The Nature of Intent

In my last post, I wrote:

At the start my reason for focusing on that word was to differentiate deliberate intent from what I'll term casual intent.

I added emphasis to that. I'm really starting to think about the difference between the two. In reality, there's a range of intent, isn't there? I'm sitting at this computer at 11:15am my time and I'm looking out across my day. I have a series of things I'm thinking about accomplishing today. I'm "intending" to do most of them, though the seriousness of my intent differs.

This is really a fascinating topic. And if I apply this notion of "seriousness of intent" to the question of the Christian faith, it gets even more fascinating. From all I can discern from reading the Bible and reading other commentaries on the subject, the Christian faith is not something one merely drifts into and floats through. Neither you or I merely drifted into this faith -- both of us very intentionally considered the proposition and made our decision. Yet based on many things I've heard and read, there's an ocean of people out there that call themselves "Christians" that have done just that: drifted to a place where they feel the label is appropriate, so they apply it to themselves.

Note: I'm really not trying to suggest one must do some specific thing to be a Christian -- some magic sequence of words or some some mystical physical act. Nor am I suggesting that I have any personal means of knowing for certain the state of one's relationship with God simply by external observation. So please don't focus on those counter-arguments. I'm simply operating off of what the Bible makes very clear: one chooses (with intent) to follow Jesus. One does not just wake up one day and think, "I guess I'm a Christian."

Along the same lines, the Bible makes it clear that the Christian life is one of sustained intent to continue to submit to Christ, to follow him, and to be his disciple.

Note: This is the great failure of contemporary "Christianity" -- for the past 30 or so years it has focused on the conversion element and ignored the discipleship and spiritual growth towards maturity aspect. This is the "make Christians but not grow Christians" complaint. Much of the aversion you and I have expressed to "organized religion" stems from this, I think. The "I'm a member of an exclusive club and you're not!" comes from this. That's a typical symptom of a very new, immature Christian.

And this is where I come to the issue of casual intent as compared to deliberate intent. Events of the last days and weeks have made me face square-on the seriousness of my intent to follow Christ. That's my focus right now.

Without wishing to trivialize this, consider the game of golf. I don't play the game, but from what I hear it is one where even someone with a natural aptitude for the game will never be considered "really good" unless they set out to be really good. Tiger Woods is a truly gifted golfer, but he is also someone with a razor-focus on being the best. He deliberately intends to be the world's best golfer. So he works at it.

Note: No, I'm not saying the Christian faith is a competition; I'm not saying one must be "the best," nor am I saying one must approach it in some mechanized, legalistic manner. I'm merely trying to point out that Woods didn't become a mature golfer by employing a casual intent to work on his golf game. His intent was quite deliberate.

Much of my life is conducted with casual intent. I'm struggling to think of an area of my life where I've employed a focused, deliberate intent to achieve some goal. Even in the realm of my marriage, where I've previously stated my intent with Lisa is more serious than than my intent with my first wife, the nature of my intent is still closer to middle of the spectrum between casual and deliberate.

And so it is with my intent to truly follow Jesus Christ and allow him to be the Lord of my life. I have been generally aware of this issue for several years, and I have continued to struggle with it in one form or another for that entire time. I suppose I should be grateful for my awareness -- that is, I believe, straight from God himself.

So we cycle back to my original post, where I mentioned Dallas Willard's definition of love as acting with intent to do what's right and good for the object. For me, this has been a somewhat eye-opening thing. It has made me more aware of the degrees of intent, and that has acted as measuring stick for myself.

And no, I don't think I'm being too hard on myself. I think I'm looking at this with a pretty open set of eyes.