Curtis Klingle

Transformation

One that calls himself a Christian should make Christ his example and standard for everything in this life. I personally make every effort to do so, but to my own chagrin, this has not always been the case. Do I measure up? Absolutely not. The fact of the matter is I do not even come close, even while everything in me wants to be like Him.

While I did say everything in me wants to be like Him, that is not quite true, for only a part of me really wants to be like Him, while what remains, fights against change at every turn. That part of me has fought Him consciously and subconsciously throughout life. What I seek is to be transformed, and to be transformed means to be changed, and human beings as a rule abhor change, and I am not the exception. All change is painful, still, even with the prospect of suffering I long for the change that will cause me to become more Christlike. Think about that for a moment. Do you not long to be able to love unconditionally? Even love your enemy? What about the ability to have compassion for all people, and to be generous and giving to the point of it leaving you in want? The goal I seek is to transform this lump of clay into a true human being. Interestingly, that is God’s goal as well. So, what is inhibiting the process? Not surprisingly, I find that this particular piece of clay that I call me, has a nasty habit of jumping off of the Potter’s wheel in the midst of shaping.

Though I have fought Him, I have also sought Him my entire life, the limiting factor being that it was never a consistent search. You cannot expect to get to your destination by taking the side roads you encounter while on your way. I wanted and embraced His will for my life, just as long as it didn’t come into conflict with my own will. It seems it has always been my will be done, rather than His. Oh, I would have the intermittent numinous experience, maybe even display some tenacity in my pursuit of Him for a short period of time, but nothing with any duration. The deduction: I am good out of the gate but lacking in endurance. I have drifted about this life solely on the whim of my emotions and desires. I would dare say that there was a time when I was even a hedonist and I bore more similarity to the narcissist than I did with anything that might be deemed a positive human attribute, much less, Christlike. The evidence of this folly was the wake of misery and destruction I left behind.

I have heard others speak of the decisive moments in their lives when transformation took place, and they have described these events as something like reaching a fork in the road. I have pondered this analogy and, while I think it is good, I don’t think it provides the full illustration of what we experience, or rather, can experience. I prefer one describing it as a crossroads, and I’ll explain.

Each of us comes upon multiple crossroads in this life. As we near these intersections, the initial decision that must be made is to determine whether to continue on our current course or to deviate. This is largely based upon whether we are in a state of contentment, but we may find adherence to the current path to be a result of our sheer laziness, possibly apathy, or even being blinded while in some state of sin. The intersection also places before us consideration of taking a turn to the right or to the left. Either direction may be appealing and may very well bring about either further immersion in the lifestyle we are currently experiencing or other new adventures. Both directions might even be good for us though surely circuitous, but yet may eventually help us toward the path we seek. Though they may be good, neither way is the best.

There is one more option available to us that we often don’t recognize, or that we may obstinately refuse to see. It is this decision which always creates the way for the greatest changes to take place. As we enter the crossroads, we recognize that neither going straight, nor turning to the right or left will take us where we need to go, and there is a vast difference between where we want to go and need to go. We see that the only way to get to our final destination requires us to turn around and go back the way we have come. At some point along our way we came upon a crossroad and failed to make the correct decision in our navigation and the only way to correct it is to go back. We must return and take the proper route.

I think this is a good example of what occurs in each of our lives. I believe we each come to a point, maybe several times in life, when we finally concede that we have been treading a path that may provide us with pleasure and riches and the comforts we seek, but it is taking us further away from the destination we really desire. We recognize that we must go back and find the point where we made the wrong turn and get back on the path. The beauty of this 180 degree change is that we really need not go all the way back to the missed turn. Once we make the decision to turn around, the real path begins to open before us. It is as if it has been waiting for us all along.  

This turning around is when one realizes that there is more to this life than the pleasures, the comforts, the security we clothe ourselves in. It is when we turn around that we get a glimpse of ourselves and are exposed to how inherently selfish we are, what horrid creatures we can be, and how we have nurtured this selfishness to the degree that we have become the very monsters we each hold in disdain. It is in this moment that the self is revealed. It also is here that the door to the heart is cracked open and for the first time, Light is allowed in, and the first sparks of the rebirth are witnessed. Bear in mind, that this turning around paves the way for the rebirth and in order for something to be reborn, first, there must be a death. The word reborn after all means, to be “brought back to life.” It is a transformation into something new, a thing never before seen.

One of the most beautiful metaphors of this process is found in the life of an insect. In the early stages of its life, a butterfly is in the form of a caterpillar. The caterpillar perpetually consumes to sate its voracious appetite; its entire pupal stage is consumed by the self, and its “need to feed.” This serves as a good analogy of how most of us spend our lives. We, like the caterpillar, live our lives consumed by a focus upon ourselves and our own wants and desires.

When the caterpillar reaches its full size, it then encapsulates itself in a chrysalis. It is during this stage that the caterpillar is separated from the rest of the world and the transformation process occurs. I have found that my own greatest leaps forward in transformation have been during times of separation and solitude. These times in the wilderness with God, are a type of a chrysalis for the human being. This is where we, like the caterpillar, are completely submitted and seeking to be transformed into something new.

While cocooned, the caterpillar’s body is drastically changed. It is stretched a bit here and then a little there, its limbs are created, forcing their way through its flesh. The butterfly’s wings and antennae are developed, and in each of these processes is pain. This metamorphosis can be viewed as a type of death. When we submit to God and His transformation process, we too are stretched to our limits and then stretched again. Old habits and behaviors that stuck out like deformed appendages are amputated and cast away like so much refuse. New attributes then begin to emerge in their place. All of this change is painful. Each passing day brings more changes to the caterpillar and to the human being, and at the end, what emerges from the cocoon is a beautiful new creation bearing little to no resemblance to the original creature. To say that a transformation has taken place is something of an understatement; it really does not convey the depth of change that has taken place. The word transfigured comes to mind and is a more accurate descriptor because something new, something higher, has been rendered from a lower form, and this new creation has broken through the barriers of this world.

When you commit to the transformation process and submit yourself, it is a death. Dying to the self is the most painful experience that any of us can undertake, and it does not happen overnight. It is incremental, a step at a time, in other words, a myriad of deaths. As we commit to the change, there comes a day when we look back, quite possibly with regret as we review our life. But it is not regret of the journey, but regret of those things which occurred before the journey began, and likely regret that we had not begun it sooner in life. When we began to see things this way, it is a proof that we are dying to the self. And it is only as we die to the self that we become the true self, when our true personality is revealed. The authentic human being has been buried somewhere beneath the façade that we display to the world around us. As the real us emerges, the veil is torn asunder and we see who we really are, rather, who we have become.

I must admit, sometimes it is frustrating walking through this life with the realization that I will never be like Him to the degree that I want to be. If I travel down this path and allow regret to accompany it, there is an inherent risk that despair will creep in. Thoreau postulated that, “To regret deeply is to live afresh.” And I could not agree more. To come to accept the fact that we took the wrong path and to hold ourselves accountable for this egregious error is learning on the highest level. The danger for me, as it is for many of you, is to perform so much introspection that I end up focusing too much attention on the past. This too holds risks, primarily in that it can transform into guilt or shame. That, as we all know, is not just unfruitful but dangerous. Shame is nothing more than pride cloaked in self-disgust.

The former slave trader John Newton was familiar with regret. He was also an example of one who had been transformed. Newton penned the song, “Amazing Grace” and those lyrics are from a soul that had encountered the living Christ. “Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, twas grace my fears relieved.” It brings me to tears every time I read those lines. Like Newton, I love Jesus with all that is in me, but bear in mind that the same man that makes that declaration is self-centered, selfish, vengeful, hateful, and basically despicable when he is not aligned with Jesus. I so strive to be perfected, but it isn’t going to be completed on this side of eternity, and I know many of you struggle with this too. To come to grips with this fact still eludes me. I know it in my head, but making my heart see this clearly is something else entirely.

I think of another quote that has impacted me deeply, and I must cling to it quite often when my less than perfect walk comes under the all-seeing eye of self-scrutiny. It gives me hope with this incessant battle I seem to have with, missing the mark when I ponder my life. In this quote, the great Martin Luther King Jr. was actually paraphrasing something the transformed, John Newton said,

“I am not the man I want to be, and I’m not the man I’m going to be, but thank God I’m not the man I used to be.”

It is in these words I find some solace, and I hope they provide you that as well. None of us will attain on this side, but we must continue to submit to being transformed. It is, after all a process which leads us from, “…glory to glory…”

C. Klingle 

II Corinthians 3:18, “But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.”

10/27/24