Heat

I have a passion, a fire.  My temperament is this way.  I control it well and don't lose my temper often, but I am excitable and quickly heat up about things, good and bad.  I have a hard time letting an injustice go unaddressed.

I have in the past been quite angry...not in the uncontrolled anger management sense, but in the seething beneath the surface, fiery oratory sort of sense.  I have been called a match: quick to fire up at the least abrasion, but short lived and relatively harmless.  I would quickly pop off on people.  Tell them what I thought.  Call them out.  Politely, but directly.  In nicer times, I could frame it as a joke and lay some low with pointed humor that accomplished the same thing as the angry version, but with less direct confrontation.  It has served me well and I took it as a gift.

Of course any gift can be perverted, and so I took my tendency to pop off or become quickly agitated.  I even thought this heat inside was to be used to call crusade for good.  To call out injustice and wrongness.  I wouldn't stand for it and everyone needed to know that they couldn't get away with that junk around me because I'd call it right out in front of everyone.

But lately, I've begun to wonder if this is not such a gift.  I'm not sure.  Really.  I have just begun to see that maybe there is virtue in quietly handling the wrongs, perhaps even letting people go their own way.  Perhaps not always...there may well be a time to stand up and call it out.  But maybe there is a time for noticing without mentioning.

Previously I viewed this as tolerating what shouldn't be tolerated.  As a disservice to the one I refrained from speaking to.  After all, Truth must shine forth, and we have a duty and calling to hack away at the darkness.

Don't get me wrong, I've never attacked people like many legalists do.  My crusades are about grace and forgiveness.  But fuelled with a blazing angry passion.

The thing is, it's really hard to win.  I took this as confirmation that the world was corrupt.  As in the Mission, I was DeNiro's reformed conquistador, ready to shed blood, even my own in defense of what was right.  I'd rather stand up and take a blow to the face for speaking out than sit by and let a wrong go.  It was not my job to win...just to fight.

But now, I'm seeing a lovely grace, an almost asian-master sort of goodness, in letting things flow.  Perhaps speaking boldly out is not always the way to go.  Perhaps there is collateral damage that could be spared.  Perhaps there is something to a more pacific attitude.  Perhaps this is not over-tolerance, a moopy spine.  Certainly it could be, just as my passion could be perverted to plain anger and hate.  But maybe this is a time for me to learn how to be meek in the truest sense.

Jesus did speak boldly.  He did enrage and agitate and even physically overturn.  But he also nurtured and helped and loved in a soft and tender way.

Perhaps the Greystokian animalistic nobility, the chivalric gentle warrior, is not God's ideal.  Perhaps it is far less inspiring.  Far more suffering (in the old sense).  Far more humble (in the old sense of lowly).

Please teach me the answer, Jesus.  What am I to learn from you in this yoke?  Help me to be pliable and open to you.  I fear I will lose my strength, my identity, and I don't know how else to be.  But I must lose mine to gain yours and I will be what you make me.

Horse

"But a false sense of power, a sense which had no root and was merely vibrated into me from the strength of the horse, had, alas, rendered me too stupid to listen to anything he said."

The quote above is from Lilith, by George MacDonald.  In this scene, Mr. Vane has been defeated and tricked by Lilith, and Mr. Raven is taking him to his house from which he fled in the first place.  Mr. Raven summons his horse, which is dark and spectral yet powerful beyond knowing to ease the journey of the weary Vane to his house where he must sleep.  Vane and the horse instantly bond and once on his back, Mr. Vane decides to leave Mr. Raven against his advice.  Raven cautions it will be to ruin again.  And then this quote.

The book in general is already one of my favorites ever and I haven't even finished it yet.  It has been speaking to me in so many ways.  But this line struck me today.

In this blog, I have recorded mere months ago the sense of triumph and power that I had been feeling.  While I had known it was from God, and not of myself, I, like Vane, couldn't help feeling as if it was mine.  When in fact it was only borrowed...no, not even that much possession.   The power was no more mine than is the strength and stamina of a powerful horse on which a man happens to sit.

Even then, in my deep heart I knew it would not last.  But how my vanity has cost me.  What damage I may have wrought in myself, my family, and those I love.  Feeling emboldened like never before I took actions and harboured feelings of authority that were not mine.

To the casual reader, this will seem different than it is.  I don't mean that I did any overtly egregious thing.  In fact, like Mr. Vane, my intentions were all honorable and above board.  I would fix what was wrong where my influence fell and would use this power to do so.  I didn't even "fall from grace" in the sense that we use it for leaders who make a public mistake.  No, it is far subtler.  Far more difficult to see, and therefore all the more damaging.  Like the loose screw in the engine that is so easily overlooked and yet once failed, will bring down the entire machine.

And yet in this realization, I am not even crushed.  Repentant, yes, falling on the grace which saved me, and intent to be better and to learn, but resting in the knowledge that it is ok.  My failing has not one bit thwarted the will and plans of my God.  He will right all wrongs and preserve His children from undue harm.

Perhaps I am also McDonald's stupid philanthropist who would use the grace given me to spare those within my influence from the very thing most needful: that which would be the vehicle of their healing.

All traces of my vanity must die.

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.

Failed

Not a month after I wrote about my great experience where I stepped out in faith and I promised to continue, I have failed it. Like Peter, I rode from the high right off the cliff and back into the mud.

As usual, no details. This about my experience, not the gossip. I encountered a friend yesterday who seemed upset. I went to talk to her and she broke down crying. I stayed and comforted her trying to learn if there was anything I could do without prying into the source of pain which is not my business. It became clear after a little while that she just needed time to let it out and being there was enough. but I had pressing engagements and was running late from the outset. Failing all options I could think of to help the situation and being satisfied that it would be ok, even being reassured by this person that she was ok, I opted to leave thinking there was nothing else I could do.

But as soon as I set off I felt this sinking wrongness like I should not have left. I justified that I had to go and other people were waiting on me. But the flat sadness settled on me and I almost wanted to turn back. I even talked about it to my wife, justifying my action outloud to her that I had done everything I could. That I always tried to and that it was beyond my control to do more. I even thought it must be a lesson for me to let God handle things and stay out of the way.

But the feeling that I had missed it never left. All day and all night it tugged at me. I even tried to call and make sure she was ok later, but could reach no one. Oddly, my phone even kept cutting out when I did get through so that I couldn't talk, though it worked fine to anyone else.

Then this morning at work I was listening to some new music I had just gotten...a particularly meditative song about failing and forgiveness while I was reading some super dry documents. Slowly, I settled into that place of contemplation and I understood. I HAD missed it. I should have stayed. I have no idea how it would have gone...If I'd have missed my entire plans or not. Maybe it would have turned into another glorious expression of God's love in real life. But I'll never know now. I was reminded of my promise and of every other time I've squelched that small fire telling me to do something. I teared up right there at my desk as I confessed and repented yet again.

Thank God he doesn't depend on me to help other people. Like Jonah, I'm constantly running the other way in my own understanding and I never seem to get it. But I have confidence that I will also be belched up on the scorching sands and end up right where he wants me in spite of myself. I'd just be very happy to stay out of the whalebelly for a little while. Even still I know that it is in the belly that the old is digested away. In the fire of this belly that the refining takes place and though I hate it and hate myself when I fail, I can quickly rejoice in it. Not a happy rejoicing like I used to misunderstand. It's a sad somber powerful rejoicing that God's power is manifest in my ineptitude.

I know it makes no sense. We seem a twisted masochistic bunch, we Christians, to those who haven't yet been burned through. To most people it is no wonder we've been mistaken for everything from cannibals to orgiasts.

God help me to listen, beat me over the head with your words, and help me learn fast. Break me, mold me, use me.