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.

Breaking Chains

This phrase is common in Christianity. There are so many references to freedom, to setting captives free, to removing oppression. This IS Christianity. I'm going to try my best to avoid railing about rechaining and the obligatory system of religion people erect under the name of Christianity. So if that's your understanding of the thing, you aren't wrong, but that isn't the truth of it...

...I actually stopped writing this for several days because the idea didn't seem fully formed yet. Maybe it still isn't. I'm not sure quite where to go with this honestly. It was a powerful impression that became half visible in the mist and then vanished before I could get a clear view of it. I'll try just talking about notable occurrences and maybe it will tie up.

I actually had a dream that was not a nightmare last night. This is a first in a very long time. It wasn't the kind of dream that I would seek out or wake from feeling like I really enjoyed it. I haven't had one of those in about 15 years. But at least no one died, no one was chasing me, there was no violence, and no demons or other evil beings. And it was bilingual...in Japanese and English.

For one thing, I had an opportunity to see a good friend again recently who happens to be a powerful dreamer, and we talked about why I dream so horribly. It was just a passing conversation, but speaking out loud some thoughts I hadn't really formed before really seemed to help. It might have had an influence.

Also, I had the opportunity recently to spend some time alone in the wild. I took my newly constructed paddle board for a long paddle up a swampy river. It was running clear at low water, so I could see all the HUGE fish swimming under me. Swam a couple of times to cool off. Felt the bracing effects of fear as alligators up to 10 feet long startled, swam and submerged within 4 meters of me. Raced turtles. Stared vultures in the eye at close range. This is precisely what another friend who happens to be gifted in dream interpretation prescribed when I told him my dreaming predicament several months ago. So that probably helped as well.

I've felt pretty good lately. Allergies have been minor or nonexistent.

My new bike is lighter and faster than my old one, but the gear ratio is much tougher and forcing my legs to get stronger.

My new team member started at work and we get along very well. I found myself able to understand Japanese on TV again almost as well as when I lived there. I don't know why this has occurred.

I saw a fun adventure movie recently that surprisingly had a character which I very much admired. He was a missionary who held his faith in a bold and fearless way all the way to the end. After the movie I found out that both my son and God-daughter thought that character reminded them of me! I was very happy to hear this since that is exactly the kind of person I want to be!

I did not die last year as I expected.

Perhaps, I feel like chains are breaking for me. Deep chains. Chains I didn't even know bound me. I'm feeling a freedom and peace that I have not felt in a long time.

Practical Belief

I realized recently that my darkness and staunch pragmatism make it very difficult to take anything at face value, and therefore very difficult to simply enjoy something that I can see through or in the midst of greater difficulties. Not impossible, just difficult.

On the up side, I am very rarely surprised by things because I prepare for the worst. I think through possibilities and find the worst case. Once I have prepared for that, any lesser case is easier to deal with. It actually serves me very well most of the time and provides a perspective that many less thoughtful people lack.

But the problem is that things very rarely go that bad. Still they always could and that 'could' is where the trouble starts. Because I have inferred a path to that worst case, it is hard to get it out of my head. The stats help and I realize logically that it probably won't go that bad, but even within the realm of probable outcomes there are plenty that are not good. I can also see the variables and recognize those (most) that I don't control. So in short, I am constantly seeing the bad and this makes it hard to just go on and be happy.

There are some things to combat it though. I try to rule out hearsay and hype. These only falsely color the situation. Local news is the worst about this. Please don't watch it. It's trash TV disguised as journalism. Even gossip is trouble this way. I try to bring things back to my actual experience. For example, I hear crime reports. Hear rumors from neighbors. See warnings from police and neighborhood watch. This makes me feel that crime is immanent. It's only a matter of time before I am hit. But in my actual experience, this is not the case. There are far more good days than bad. Far more good people than bad. Most of the incidents are stupid kids that are easily caught. and some reports are just plain false. Like the one about the neighbors basketball hoop that was supposedly stolen when it was no longer on the street. I looked at their yard and saw the hoop laying beside their fence. This isn't rose-colored glasses; remember I can't do that. It's just the REAL facts.

You might be tempted to say, "just trust God and let him care for you." Well, that's great, but short-sighted. If you could see all the pathways that I see and consider all the cases that I know, you'd see that there's a whole lot of bad that can occur inside God's will. It doesn't mean I won't get robbed, beaten, sick, jailed, persecuted. In fact, the historic and modern cases around the world show that in fact those things are far MORE likely if I am a Christian. The fact that we don't see them so prevalently in this part of the world means 1. we are not capable of handling them, 2. we are not worthy of them (i.e. we don't offend the enemy enough) or 3. we are EXTREMELY blessed.

This is not to say that God doesn't provide all our needs. Just that many of our fears lie between our accustomed lifestyle and our needs. So for me, I have to find faith in something more solid. Remember that faith, as understood by those to whom the Biblical books were originally written, meant something more like credit or patronage. Not blind belief. It meant, it means in actuality, an offering of trust. Just like you trust the bank to hold your money for you. Or in those days, you might trust a powerful ruler to provide security and prosperity. In fact, that is the context of all the references to God as King. We are asked to trust Jesus like we would a king. That's why he laughed at his disciples so often that they didn't trust him in that way even though they trusted God as they knew him through Judaism. It was a whole different game with that God standing next to you.

So for me, I've been trying to give more of that trust. To recount past incidents where He was faithful and therefore bolster my faith. It's hard to truly do this in all situations. I constantly want to take back some control, as feeble as it is, and provide for myself. I've been really practicing seeing the good. Counting my blessings...really, it's not a cliche. And where I can't settle on a high probability of good outcome, I have to trust that there are factors I can't see and that He has promised not to let me go. And where bad outcomes are the most probable, I am practicing enduring, and even charging in. This is bravery, though we don't think of it like that. I would easily take on a gun or even knife over something less decisive like uncertain financial future. But one dragon is as another. Both must be charged down, come hell or ruin...

In these moments, I sometimes catch a glimpse of myself...at least I hope it is me in the same way I see others, like Galadriel of previous blogs. I see a fell warrior, bloody and singed, but standing firm in the midst of the demon swell. Maybe a little something like this.

But only for a moment. And then I come back to my own life...or maybe I just fall back to sleep.

Re-reawakening

I am slowly living back through so many things but on a different level. Like a giant spiral of translucent life in which I am passing back through things I've already experienced, but now colored by the new place in time and space. Rejection of things I had rejected. Embracing of things I had embraced. Having reactions to things and remembering having the same reactions before. Understanding what I had felt then on a younger shallower level and seeing again on an older more experienced level why I had gone that way. It's almost like reliving my life as a wiser person...yet turning out to be the exact same person. I see how I got here and I am choosing to do it again.

It's a reaffirmation really of who I am and who I am made to be. It's good. And I am choosing good. I have had enough of the fake and less than...again. I am gravitating toward the real and more...again. It looks from the outside so much like going the other way. But there is peace here. I can't quite put my finger on it yet, but I'm following that peace.

I have a friend that I often argue with...not angry fighting, but just engaged debate. This debate has helped me. Like iron sharpening iron, it is a grating and clanging process, but it leaves a finer edge. He says some things that I do not agree with and that I wouldn't say, but I understand what he means. It's all about perspective. One has to be in another's place to see from that perspective. I always did understand what he means on a certain level, though I constantly take exception with it for good reason. But in this place right now, I can feel affinity for his statements so much more than just assenting to it logically. I guess I'm saying that I feel it right now. I'm following what feels good and right.

I'm moving away from what hurts. I've tried to find the way to a place of peace again for a long time and all I keep finding is injury. I'm going to think on the pure, holy, worthy things. But that won't take me where most think it will. It didn't before. I don't deny my darkness. It is part of me and will be me, but I am accepting it and moving toward a place where the darkness is acceptable as part of the whole. I will never be at peace in the places that I was not made for. I learned this early on and had somehow flopped back out of the water where I have floundered and flopped trying to walk on fins and trying to breathe air through gills. And then upon strangling and tripping I began flopping about looking for the water again. I think I have found a trickle. Maybe a puddle, but there seems to be flow and life there and I'm looking for deeper water. I'm diving in, going deep, hearing that fluid rush. Get me in the water!

Get me out of the Keep (mixing metaphors, I know). I need to find that dewy wild place beyond the wall where I can crash down among the lilies and find the one waiting for me there. When I catch that scent, hear those pipes, I'm gone man! Watch how fast I cut it all away.

Railing

My reader...the only one I think (maybe I should just address these like letters to that person) said that my posts can change dramatically in style and tone. I recognize that and apologize by saying that I wanted this blog to be raw and real, so those swings are actually swings in me, chronicled in the hopes that some other soul may read them and feel less alone...but I know it makes it hard to read sometimes...which is probably why I have one reader. Whom I am tempted to call the "fan base", but I'll leave that reference there just to see if anyone ever gets it.

I also noticed that my blogs tend to be railing sorts of things. Not always, but a good deal of them. My facebook posts are even more so. I don't really like that about myself. I don't start out to be that way. And I don't feel like a very angry or miserable person always. I just think those are the things that get posted more. I have a hard time writing happy drivel.

Honestly, I try very hard not to be negative. This is an uphill battle as anyone who reads this blog will know about me. But it isn't helped by the fact that there are just so many darn insufferable things out there. What is insufferable? Well, for me it is misrepresentations, usurpations, manipulations, by those who claim (and are expected) not to do so. In my world, these are usually people who call themselves Christians and the organizations that they operate. I can't judge what goes on in their hearts, but I can comment on their actions. I want to be clear that I do not judge the person as I judge the actions. I don't. And since no one but God can see into my heart as well, you'll just have to take my word on that. I hope my actions bear it out as well.

I want Truth. I want what is real. Recently, I went into church after a few weeks out. I've been slowly extricating myself from that system of religious obligation and manipulation, but was feeling open and ready to see if God would speak through those present. I was trying hard to not be bothered by the usual irks (plastic expressions on singers, forced hype, awkward smiles covering real hurts, etc.) And then, what met my ears was, well, insufferable to me yet again. I fully believe in a real hell. I've experienced enough of it and what comes out of it to know this, so we are on the same page at the root. I was even able to look past the short-sighted Biblical citations. They were correct in reading, but the speaker failed to mention (if he knew) how those who counter them do so. There are some very good arguments against them that make it hard to use those verses alone as proof of point to someone who knows how to argue at all. If he knew and chose not to mention it, he only sends his flock out with false security against wolves.

But then he went on to start nothing short of brainwashing. Telling the congregation that they may have questions, but so what. Throw them out because if the Bible said it, that was all they needed. At this I was piqued. But then he went on to have a call-response where the congregation was supposed to repeat the mantra that they didn't need proof and their questions didn't matter. I had had enough. I had to walk out. What I felt like doing was interrupting the whole sermon by calling out the heresy right there. Maybe I should have, but most wouldn't have understood what I meant and those that did would have been too bound by their own issues to accept it. I would have instantly rocked their boats so hard, they would have instinctually thrown me out simply to stop the shaking.

So I went to the bathroom to hide for a minute, then look for a place to go. Everywhere I went there were people milling around who knew me and wouldn't understand. I couldn't attempt to talk to them, they'd see my upset. So I had to go outside.

Out there was a world. A world that God made and lived in. There were things living and moving and happening. It was calming. A whole different tone from the cursed tomb that was being created inside what should be a place of life, a well of living water. Instead it was turned into a stinking sepulchre of religious bondage.

Jesus never spoke to people that way. Jesus went to lengths to be tender to people's needs. To meet them where they were. To explain and build trust. He even met with one scholar one on one to explain one of the seminal passages in the Bible! I'm sure he must have done it more, but we don't have record. He still does this today. I thought we believed he was a living and active and caring God. Yet speakers like this try to force their point on the masses who look to them for guidance through manipulative techniques like that. God, it would be better to have mill stones hung on their necks and be thrown into the sea than to lead those astray. The Bereans were commended for questioning what they were taught and searching it out to see if it was true, not expected to blindly repeat what they were told! It hurts me and makes me want to rend my clothes! And my only outlet for this is some lonely blog with one reader. I am thankful for that, don't misunderstand. But it makes my heart cry out like David, "How long, God?!" How long will this evil continue? God I want to see your mercy and grace poured out on these people, even the speaker.

And yet these masses will listen for a while, until the stench builds so strong in their noses that they know something isn't right. Then they leave as well...probably to be more disgusted with Christianity and less friendly to the one who came to do away with this very thing. Jesus only ever railed against the religious and self-righteous...with good reason.