Two Sides, One Coin

Grace is a central issue of Christianity. Volumes have been written on it. I don't want to repeat or synthesize any of that. This blog is about contemplations, engagement of ideas. I recently read an article on grace in a blog by Wayne Jacobsen where he addresses a question about modern use of grace as license to sin. His answer went, as usual, exactly where I would have gone, but perhaps in a more refined and knowledgeable fashion than I would have managed. In short, he says that apart from a relationship with Jesus all else is human effort and will not work in the end.

Some claim grace is a stamped pass to heaven and thereby ignore the relationship and ignore a call to be holy and become like God. They use grace as license to continue in their own will and sinful desires. Others claim grace only opens the door but it is up to us to do an endless variation of things that all amount to earning our salvation in some fashion or other. Even the Evangelical alter call is in this group, but that's another story. There are many variations along the spectrum in both directions.

So how are we to find the right balance? This is where Wayne's words struck me most. Anywhere on the spectrum, and truly even trying to find a place on it at all, results in a constant tension between legalism and licentiousness. The whole process is just more human effort.

Like the old War Games moral...the only winning move is not to play. It is only in a relationship of trust (that is what the word faith actually means, just simple trust) that the two sides can make sense and we can get off of that tightrope.

I am given unbelievable grace for all time...that is, I have been forgiven for things for which I am justly guilty. And I must work out my salvation with fear and trembling, not being overconfident. Both are true and make sense in an actual personal relationship. Everyone would agree that if someone bought you out of a mess with no obligation to do so, we should be grateful and would owe that person. Even if they said forget it, we would seek to repay in some way at some point, never forgetting that favor. And if they did ask, we'd do what we could, right? To do otherwise would just be wrong. If that person asked us to hang out with them, we'd probably accept, even if it wasn't the scene we were used to. This is a shallow example of how grace and works are reconciled in a relationship. Of course it will fall apart if we pursue it too much, just as all human metaphors do, but the point is clear enough I think.

So sad that so many people quickly trade that relationship for system and process. Giving more won't make God love you more. It won't make you more blessed. It won't fix your life any more than continuing in all the same old destructive habits will. Sure some things are better than others, but the good in them comes from their connection to the spirit and truth in them, not the acts themselves. They are still curved roads in a curved world all bound in the same circle, to borrow some elven mythology. But you can't hang out with God, listen to him for any length of time, without changing who you are.

Perhaps this is why it's so hard for settled people to go to him and so much easier for the broken. The broken feel they have nothing to lose. While those who feel comfortable could be making a mistake and who knows what he'll ask of them? How beautiful to be forced to let ourselves go to find true freedom. To be forced to trust. Again, this seems an unacceptable condition in a system, but in a personal relationship the benefactor has every right to stipulate the terms of his aid. We do it every day...judging someone's worthiness to receive, to win, to befriend.

The Devil

What a topic. Some people are afraid to talk about it. Others want to focus too much on it. For others it's a cartoon idea that they like to play cutesy about. Theology aside, what is this thing we call the devil?

I have spent much of my life afraid. Terrified truly. I am mostly a fish out of water everywhere. I know what it is to feel different and to be incapable of making myself to be like others. This led to a lot of anxiety about people. What I didn't know, what I wasn't taught is that there is a being, are beings, that prey on fear...like feeding on it. They have no other real power, but they are very very good at pretending to have it.

I went through a time in my life when certain senses were awakening that these beings were very present to me. And that too was terrifying. I could recount visages and happenings worthy of a horror movie...worse because you can't just walk away or turn off your life. Even if it wasn't truly occurring, but only some psychological delusion, the effect was the same. I was paralyzed from doing anything else and anything good, and terrified. This led to a fear of the very idea of a devil.

This was necessary as a tool to keep my distance from these things, but is not good over the long term because, as Rowling said, fear of the word increases fear of the thing. Which is precisely what they, he, it wants. To instill fear.

But recently, I have come to realize that Jack's interpretation of the devil as nothing more than a sniveling annoying brat is far more accurate. It has taken a long long time to come to this and I know it will sound far weaker to anyone else. But it is huge for me.

Even though I had come to understand that his power was only to terrify and that there was no substance to any threat, it was still pee your pants scary and I didn't want to engage it at all. I knew I couldn't win in a direct fight; truly to engage in the fight at all was to give him power that he did not possess on his own. So I avoided.

But that meant that he was ever lurking to get me. Dark corners would bother me, certain times of night, certain conditions, thoughts had to be avoided to keep from engaging. But now I am finding that fear abating. Not entirely, but definitely. I am not as afraid. I can see how he need be nothing more than a mere annoyance, worthy of pounding the crap out of him given the chance. A kickdog. I don't mean to move into that fallacy of fighting the devil at every turn and disrespecting the spirits. This is a false power, and all false power is power given to him.

I hope and pray that this is not a phase, but a real step upward. It would be revolutionary in me. I know I am being trained, made perfect for something. We all are. As long as we live we are being trained, so this isn't prideful. To stop being trained is to end life in this world. But in me, which is the only person I can see inside of, I know this is a ground-taking step. Because to lose fear of fear embodied is to lose it altogether, and that means I become far more dangerous. Far more powerful. I want to reach into those dark corners where the bogey lurks and grab him by the throat. I feel ready to reach through to the other side of the mirror where the demons mock me in my sins, take one by the feet, and use it as a flail to drive off the herd. The hell hound at my hind will soon get a knife straight up through his hot jaws and into his tiny little brain.

All hell can't stop me now, in Jesus name!

Light

I'm finding it difficult to talk about this. I keep having these flashes of insight that I just can't put into words when I sit down to do it. I keep diverging into paths I don't want to take. Like trying to get a needle through the exact right spot and constantly coming up in another part of the cloth. I want to talk about light. The kind of piercing bright living light that we find from time to time. It's more than a metaphor. If you haven't experienced it, go find it. It is such an apt description of God. Light emanates and drives back the nothing which is darkness.

I used to shy from light. I preferred the solace of darkness and that was good for a time. It can be perverted like anything else, but light is incorruptible. Now I am so drawn to it. Illuminate! Spread the light out, pierce the dark corners. I want to be known and not hide. I want my scars to show. I want my ruin to be displayed so that it loses all power. In the light there can be no shame, no guilt. All is revealed and the things of darkness lose their power.

I don't wish that any who are afraid of the light be forced into it. Not that I'm against forcing because sometimes we are ready and won't move until forced, but to those who are not ready, forcing does more damage than good. So I want them to be sheltered. But for me, I am so tired of the games we play trying to keep our eyes shut. The light bathes and cleanses and frees us from these pretensions. In the light we can call what is wrong wrong and we can call what is right right. There's no need to beat around it.

I am imperfect and ruined by my own hand and in that I celebrate God's goodness to me. I want to walk in the light, be in the light. I can sometimes feel myself surrounded by light when I close my eyes. The space in my mind which used to be dark is now blindingly bright. There is no falsehood in it. I can picture it bleeding out through my pores and overcoming me. I can picture projecting it, shining it, dancing with it, in it, freed by it. Shining on the poor wretched things cowering in the dark, right at our feet, but unseen in the dark. What things are right at your hand? What pains, fears, humors and valiants beaten to submission, uglies, not good enoughs, sicks, disturbeds. I want to walk into the dark places and have the very ground light at my step on it. I want to see the light fall over them and pass through me to them.

I want to stare long and hard into the blinding source of that light. I want to know him. I want to see it washing out of and over my friends. I want them to let go and stop hiding as well. I want it to overwhelm me and consume me and never leave me. I want it to root out all corners of darkness to the deepest cellars of my soul. I want them to glow of their own with real radiant light not the sickly imitations we shine on them.

I once wrote that some people huddle to candle flickers and cherish them beyond all else but can't see those dancing in absolute conflagration behind them.

The lights have been turned on. Reason, Redemption, Freedom, Restoration, Peace, Rest: all of these have come to those least able to receive them. Even I can't fully accept this. I want those dark places to be illuminated.

Again, I don't mean the darkness that is good, that gives rest and perspective and gravity, but the darkness that hides and shames. The one which festers and bites and imprisons. This must go and everything in those dark places must come to light. I'm ready for it...at least for another step.