What Does This Word Mean to You?

Hi bear-

I think it might be spelled "gelassenheit."

I looked up several definitions and I certainly agree with the concept.

In fact you may not be saved unless this word describes you.

A website of Elizebethtown College says this...The core value of Amish society is captured in the German word Gelassenheit (Gay-la-sen-hite). Roughly translated, Gelassenheit means yielding oneself to a higher authority. The Amish speak of "giving themselves up” to the church. Gelassenheit carries many meanings””self-surrender, submission, yielding to the will of God and to others, contentment, and a calm spirit. Most important, Gelassenheit is the opposite of bold individualism that promotes self-interest at every turn. This is the point where Amish society diverges most significantly from contemporary culture.

I had never heard the term before, but in the sense that the term seems to be used here, I would agree. Jesus said that if any man would come after Me, he must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me. Paul said that we are baptized into Christ's death and must find our new life in Him. We must lose our life to find it right? There is not room in the kingdom of God for my agenda alongside of God's agenda. I must surrender my will to His agenda if I am to be part of His kingdom.

Blain: I don't think that there is any real trick to living this principle out. It simply comes down to this. I give myself wholly to Christ and obey Him in every facet of my life. I spend copious amounts of time in His word and in His presence, I listen to His Holy Spirit, and I obey. There is really no magic formula and no tricks of the trade so to speak. It is the end of me, laying my own life down.

Why is it so hard for Americans to practice gellassenheit?

Because, America is rooted in its opposite. In spite of his staunchly Christian rhetoric and profession, John Winthrop, who co-opted the "city on a hill" imagery of Jesus to describe the Massachusetts Bay Colony -- and which was famously quoted by Ronald Reagan (to show the reach in time of this paradox I'm about to describe) -- also considered the English to be so more advanced and superior to the New World "Indians" that he claimed a superior right for the colony on lands only seasonally used by Indians.

I use this as one example of the problem. Winthrop's ideas were instrumental in the early formation of what would become the United States. And, as Christian as his writings are, and as serious as Winthrop was about Christianity, he was seized by a competing and dominant view that he either failed to recognize or never really reconciled -- economic gain at the expense of others deemed lesser.

The entire American ethos of "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps" and "leaving your kids better off than you were", etc., still remains and still necessarily means there are winners and losers in terms of wealth. That is only part of the issue -- we know that wealth is unequally distributed and we don't stumble on that truth. But, what is a stumbling block is that gaining wealth and retaining wealth in our inherently unequal system is seen as a virtue of our nation's existence. Even "liberals" and "big government" types who would redistribute wealth don't mean it -- they just reshuffle the cards to suit their own gains, and they win whole elections on appealing to the "virtue" of it.

Gain is virtue. Cut throat profiteering, insider trading, loaning at interest. That's virtue in America.

Lack? It creates its own perverted version of the same twisted virtue. Lack is either because you are a victim (so pay us more to protect you and help you), uneducated (so pay us to teach you), hungry (pay us to NOT grow food for you and we'll control costs of what we do feed you and you better consider yourself lucky) or some such, each of which comes attached to many ways of someone else gaining from that lack in a way that is sold as a virtue.

America's best and highest ideals and views of itself are antithetical to the whole of the kingdom of God. On its very best day, America is filthy before God. Everything in America --- and this is probably true of any democracy, but especially true here as history demonstrates --- is premised on the personal accrual of power. The kingdom of God among us is premised fully on the person of Christ and His personal giving of power. These are inextricably and immutably opposed.

As long as Americans love America as America -- which is to love the world itself -- gellassenheit is just another $5 word that gets tossed around by those who like to position themselves as being in front of some cutting edge discussion. Until we hit our faces across this land in real repentance, we are not a city on a hill. We are a bushel basket smothering out the light of Jesus and draining the oil from our lamps.