things, like God becoming human in every way, while showing us the Way to become divinely human.
To become all things to all people is to throw away a need for reputation and recognition, and recognize the Image in all. To cross-pollinate all that the cross reveals across the universe. To live in the Oneness of the Spirit’s diverse manifestations in this age, and the one to come. To surrender to that which awakens and saves us, not in our own strength as if we could carry such a revelation, but to allow this revelation to carry us, like it is already. It’s like the Wind, not knowing where it comes from or where it is going, yet we are in it and it is in us.
Oh breath and wind of Life, we’ve all been born, until we are again!
To become all things to all people is to be vulnerable, it is to take the lowest seat even when offered the highest, to reveal the Way in the most unlikely of places. This highway of holiness is travelled within and navigated by following the Spirit. When one tries to hold onto this and define everything that is happening, the Spirit seems to vanish as they either cry out, “Do not take your Spirit from me!” or they go on living against the Wind, struggling to realize the strength of resistance will surely assist them in getting stronger, if only to learn the strength of letting go.
To become all things to all people is not to lose yourself, but to find every self. It is to find the Self that was initiated from the beginning, like being born again, and realize that all are in Adam, deeper still, all are more deeply rooted in Christ. In Adam all died and in Christ all were awakened to life. One only needs to let go of who they are not to find the many that make up the reality of who we are. We are the body of Christ, made up of many members and expressions of existence, functioning uniquely beyond the bounds of religious definitions and categories, or any label used to define who is in and who is out. One can only be outside the awareness of what already is, thus becoming all things to all people is to awaken them to the awareness of what is. You and I, are in Christ, allow the light shine within.
If you should hear such things in another tongue, another language, it is not to be feared. There is patience in learning to listen, to hear the Word through the strangeness of another, not giving into fear, but to curiosity and wonder. Not trying to build a tower of Babel to become the same, but to spread out in the diversity of a Oneness so large, it can be spoken of through millions of diverse languages and images. These flavors join together to prepare a meal in which all find themselves at the same table extending to the heavens, and beyond. The table is long, but the depth is wider, if only we see the connection of it all. If only we’d become all things to all people and allow them to become all things to us.
The width of the table has nothing to do with distance, but the inner capacity to hold all things, which is clearly not a power we hold of ourselves. You can’t handle the truth, but you can allow it to hold you. You can allow yourself, and all, to be held in the mystery of being that reveals the meaning of existence and the work to be done in it. A work that comes from rest, not for it, and an assistance in the waking up of the entire world. Becoming all things to all people is entering into the very rawness of their diverse lives, strange again we suppose, yet it is how we treat the stranger that determines how we treat the mystery of allness.
“Do unto the stranger as you would want done to yourself.” So long as we treat ourselves with the kindness and respect God feels we deserve, we will think we don’t deserve it. We will think they don’t deserve it. We will feast on deservedness not realizing the tree it came from does not give us real knowledge. In our addiction to knowing good and evil apart from the Oneness of all, we will not become all things to all people, for we will have decided we know what is best, or that we do not know at all. We will have decided we can judge the living and the dead, and we will have become our own god in worship of the True God in word only. Stranger still, we will have become strangers in our own land thinking we own it, or that it was taken from us, rather than seeing who else belongs. Belonging then, is only known through ultimate reality, through the tree of Life that already reveals our existence and being, and theirs. In Him, WE live, move, and have our being, and we become all things to awaken this reality, this deeper knowing within. It is here we remember ours, and everyone’s, original essence. That original image, no matter how marred, still lies under all the lies in front of it that must be surrendered to reveal the lights we are. “You are the lights of the world”, Jesus says, so stop covering it and get up on that hill for ALL to see the light.
“He owns the cattle on a thousand hills.” A thousand diverse expressions not on the same hill, yet similar to the others.
On one hill we see the Light of the world himself crucified. The One who became all things to all people, including the very definition of Humanity in both its original innocence and disgraced appearance. We see the weakness of a God destroying enemies through Love rather than violence simultaneously exposing the wisdom and power of the world. We see a Forgiveness so large, it takes us back to the beginning before forgiveness was not some something required, but freely given. A Forgiveness that invites us on a journey to realize it was never about measuring up, for measurements are always inadequate and impossible, too deep is this love to be measured. Yet with outstretched arms nailed to a cross extending about 6 feet, those with eyes to see, see the embracing of the world, of all, rather than a wisdom that is only a few feet deep.
It’s where judgments of another, or ourselves, go to die.
How dare we think those arms are limited to our natural reasoning of how far they could extend? When death was exposed for what it was and the resurrection revealed what is, there is no limit to what is possible, and there never was, except to those who have not yet become all things to all people. To them, the limits are still in operation as they define their way to misunderstand the meaning of it all. Until the operations of their mind are crucified on a hill like Golgotha, their light remains dim if not covered completely by appearances. Yet there are those who know what is under there, deeper still.
We end in becoming all things to all people, which includes you. Where we end not becoming all things, we must start again and again, until we surrender to the ocean that surrounds us. Like fish not knowing it lives in water its entire life, we must know the Waters we’ve been living in, and they are living waters. They are the only Reality that reveals we belong, and always have, and “they”, have too. Who are they? They are me, they are you, they are everyone in whom God has placed Truth. And where has God put it?
“For He has set eternity in the heart of humanity, yet they cannot fathom what God does from beginning to end.” - Ecclesiastes 3:11
So we do not seek to fathom how God has placed eternity in all, we simply seek to find it in them and help them find it in themselves, by becoming all things to all people. All things are being reconciled in heaven and on earth (Col 1:20) making peace though the cross on a hill, shining into the shallow graves of death to resurrect all things that think they deserve death. You’ve never deserved death, you were made for Life, both now and forever. And if death has been exposed for what it really is, all things will be exposed for what they really are. All things brought into the Light by the ones who have become all things to all people, by letting the Light shine through each veil and revealing what is behind it.
That is Eternity in your heart speaking.
No need to fathom, only to surrender.
All in all,
-PH
