God Friday, Nov 16 2007

Does God exist?  It had never occured to me to ask this question.  Not until I met my friend, Chaz.  The other day we were eating at a restaraunt and I made a comment to him.  I was very excited about something I had just read on the web. I had read that the ark which Noah built [in ancient times] was surprisingly like modern sea going vessels in its proportion.

“Isn’t that amazing?”  Said I to him, my eyes and heart full of wonder.

“Nope.”  Said he.

“No?  How do you mean?”  My wonder and excitement wilted and my curiosity gripped me.

“Moses wrote the first five books of the Jewish Old Testament around 1400 BC.  The technology for building ships had been around from 2500 BC and before.  This blue print for the ark is not so amazing at all.”

I sat there, stunned.  I wasn’t sure what I felt.  My first feelings felt like when your feelings are hurt.  Then I felt angry.  I told him he would have to prove this to me.  And so began a small debate between one believer and one unbeliever.

During our debate I learned his beliefs concerning a few more things.  I learned that he was not an atheist, but an agnostic.  He told me that he assumes that there is no God until evidence surfaces which prooves God’s existence to him.  He also said that he believes that man’s moral conscience is nothing too very above nature. 

He explains our moral intuition by telling me that it is no amazing thing at all, but just the means by which evolution allows man to survive within civilization. 

I went on line and found out that there is a place in the brain where morality is ‘housed.’  It seemed as though my belief was becoming more and more foolish.

When I tried to tell him about my faith—the whole story of it all—he went on to tell me that faith is a delusion which man has created in order to appease his psychology.

This time I was not angry.  I was profoundly saddened.  For a moment…for a very long and painful night I was certain that I could no longer rationally call myself a believer.

But then I went on line and found that there are other views.  Some assume that there is a God, instead of the other way round.  They assume there is a God until evidence surfaces which proves that there is not.  Which takes faith.

I guess I was wanting some input from you guys.  What do you think?  Is morality as mere as my friend explains it to be?  Is psychology just a conundrum of gray matter…nothing more?  Was Noah’s Ark sooo easy for the technology of even Moses time…the time of the writing?? 

Is the Bible just myth and legend…or is it factual history?  And if it is history, how can I help my friend to see that it is more than just an ordinary piece of literature among millions of other pieces of writing?  What sets the Bible apart from other writings…religious or otherwise?

And of the complexity of the world we see?  He says that can all be explained as well.  He says that if it can be explained down to some natural point, then there can be nothing above nature about it, period!

I suppose I am just struggling over here.  I do not want to be an unbeliever.  But he nearly persuades me to be an agnostic?  He really appeals to my rationality, anyway.

The man is brilliant.  I was angry and told him that he wasn’t as smart as he thought he was…that he was straining at the gnat and inadvertantly swallowing the camel! 

Then he showed me how smart he really is.  He sent me all the facts.  The facts were on his side.  The facts were not on my side.

Even about Jesus.  He said that Jesus was likely mentally ill, only perceiving himself to be sent from a god.  He spoke highly of Jesus, but doubted seriously that Christ was who he thought he was.

Help me, please.  I am hungry for answers.

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Holy Rumor Monday, May 28 2007

There are two sorts of rumor. The first case being that of gossip which is slanderously spread in order to hurt a person or persons. The second case is more like oral news from a far away place that spreads out slowly and clumsily and sometimes gets mixed up or embellished along the way. Of the first case I have nothing here to say. Of the second, I will say the following.

We must be careful concerning rumor. Even legend, fable and myth cannot be viewed without some pause from their readers.

Once upon a time, Americans heard rumors about the atrocities taking place in Europe during World War II. These rumors were so incredible that many people just did not find them believable. However, when our soldiers actually showed up in Europe, they found out the following about those rumors. They discovered that the rumors were true. The rumors had  become fact. Further, the atrocities these soldiers actually witnessed exceeded what the rumors had reported.

This is why I say that we must be careful concerning rumors.

It has been said that the Jewish book is a Holy Book. For illustrative purposes I hope you will not mind if I here mention that it is like a sort of book of rumors; and that when it was given me it was promptly asserted that it was divinely inspired by the inventor.

My eyes danced a bit and I thought, yeah. I then read the whole thing.

I will say that the other holy books are full of wonderful stories, psalms, proverbs, laws and regulations, ceremonial rituals and the like.

Not so with the Hebrew Holy Book. It is more like a historic record than it is anything else. It is not at all what I would have expected from a Holy Book. All of its psalms, proverbs and laws seem to be an aside, while the story of this people known by their God takes center stage.

The story these people have recorded makes them look, quite frankly, as though they were in some sort of very big trouble.

Now, it is said that the Hebrew people wrote their Holy Book. I will say that, if not divinely inspired, I have concluded that these folks were followed about for a period of about one-thousand years and coerced by spear point, or fully stretched and loaded bow: and forced to, “Tell it! exactly-the-way-it-really happened.”

It is unlike any inside story I have ever read. Other inside historic accounts make a people look honorable, powerful, victorious and heroic. This people, however, wrote a tale largely steeped in tragedy, despicable deeds (private matters folks don’t discuss, let alone publish).

Why, they even record their own God calling them prostitutes. Had it been me I’d have kept that one under my hat. These Hebrew people recorded a history that is heavy; a history that is not very flattering, at that.

If this book was not divinely inspired—if the Hebrew people invented it—then it seems to me that they should come to their senses and disclaim the whole thing; or at the least edit it.

Yet, they call it their Holy Book. Either it was divinely inspired, or they are a people gone completely and utterly mad. If it is divinely inspired, then this people did as they were told concerning this: they wrote it down exactly as it really happened.

And although tempted to shake a finger at these folks, this act of writing down the whole account won’t let me.

This act hushes me. In fact, it nearly seems to subpoena me.

For, it is reasonable to believe that one man, perhaps two…even three or five men could go mad and agree upon a conspiracy against themselves. But for an entire nation of human beings to agree upon a conspiracy which largely makes the human race look an ass? to believe this takes a strong faith, if not a fantastic faith!

These men recorded the truth about the human condition. And something influenced them to do so. There is no nation who records all that really happened.

They have left for us, the readers, suggestions of our own secret conspiracy to be left alone by God.

It is the account of humans flitting and piddling about with all their exhaustive auditions for some thing to satisfy what appears to be a common, secret, permanent human ache. And when the Divine comes up for consideration as a possible object, we humans hastily determine, “No, He could not be it.”

We conclude that the cause of human suffering is God and that the object of all our longing is something other. The Hebrew Holy Book suggests that we humans have it all turned around. It suggests that the cause of human suffering is humans and that the true object of all our longing is the Divine, Himself.

This does nothing to promote all our self sought endeavors to find our own solitary happiness. An endeavor which, if we are honest, has been hard work for us, even investment.

This human pursuit, this investment, is somewhat disturbed by this Jewish story and also by the Christian documents.

It disturbs our own pursuits because the main thrust therein lies in the suggestion that all our work has been a vain and meaningless endeavor. That we have been heading for progress in the wrong direction.

This Book prompts us to do the intolerable.

It challenges our entire life-paradigm. It reckons our pursuit to be left alone by our Maker to be a pursuit for a bridge out ahead. And this not only horrifies us, but it hurts our feelings.

Our thinking becomes inflexible because we have invested so much of ourselves into this endeavor to find our own happiness.

And as we follow this God about [in reading this Book of Rumors], taking on His perspective, we see Him appearing to hold back, or restrain Himself in some strange way. However, this restraint does not seem at all to stem from what we should recognize as weakness. He appears to restrain Himself on purpose.

It is, in some ways, comparable to our own delay of punishment to a child under our care when that child is behaving in such a way as to spoil all our plans for his good.

Of course, the Hebrew Book seems to freeze this people’s story at the cross-roads, if you will. The Divine appears to have said His piece and gone into a retreat of sorts; he appears to have pulled back for a time. Yet, His people were the ones to pen the whole tragedy.

For this, my respect for the Jewish people is unfathomably deep.

Faith is indeed a Jester in their court, puzzling the world to be for sure. They were the only ones to be so bold. Perhaps the Divine was right in saying that through this people all people’s of earth would be blessed.

They have braved the first and most treacherous of battles in the struggle for human redemption. The battle of: The Truth about Us.

The truth being not only our need for redemption, but our being the cause for there being a need for it in the first place. Something good will have to come from this people’s audacity to believe.

This is why I find the Hebrew Holy Book, with all of its myth, legend and rumor to be credible: it is entirely unembellished.

I find the same odd phenomena in the Christian legends; and I find them credible for the same reason.

We must be careful concerning rumor.

Once upon a time, the whole world heard rumors of a nation known by their God. They heard myth, they heard tales, they heard rumors of a God with a mind and a heart. They heard rumors of a Mighty Who creating man in His own image. Many found these rumors too incredible to believe.

And then, the most audacious of rumors began to circulate. A rumor suddenly surfaces that the God of the Jewish Nation had become a man in order to join with man in his humanity and in order to rescue them from the wrath of God. It was rumored that there would one day be an ultimate Day of Awe. Also, that there would be a day of feasting and of reward and debriefing from this life’s struggles.

These were even more preposterous and incredible to believe.

Perhaps one day it will so happen, when we land on that further shore, that all those rumors will suddenly become fact. And that the actual rest and reward will even exceed the rumors. Or else, well, we know not what for we have yet to arrive.

This is, finally, why I say that we must be careful about rumor. Even legend, fable, and myth cannot be viewed without some pause from their readers.

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Dialogue Between My Doubting Heart and my Youthful Heart Wednesday, May 2 2007

Too Heavenly Minded

Crown Him with many crowns…the Lamb upon the throne

Hark—how the heavenly voices drown…all music from its own

Arise my soul—-and sing

Of Him who died…for thee

And crown Him as the majesty…through all eternity—Michael W. Smith

Heart? I’ve had it to here with the unpopularity. Let us tame it down a bit–we’ve been accused of being too heavenly minded! This is no fun, no fun at all. Having millions of pearls and no one wants a part of it. This is too dreadfully lonely.

Too heavenly minded? Well–I beg to differ. I will say that it is certainly possible to be ever looking, here on earth, for heaven, which will certainly immobilize the troops, and in a hurry. It seems to me as well that it is possible tp be so legal minded that you are of no earthly good, really. However, for those who wish to tell us we are too heavenly minded, let us refer them to take this up with our Commander.

I am certain His servant David will come up, no less. And what of the Christ Himself? How heavenly minded was He? No, it is not possible to be too heavenly minded’ Heart. Not possible at all. So with that in mind, I will now share with you some of what is in store for all of us; for one day it will be That Day.

Because of this I say let’s take it up a notch, not tame it down!

The Divine has raised a banner–really given it to us to keep raised–to rally us. Not to rally us to an end of pain and suffering or a bed of roses; not in this life.

He has raised the banner to rally us to battle. He has proposed, inviting us to share in what He could very promptly do by His own power, if He so desired. He has committed the ultimate act of submission. He did not merely rescind His power and His privilege for a time, but obscenely hands it over for our honorable, unmerited inheritance to participate in this, the ultimate of struggles.

Before we were suspicious of His plans. We imagined that He was like some humans we knew. Some were misrepresentations of Him. Some were closer representations than others, which helped greatly. Nevertheless, our real Commander turned out to be unlike any one example: save the example of the Christ Himself. And it is He which leads us.

Taking us to the place where the texture of His furious love is at once found out. That in this life, we merely see dimly, as in a brass mirror, suggestions that seem to whisper, “It will not have been in vain.”

For it is said that one day it will most certainly be that day. The day when we are called home for our debrief: A medical debrief, a feasting debrief, and a decoration ceremony most unimaginable.

We are to be one day decorated, Heart.

We who have been endowed so at shaking in our boots shall be recognized by our Commander. This turns us into the most un-lonely creatures to exist! Though for now there is pain.

All of the pain we will encounter here, that which gives evidence to the unseen struggle waging all around us, will be remembered by Him and most certainly forgotten by us, on That Day. We must certainly make it count. For one day it will all be over, over there. It will become then a mere memory.

Let us make it the most God honoring memory we can. Let us make it a great claw to the groin to that ancient serpent, the devil. Let us rally all to join in this, though treacherous for now, most honorable call to duty, a cause for which to fight, ever to be extended to humans.

We are enlisted to serve in the ultimate of struggles. And we must do at all times many things, but two, to be for sure: we must remember what He has done for us and we must remember what He has in store for us. There is no such thing as being too heavenly minded.

And when laid siege, when battered or wounded, in our weary moments He whispers to us…

“Hold fast, child. The long is near the end of wait. In a little while. Hold fast child. For I shall return.”

Heart, it’s quite a bit different, opposite actually, then I had anticipated.

How do you mean?

Well, before, my feelings about God were similar to my feelings toward romance—when we were nine, remember?

Yeah, “Over my dead body!”

We swore we would never be tricked by romantic love! But with God, my greatest fear, greater than being judged by Him, was that He would hook me and straight away slam me into a cage.

You mean a jail cell?

No—worse. I feared he would put me into a tiny, cramped cage that gave me no more room to move about than perhaps enough room to lift a crust of bread to my mouth. But it is nearly as though–looking back–He did the opposite. Of course I would never have noticed it before, but I think He has put us outside of a sort of cage we were already in! I suppose we’d become so accustomed to it that we thought it was as far as there was.

It is just as you say.

It is an odd feeling…being in wide open spaces.

Odd, indeed.

In some strange way, it causes me to want to…

Play?

What would people think?

That we are absolute fools!

HA! I see you have paid me a compliment!

What manner of God is this, that He should call us His children?

This God is un-figure-out-able! Just the way I like it!

I see it is snowing treacherously out side. Shall we go out?

After you, I insist! Heart? I’m not certain I remember how to play.

That’s the best part. You needn’t know how, now come on!

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The Creepy Deep of Me Monday, Apr 2 2007

“…Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you as wheat.  But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail.  And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.” Jesus said.  Luke 22:31-32

Before we can move on to the comradery we all crave, we’ve another little issue of which to remain ever aware.

While our redemption requires of our executive staff, of which we have been made gods, to lay down it’s scepter and resign it’s tiny throne, restoration will require far more from us than this.

They say that the truth shall set you free.  Well, not before first setting you on edge.

We surrender, and the King of the Universe comes in to sup with us.  Yet, once inside, there is no hiding all our rats from Him.

We do not work our way up through the ranks of Honor and Glory; rather we are supernaturally pulled up through those ranks by virtue of the incarnate God having brought these down to earth for us.

The trouble with being pulled up through the ranks is that our creepy parts, being so near and dear to our hearts, think to stick to us and move with us up and through the ranks.

But honor will have none of that!  And this is because, if you remember, within Honor shame cannot dwell.  We will get so far and our cowardice, our greed, our pride, our lust—these will try to stowaway.

We will find that our next desire is to be numbered among the fighting men and women.  We will, by and by, begin to catch on to the masterpiece composition within which we are called to play a specific role.  And the spell will be cast which, at the least, begins to break our enchantment with all our solitary engagements.

We will begin, after we fall into His hands, to look up.  And once we have left the throne of our free will free for God to occupy, then our learning can and will begin.

We will spend much time sitting beneath that throne, looking up and listening to our Mighty Professor.  But we will not sit forever.  He will impress us all deeply and intimately. And this impressing will demand expression.

By and by, we will step down from our grand lecture hall, and we will leave the place of instruction.  We will leave our Holy of Holies—our meeting on the mountain—and we will go back down and into the valley.  But we will not leave with our eyes averted downward, nor will we leave with our eyes trained inward.  We will leave with our eyes looking out horizontally, as it were.

Now, for those who’d previously believed the myth that Christ was a Messiah for the weak, these may wish to take the children in for this next bit of prose.

There is one more bit of business needing tending.  You and I are fiercely attached, even loyal to our fleshly, prideful desires.  Remember?  those old ideas of good, the small circuits we assumed to be as good a standard of pleasure that could be invented.

There is great significance in the fact of our sin and guilt being separated from us by our Commander in Chief.  The significance is most acutely realized when it is required of us to first battle our own fact of criminality.

To be the intrepid hero, I pine.  To find that I am the innocent damosel in need of rescue, I can tolerate.

However, to discover that I am the reason for there being a need for redemption?  to discover this, I cringe.  We pull back.  From this, we will most tenaciously turn tail and run.

Yet, while redemption for us is a one time event requiring only our surrender, our restoration will last a lifetime and require from us far more than we can bear.  The Mighty God may have destroyed our fact of sin and guilt on the cross, but He did not do our homework for us.

And for good reason.  For the one who does the work is the only one who is learning.  He may have obtained for us that which we could never have obtained for ourselves, but He did not leave nothing for us to learn.

If there is anything capable o making us aware and appreciative of what was done for us on the cross, it is the requriement of us to carry our own smaller and much less burdensome crosses.  For when we do we will find that the sin of one man is intolerable enough to bear; let alone the mass of the sin and shame of Everyman.

And remember.  The cross Christ bore differed in one way from the one we are demanded of to take up and carry.  Christ was crucified as a criminal.  We are asked to crucify our actual and factual criminal.  It is a very subtle, but significant difference.

Very well then.  Now, in light of this, as soon as you or I think our own cross-bearing something sentimental and heroic, we are mis-thinking.  For the demands of the flesh are, perhaps, one of the most embarrassing realities I will ever face.

When Simon Peter said to Christ, “I am ready to die with you,”  I do not suppose you’d believe me if I were to conjecture that he really did mean it, would you?  He did.  Yet, there were obstacles to that desire.  They were not obstacles from without of Simon Peter.  In fact, he was the obstacle to his realization of this very childlike desire of his.

When Christ challenged Peter, “Will you really?”

Well, Simon Peter may have spent the better part of the Gospels in denial, but he had nothing on me.  The brilliant and blaring darkness within you and I will certainly do one thing, if anything for us.  It will keep ever before us the fact of our need and of our dependence.

The man who walks about thinking about what a good chap he’s been all day, is the chap who is just like Simon Peter…and me…and her…and him:  he is in denial.

It is a fact that there are things that yet reside in all of us.  Restoration involves this plumbing of our creepy deep for these creepy things.  These must be exposed and they must be violently captured and ushered before our Commander for examination.

The Beama Seat begins today.

And though we spend a life time cooperating in this purification process, on the other side it will likely be discovered just how much of our purification is mercifully granted to us by the owner of a thousand virtues on a thousand hills.

Yet, He affords us the incomprehensible privilege of at least a small co-regent sifting of the pitchblende and beating of the metal.

What remains of us in the end will be pure, solid, and without trace of impurity.  The happiest state of us to exist is a promised state that can begin to day; the Divine idea of me, at long last without distraction.

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It’s a Miracle Sunday, Apr 1 2007

Is the parting of a sea any less miraculous than our current, reliable tidal regime?  This ball, hung in the vastness of space, is sixty-six percent water.  Who shall we thank for so brilliantly coming up with a moon and so strategically hanging it such that our planet’s proud army of waves might be just agitated unto life, and yet not too agitated as to regularly drown the dry ground we so proudly pioneer and inhabit?

 Is it less miraculous that water opposes the elemental status quo by expanding when it freezes, than it was when Christ walked on liquid water?

Or, does it not arouse your suspicion that—of all the other earthly atoms and their molecular combinations, water alone possesses a very curious specific heat value?  It takes longer to cool and longer to heat than most.  Almost seems intentional.

Are you ever picking grapes nonchalantly when suddenly!  you are stunned by their nearly preposterous silliness?  Of what practical value, after all, are they?  Do they participate in some way in keeping the earth from going off on a tangent?  But we feel we are being hood-winked when talk surfaces of water being turned into wine!

 I do not believe we are interested enough.  We make such an ado of the miracles rumored to have occured in the presence of Christ.  But it would seem to me more interesting if we were to forget how miraculous those miracles would have to be and instead analyze the choice of wonders He chose to display.

If you or I were gods and if we came to dwell among the mortals, what wonders would we have chosen?  Why did Christ rely on mere human power when he drove the money-changers from the temple courts?  I’d have turned their money into feathers and moved a cumulonimbus cloud over the scene to rain them all out. 

But Christ did not drive them away with signs and wonders.  He drove them away in the only way a man is able:  He overturned their tables, freed the animals, and verbally pronounced His indignation over what was happening in His Father’s Courtyard.

And of the feeding of the multitudes?  What would you have done?  Perhaps you would have ordered a seven course buffet fit for a king and a table long enough to fit them all…we think along the lines of Bewitched or Walt Disney when we think about the wonders we’d have displayed, had it been us.

And rightly so, for we feel that the miracles of Christ must, of course, be classified among fairy tales and tall tales.  And yet they look nothing like the sorts of things we come up with.

The wonders of Christ were far too earthy and dull fo us.  They lack the pizzaz our itching eyes are longing to see.  We think, “Very well then!  If there be miracles, let’s make a real rum show of it!  Then, you see, I shall be made to believe.”

The miracles of Christ were awfully tempered.  It is nearly as though He was not intending to make a show at all.  It was something other that drove the man.  He almost seemed embarrassed of His powers.  He was reluctant to turn the water to wine and He was regretful of the wonders He’d displayed in some towns.  He was known for following a miracle with the following admonition, “Tell know one of this.”

He displayed the following wonders:  He turned water into wine, He healed the sick, crippled, and so forth, He calmed a storm, He caught an obscene number of fish, He walked on liquid, agitated water, He caused a plant to shrivel up and die, He fed a multitude with five small loaves of bread and two fish.

The wonders  He chose to display leave a person with the impression that whatever Christ knew He knew it automatically, completely, and intimately.  Some of what he knew we know as well, but some was foreign to us.  He knew that water begets wine and grain begets grain and fish beget fish.  But there were things He seemed to know about, say, water that bewilder and puzzle us.  He knew that water could obey, that it was sub-servient. 

 And He knew of a certain water, Living Water, that if consumed would completely and forever satisfy a thirsty soul.

He kney physiology and anatomy so completely and intimately that He had no need for a medical bag or medical equipment or an office or beds….that He might right that which had gone wrong in a body.

There is this idea that we can explain away the miracles of Christ.  THere is the temptatin to deem Christ a mere moral teacher without parallel, and to dispense of the other facts recorded of the man.  It just isn’t believable.  But why is it any more believable that presently I am enjoying a fresh, hot, fat dinner roll? 

Is seeing really believing?  I find it much more difficult to believe that grain is an accident.  Perhaps if grain were an isolated case of preposterous weirdness I may excuse it to some cosmic accidental coincidence.

But what of all the other hallaballoo?  What of our tidal regime?  What of this ridiculous and unherd of idea of a thing called water?  What of the frightful reality of cellular differentiation in a mother’s womb?  Or, the horror of the algorithms that must be involved in the metabolism which fuels cellular work in my own body? 

Isn’t the idea of blood weird to you and I?  Isn’t it strange that seeing with my eyes was not entirely necessary, nor tasting with my taste buds?  A body can survive and more without these.   Something smells fishy about the whole thing.

And of pupulating the earth!  Why romance?  why courtship?  We are suffered to make love instead of merely mating.  Why?  Is this not the most stunning barrage of miracle you’ve ever…or he’s ever…or she’s ever imagined? 

No eye has seen.  No ear has heard.  No mind has conceived.  But now we see and hear and imagine.  What has happened to us, Oh Heart of youthful man?  Where have we gone?  Why have we all finished with all our playing and laughing and all our signs and all our response…our awe over it all?

The parting of a sea is of no less wonder than the obedience with which it travels, “…thus far and no further shall your proud waves go…”

It is no less a miracle to me when a man willfully designs, engineers, and manufactures an airplane of earthly elements, than it is for the Son of Man to know when a specific sparrow falls to the ground.  Christ was as tall as any average man.  His hair, his eyes, his face, his feet were ordinary and not fare by any means.

Christ had sweat glands, just like you and I.  His stomach made embarrassing noises sometimes like anyone’s.  And this was how He chose to make his dwelling among men.

In like manner, Christ chose to display his wonders in a curiously humble manner.  Do we discount them because they weren’t big enough?  This seems more plausible than discounting them because they were unbelievable.

Is it becasue he did not quite wow us enough?  “A perverse generatin asks for a sign.”  said He.

But a second look…a closer look will brign us to if we let it.  A closer look will bring us to our senses because if we look long enough it will be discovered that if Christ knew all he knew so completely and intimately, then it must not be forgotten that he must know you in the same way.

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Peace of Christ to You Tuesday, Mar 27 2007

Most of us see our character as most genuinely revealed when times are good.  And though we’ve each been taught to believe that there exists a discrepancy between our character as it presently stands, and our character as it ought to stand, in Christ, we do not quickly perceive any real formidable gap; when all is well.

However, when trials and tribulations come to us, we respond with a character that often quite embarrasses us.  Of course, we defer this intruding character, and call to the bench instead, the trials of which we are certain are the true criminals in need of conviction.

“Well, I know that my reaction was heinous and wicked, but you do not understand.  If you would simply take me from the fire,  you would see my character more clearly.  Indeed–help me from this fire and you will suddenly see me become a much more amicable, even honorable creature.

You are not alone in our espousal to this misconception as though a conception of truth.

I fall for it each and every day.  And the Christ Himself foresaw this trend in human thinking.

“This is my body, given that you might have life.  Take and eat of it.  Do this in memory of me.”

It is under the fire of trials that our criminality is brought before our senses for consideration.  THe trials do not make us criminal.  The trials prove that I already am criminal.  And every time I choose to disagree with this truth, I choose to remain in that most unteachable state of denial.

Learning is measured by changes in behavior derived from a genuine change of heart and mind.  THe one who is in denial is all finished learning.  When I am all finished learning, then I am all finished cooperating with my Maker in his efforts to restore me to health; I am finished decreasing the discrepancy between my character as it stands and my character as He desires it to be.

Trials are not permitted in order to shame us and whisper hopeless umors into our discouraged ears.  Just the same, times of prosperity are not designed to mark and end to all of our learning. In fact, times of prosperity warrent the need for times of trial.  The reason being that when we tarry in our debriefs for too long—which for us is not long at all—we forget.

We forget what it was (and is) about us that warrents a need for redemption and restoration in the universe in the first place.

What we are commanded to remember is not merely that God so loved the abstract collection of creatures, that he gave his One and Only Son for this.

What we are commanded to remember is that God so coveted my honor, that He gave His Only Son as a ransom for the crimes I committed which lost it.

If Christ merely died for my childish immaturity, then I feel less inclined to associate my eternal fate with my current choices in life.  But if he indeed endured intolerable humiliation for my conscious, willful, grown-up criminality, then my tendency to the trend of “at least I’m better than ‘X’” will come suddenly before a court room filled with the all knowing Numinous Himself.

In other words, I have seen my behavior under trial.  And if, in the seeing, I decide that this is not the real me, then I may not have had much that needed dying for in the first place.

But if, in the seeing, I assess my character, thus revealed under trial, as being the purest revelation of the solid truth about my real character there is, then I will spontaneously feel the need to fall before Him and cry out to be saved; and in so doing, my remembering will have the real work of Christ intimately connected to the real acts of my criminal tendencies.

It is not merely necessary for me to apprehend and agree with this, but it is also somewhat of a brilliant plot to effectively motivate me against the pomp of judging my brother.

It is quite facile for me to take snapshots of my brother during one of his fiery trials—when I am back at the fort enjoying one of my momentary debriefings, mid war.

It is another story and another perspective when I am really aware of what it was about me that created the necessity for the Holy Communion, of which I am about to receive.  I am more apt to eat and drink with my cloak on my back and my duffle ready and packed.  I am more apt to make my debriefings more brief.

I am more apt to button up, dig in, and help my brother to stand.

Here is where a major obstacle is overcome.  Here is where the Love of Christ is at long last activated.  It may have been there all the while, but the will to power had first to be overcome.  My will is the activation barrier to that Love of Terrible Aspect.

Terrifying indeed, and yet never will the Love of God be forced upon the non-concenting creature.  Terrifying,  yes; colonizing, no.

The Love of God is more demanding than man can tolerate, yet He will never exploit a child; The Living God is not the sort to press His advantage.

When the Christian gleans this inkling which connects his own fact of criminality with the historic fact of Christ crucified, the learning begins.  The romance begins and never ends.  And the continuous flood of Agapeo begins to stir, simmer, and bring to a boil such things as adventure, comradery, glory, honor, and yes, even immortality even as we live and die.

Death becomes birth.  Birth ushers in the freshness of novelty.  And the old saying, “His mercies are new every morning” becomes, for the Church Proper, a secret truth which is much too splendid to be kept.

When put like this, it causes a man to lay down his arms.

It causes this act, of being brought face to face with our own factual criminal, to appear much more appetizing, instead of repulsive.

We’ve been found out, which is—if we should be so honest—quite the relief.

We throw down our last defiant card, and suddenly we are raptured back into that ancient heart of things we’d all but forgotten still existed.

And we are, at last and indeed, truly growing young.

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Death of the Cherished Self Saturday, Mar 24 2007

In order to gain your life you must first lose it. 

 Therefore, the only way for us to ‘come to life,’ as it were, is to yield our creep to the King.

 The adventures of death carry an air about them which draws up suspicion within us.  We mistake them for misadventures, wise to be avoided.  G.K. Chesterton defined courage as a strong desire to live taking the form of a willingness to die.

We are looking for glory, but our looking is inordinately directed.  And the re-orientation of our sights is rather an offense to our palates.  After all, it is not the ‘passing worshipful knight’ who is slain or made to yield.  Indeed, it is (so we think) the ‘false knight beloved of evil’ who is supposed to die.  Not I, but he, should die.

 In the world of Arthurian Romance, the terms die and yield are nearly synonymous and used interchangeably.   Every bout of our yielding to the Creator Spirit, means another death to our dearly beloved self.  And when I say dearly beloved I mean dearly preferred.

And with every one of these deaths, a period of grieving ensues.  Not a glorious feeling, if I do submit herein.  Of all the civilizations who succeed in civilizing grief:  all that sophistication goes up in a puff.  For none can tame the weeeping, wailing, and tearing of robes which follows the death of the cherished self.

However, as these adventures mount, we are ever made more aware that this death of our flesh was a very sensible and sound decree from an obviously wise Commander in Chief.  For the self is the formidable obstacle to that sort of thick glory we know, at heart, must needs be painful to enter therein.  Indeed, it is even painful for us to behold such a thing as Glory.

 But it is good to call these deaths adventures (in the Arthurian sense of that word).  And it is good for us to become familiar with the Arthurian disposition toward adventure.  They pursued it as a lust.

They sought out affliction as you or I, today, seek out all our material possessions.  And at the heart of this lust was a fully kindled desire to be proved of both fitness and virtue.

The true knight was not at all prone to talk about how worshipful he was.  Indeed, he doubted if he was even worshipful at all.  No, he was not at all interested in ‘coming off’ as a good knight, or arranging himself that he might apear to be heroic or strong.  His behavior had all the air of a sort of sickening and pervasive self-suspicion.  Almost as though he could never be done with proving himself–yes, even to himself.

For at every turn these knights were in search of that adventure which might test them and practice them and thus perfect their fitness and their honor.

“Fair damosel,”  said Sir Lancelot, “know ye in this country any adventures?”

“Sir knight,” said the damosel, “here are adventures near at hand, and will thou prove them?”

“Why should I not prove adventures?”  Said Sir Lancelot.  “For that cause came I hither.”

This seems a very strange and foreign lust to my sleepy eyes.  Groggliy I read on.  And slowly I begin waking to this odd image of chivalry; and slowly I begin to desire it, too.

For if romance was before to me merely the sending of roses or the riding up in a shining car—in this old realm, my whole frail structure is at once falled.  And a new idea replaces it which is not less full of desire, but grossly more full of it.

Romance becomes my winning of knights and sending them to serve in my King’s Court.  Also, it becomes my riding through the town in the ass’s cart, to have my love for Him assayed.

If you or I wish to begin with our first adventure, we might well look at what we have been hitherto avoiding.

 That letter I am neglecting to write because there is so much other I would rather be doing.  That person I’ve not called, for I am holding out until he ‘makes the first move.’  That mission trip I’ve put off becasue it will expose me and all my bad habits—not to mention emptying my pocketbook.

Here the adventure calls us.  Dress yourselves, for Sir Pride has asked to have ado with you.  Make capture of him and in his stead, Sir Dignity will be at your side.  Honor is Sir Beaumains in the flesh!  He dresses as a mere kitchen knave to put our friendship to the test.  “How is it,” we whisper, “that a mere kitchen boy so worshipfully slays even giants?”

A kitchen knave you learned that he was—yet he bahaves as one from high and noble estate.

The same flood of honorable sentiment comes over you at the sight of this kitchen boy, as floods over you at the mention of our Lord.  However, it is not nearly so what we would have predicted.

Humility is painfully modest.  Her secrets are as the secrets of mothers’ and fathers’ at Christmas time.

the child’s impatience leads him to make hasty assumptions, as children from whom delightful secrets are being kept hidden.  As children, we were certain that there might be coal in our stockings on Christmas morn—so we behaved indignantly.  We became prone to foot stomping and door slamming and we said things we ought not to have said.

But on the morn—Oh what a morning—the secrets are laid bare.  And there we stand in a swoon and a blush.

Suddenly!  we do not want what we see half so much as we want to take back all our assumptions and with it the behavior we resigned ourselves to as a result.

The secrets of our King are without blushing because they are absent of all treason, despite, and falsity.  As soon as we begin assuming that the secrets behind His demands are treacherous, spiteful, egotistical…or anything other than good…we will then behave accordingly.

 Either He is the flower of chivalry, or else He is…we know not what.

Our Maker’s secrets laid bare will expose the following.

No one, including the self, knows us as our King knows us.

We will one day discover that He is not the sort to wrap up a knitted stocking cap for us to open that we might learn to hide our disappointment with appropriate sighs and smiles.

He is preparing for you that sort of desire you will immediately recognize as precisely and unmistakably exactly what you were made for.

And at home you will indeed be; a home so much bigger, and yet so much nearer than you’d ever dared even fancy.

But first:  the ass’s cart.  The old maxim, “You can’t have your cake and eat it too,” is misleading.  Instead it should have been said, “You cannot eat the poison and live to taste the cake.”

You must lose your life if you ever wish to find it.  I must eat my humble pie if I wish to gain that coveted accolade of Glory, “Well done, thou faithful servant.  Enter into the Court of your

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The Problem of Pleasure Friday, Mar 9 2007

You could never have forecasted the mid-latitude-like cyclone about to rapture us all, both student and professor alike, that final year at Lewis Academy.

And to find it all coming together, so many divergent threads converging to this absolute and very sharp point.  THough it would be a point with fringes, itself…fringes that were found all around:  suggestions without definition.

Than even in the definitions there were limits that allured and tempted and flirted and —heavens!  you were never done learning in that place.

It all began our final year.  We sat semi-conscious and listened to Professor Upshot tell one of his long-winded anectdotes.

“There was a boy who had bought himself and his sister an ice cream..on a hot day, you see.  He had bought his sister the bomb pop and himself the two-ball-screw-ball. 

As they walked, they enjoyed their treats.

Now, the boy enjoyed the ice cream first.  However, what he was really after was the gum ball in the bottom of the ice cream.  One just can’t expect to find that sort at any five and dime or market, you surely know.

Just as the boy was finishing his treat and about to tip the gum ball into his mouth…his little sister stumbles on a tree root, dropping her ice cream and crushing it as she fell upon it…”

Most of us were nodding of, as usual, that warm autumn day.  I was getting bits and pieces of the strange story.  I looked out of the floor to ceiling windows and heard the beautiful day calling…calling…

“The girls’ bomb pop was ruined.  It was terrible.  So the boy sat down his two-ball-screw-ball cone on a nearby picnic table and picked up his kid sister to soncole her, the way a very good boy ought in these circumstances.”

I felt a nudge and came to.  I then opened a note from Frankie which read, “SOMEONE PLEASE PASS THE SNIFFING SALTS.”

“…Now then, the boy administered all the love and tenderness he could find within himself to administer.  And thus he managed to get her sobs to slow and to weaken and by and by and here and, ‘there, there, be a big girl, now…’

And the girl looked over and noticed her brothers gum ball sitting in the bottom of his two-ball-screw-ball cone which lay upon the table behind them.  Says she to him, ‘Brother, may I please have your gum ball, instead?’  After all, he had enjoyed all of his ice cream, while most of hers was lost to a dessicated patch of ground.

But did the boy want to give up the gum ball?”  Upshot stopped there and waited for a moment.

He had us.  All the usual classroom noises were hushed.  We sat, as usual, caught up in the man’s strange and childish story, as though enchanted or entransed by it.

“No, men and women.  No, the boy did not want to give it up.  So he kept it.  And he made a long and very reasonable explanation to the girl as to why she should or ought not…or it should be better if not…that she could not have it and he did not give to her the gum ball but enjoyed it himself!”

“Enjoyed, indeed.”  Said I.  “It was rotten what he did.  It was plain rotten.”

“Rotten.”  Upshot began to take up the pipe, but thought again and pushed it into his jacket pocket.  “Why’d he do it, then?”

“Because he’s a rotten lot, he is.”  Frankie said.

“My, my you are rough on the lad.”  Upshot turned his back toward us and faced the windows.

“Such a ruckus, outside today.  Why did the boy keep the gum ball to himself?”  He asked again.  We sat quiet for a spell.

“Well, it is a good thing.  And he had waited and nursed the ice cream so patiently and then BAM!  out of no where he was demanded of to sacrifice it!”  Peter seemed a little tense and uptight.

“Now, there is some thinking I can sink my teeth into.”  Said upshot.  “But do you suppose he wanted to give the gum ball away, on some level?” 

“Of course…on some level.”  said we.

“Then the boy encountered a crises…”

“Yes it was a crisis of pleasure…” I said.

“Rich.  How so?”  Said he.

“Well…he was in a real dilemma—either way he turned would mean unpleasure.”  said I

“What is pleasure?”  said Upshot.

“It is happiness, sir.”  said I.

“If you were that boy, would you feel happy after eating that gum ball?”

I hated when he did that to us.  There was just never any getting to a point with this one.  We all felt foollish.  Such a simple little story and yet he’d back into a maze just like that.  Soon as you know just what is up and where you are and you have it mapped out, BAM there he’ll lead you right into the middle of no where!  What is pleasure, indeed.  I thought.  And would think.  And think and think and think on the matter for the better part of my senior year.  As would the whole lot of us.

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Where Observable Facts Leave Off… Thursday, Mar 8 2007

“It is this silent swerving from accuracy by an inch that is the uncanny element in everything.”—G.K. Chesterton

 The most air tight arguemnt with an unbeliever is the one which will not include anything that cannot be readily proved though some sort of sense observation.

Most unbeleivers do, however, believe in the bigger things—the apparent aspects of DNA, photosynthesis, metaboism, mathematics, history…

However, when you trace these to their end—you find that there is no end, but there are infinites and uncertainties and fringes and undefined…and heavens!  you are never finished with them!

How does the unbeliever ‘explain’ division by zero or the invisible act of metabolic oxidation and reduction in fueling cellular work or different rates of evolution or the element Francium?

Just wondering and curious.

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Religion-Based Evil? Wednesday, Mar 7 2007

Recently a friend made the following statement about religion.

“Most of the evils of war and so forth are born of religion.”

I addressed him by saying that most evil actually seems to stem from the human bent on ‘taking over the world.’   It is a desire to be in control.  Human beings want power and influence.  And whether by money or prestige or “…this means war!”  we humans have been duking it out like this from the beginning.

We may be affiliated with some religion while pursuing this power or wealth or status or what you call it, but if you drop the religion, this fact about we humans would remain.  We are selfish and greedy, uhm, er…I mean patriotic and loyal.

I do not mean to be terribly negative.  We can choose to actg on this trend toward self or not to act on it.  I merely see that, overall, there is something else producing the evil we see.  There is something quite beside religion which causes it.  And it is something which religion has often been more of a cure than a fanner of the fire.

Anyhow, I do not know if perhaps it may not be wrong to want to ‘join a gang,’ as my friend had mentioned as well.

I do know that I’d like some input on the matter of good and of evil and their reality and the joining of sides.

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