GOD IS FINALLY GOING TO FIGURE OUT THAT I'M NEVER GOING TO BE FIXED AND WHEN HE FIGURES THAT OUT HE'LL LEAVE.
Worst fear right there. I'm afraid that if I keep rebelling and if transformation keeps taking so long because I'm either lazy or immature... then I'll stop making forward progress at all, and He'll leave. He'll quit. If I don't keep my butt moving towards some kind of "goodness" than He'll leave me to do it on my own. It's like some insane school progress report - no matter how stupid Jimmy is, "as long as he makes progress the, the school will continue to support him academically" - but if it looks like he's coming to any kind of a halt... he's out. It's not where he is that's the problem, it's the fact that he's not on his way to anywhere else. I usually feel that way about God. As long as I'm moving, no matter how slowly, He's there for me. If I ever just stop...
Then today I realized that that's the stupidist thing I've ever thought.
"Of course I'll never leave you. I died for you."
God died. God was killed so that I could be transformed. If my ultimate transformation and redemption is worth that much to Him before I was actually inherently worth anything, why would He quit after He's made the investment? How completely stupid to think that He would make a commitment like that to me, a commitment that involved huge sacrifice on His part, and then back out, ever, because of anything. He's in this for the long haul. Yes, sometimes I feel like I've stopped moving or that I'm moving backwards. But God was willing to invest His life for me so that I could be eventually His, and so because of that truth I'm willing to bet that even when I'm going backwards and sideways and upsidedown, He's not ever going to stop working in me and on me.
Whew.
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Friday, September 12, 2008
The Tricks of the Trade
There's interesting paradox that has really bothered me over the last year or so. Whenever temptation is particularly strong, and I am particularly "weak," and temptation seems to be pulling out all its big guns on me, I'm much more able to withstand it and come out strong on the other end. But whenever temptation isn't particularly strong, or even particularly tempting, more of a vague, floating, half-baked idea that doesn't even seem to interest me much, and I'm not even feeling drawn to it.. I almost always end up completely annihilated.
This puzzled me. I used to say that the level of attack always was directly related to my willpower to fight it - if it was a massive operation, for some reason I always pulled equally massive amounts of willpower out of God knows where and usually made it out the other end. The lower level attacks, the ones that didn't bank on desire so much as boredom or lethargy, barely even showed a gun before I threw mine down.
I think that my consciousness just doesn't go into high alert for those more covert operations. When I'm bored and when temptation is a steady, gentle, constant knocking, I don't even realize I've gotten up before I've opened the door. Or sometimes it does go into alert, but the problem is that I'm impervious to it because of that same lethargy -it's not that I want whatever particular temptation is being sold to me, but I don't want to resist, either. It's a supreme boredom with the argument itself. If I could, I'd ignore both my conscience AND temptation and just shut the door and go to sleep. Unfortunately, conscience can be ignored, but temptation can only either be fought or succumbed to.
A Kierkegaardian moment - every sin has it's root in boredom.
This puzzled me. I used to say that the level of attack always was directly related to my willpower to fight it - if it was a massive operation, for some reason I always pulled equally massive amounts of willpower out of God knows where and usually made it out the other end. The lower level attacks, the ones that didn't bank on desire so much as boredom or lethargy, barely even showed a gun before I threw mine down.
I think that my consciousness just doesn't go into high alert for those more covert operations. When I'm bored and when temptation is a steady, gentle, constant knocking, I don't even realize I've gotten up before I've opened the door. Or sometimes it does go into alert, but the problem is that I'm impervious to it because of that same lethargy -it's not that I want whatever particular temptation is being sold to me, but I don't want to resist, either. It's a supreme boredom with the argument itself. If I could, I'd ignore both my conscience AND temptation and just shut the door and go to sleep. Unfortunately, conscience can be ignored, but temptation can only either be fought or succumbed to.
A Kierkegaardian moment - every sin has it's root in boredom.
Sunday, September 7, 2008
Pride as a Cosmic Banana Peel
Pride goes before the fall - but not as an arbitrary judgment, like "If you eat that cookie I shall send you to your room!" It's logically connected, like "if you eat that cookie you will consume more calories and, if you continue to eat cookies, you will gain weight." Gaining weight isn't the punishment of eating cookies, it's just the logical conclusion.
Falling is the logical conclusion of pride. Once you stop focusing on what you're doing - working, speaking, cleaning, playing piano - and start focusing on how well you're doing it, the natural outcome of that behavior will be a drop in the quality of your work. Once you stop focusing on the task and begin to focus on something, anything, else, you fall.
Pride goes before the fall, because standing upright requires concentration, and pride is only concerned with itself.
Falling is the logical conclusion of pride. Once you stop focusing on what you're doing - working, speaking, cleaning, playing piano - and start focusing on how well you're doing it, the natural outcome of that behavior will be a drop in the quality of your work. Once you stop focusing on the task and begin to focus on something, anything, else, you fall.
Pride goes before the fall, because standing upright requires concentration, and pride is only concerned with itself.
Saturday, September 6, 2008
I Just Wanna Be A Princess...
So many beautiful clothes! So many beautiful people! Classy, earthy, indie type women who all look confident and beautiful, wandering around campus and downtown, and it just makes me want to hire a wardrobe consultant so that I, too, can be classy, earthy, and indie. My mother says I never used to be this vain. The truth is, I was, but I was confident that I was beautiful, so the vanity never showed up as insecurity until recently.
Then, sitting in downtown Dover, this wonderful lady strides out of a store, and honestly, all that I remember about her is that she had this fabulous, wild, curly brown hair that spewed out over her shoulders. She must have been middle-aged, at youngest late 30's, and she didn't see me... she was walking fast and smiling, and all of a sudden, still walking, she flung her arms out and threw her head back, and the wind was blowing her clothes and hair and she looked so damn happy that I started to smile, too. Then she saw me and looked a little sheepish, but smiled and waved, and as she walked away I told myself that "that is what I want to be like!" And then I realized that I had no idea what she was wearing. She could have been wearing a denim jumper or pants belted up at the waist or Crocs. The thing was - I didn't notice.
Paul wasn't fooling when he said that women should just let it lie about clothing. Of course we all want to be beautiful, but when we bump into real, stunning, confident beauty, we don't even notice the clothes that cover it.
Then, sitting in downtown Dover, this wonderful lady strides out of a store, and honestly, all that I remember about her is that she had this fabulous, wild, curly brown hair that spewed out over her shoulders. She must have been middle-aged, at youngest late 30's, and she didn't see me... she was walking fast and smiling, and all of a sudden, still walking, she flung her arms out and threw her head back, and the wind was blowing her clothes and hair and she looked so damn happy that I started to smile, too. Then she saw me and looked a little sheepish, but smiled and waved, and as she walked away I told myself that "that is what I want to be like!" And then I realized that I had no idea what she was wearing. She could have been wearing a denim jumper or pants belted up at the waist or Crocs. The thing was - I didn't notice.
Paul wasn't fooling when he said that women should just let it lie about clothing. Of course we all want to be beautiful, but when we bump into real, stunning, confident beauty, we don't even notice the clothes that cover it.
Friday, September 5, 2008
Real Life Magic
When you do something incredibly sinful and selfish, and then after all the necessary repentance and horrible consequences you see something wonderful happen because of that sin... it makes you doubt things, like if the predestination thing means that God makes us sin or God doesn't stop us from sinning because something Ultimately Good will happen. This is particularly hard when you've committed some devastating piece of work that, while it was occurring, hurt you and the people around you tremendously. Just because the final outcome was "good" can't - can't -possibly mean that God orchestrated the whole fiasco. I worried over this with a friend, and she used a word that I hadn't even thought of before - redemption. Making good out of bad.
Maybe the whole idea of God "redeeming sin" means that He can create beauty out of everything, that He can transform anything, and that He is ultimately an artist who can see glory everywhere, and, once we stop trying to make Rembrandt out of mud pies, He can take the mud and breath life into it. While it is in our hands, it will always be mud. Once He takes it, He can "redeem" it - transform it, reincarnate it, magically and impossibly make something beautiful out of our worst sins.
My sin was not orchestrated by Him, thank God, in order to bless me today. But once He took my sin, He transformed it into something of unrecognizable beauty. "Redeemed."
Maybe the whole idea of God "redeeming sin" means that He can create beauty out of everything, that He can transform anything, and that He is ultimately an artist who can see glory everywhere, and, once we stop trying to make Rembrandt out of mud pies, He can take the mud and breath life into it. While it is in our hands, it will always be mud. Once He takes it, He can "redeem" it - transform it, reincarnate it, magically and impossibly make something beautiful out of our worst sins.
My sin was not orchestrated by Him, thank God, in order to bless me today. But once He took my sin, He transformed it into something of unrecognizable beauty. "Redeemed."
Thursday, September 4, 2008
In Case of Emergency, Activate Puddleglum
Long post today.
My favorite part in The Silver Chair (and there aren't many) is when the children and Puddleglum are captured underground, and the witch is busily placing a spell on them with the help of her magical lute and fire. She's convincing them that the only world is the world they're in now, the Underworld, and anything else they think is real from above ground was invented from smaller, "realer" things from the Underworld. “'You have seen lamps," the witch purrs, "'and so you imagined a bigger and better lamp and called it the sun. You’ve seen cats, and now you want a bigger and better cat, and it’s to so called a lion. Well, ‘tis a pretty make-believe though, to say a truth, it would suit you all better if you were younger."'
Between this logic, the lute, and the fire, everyone goes down except Puddleglum.
"But Puddleglum, desperately gathering all his strength, walked over to the fire. The he did a very brave thing. He knew it wouldn’t hurt him quite as much as it would hurt a human; for his feet (which were bare) were webbed and hard and cold-blooded like a duck’s. But he knew it would hurt him badly enough; and so it did. With his bare foot he stamped on the fire, grinding a large part of it into ashes on the flat hearth. …
“'One word, Ma’am,” he said, coming back from the fire; limping, because of the pain. “'One word. All you’ve been saying is quite right, I shouldn’t wonder. I’m a chap who always liked to know the worst and then put the best face I can on it. So I won’t deny any of what you said. But there one thing more to be said, even so. Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things – trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that’s a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We’re just babies making up a game, if you’re right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That’s why I’m going to stand by the play world. I’m on Aslan’s side even if their isn’t any Aslan to lead it. I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn’t any Narnia. So, thanking you kindly for our supper, if these two gentlemen and the young lady are ready, we’re leaving your court at once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for Overland. Not that our lives will be very long, I should think; but that’s small loss if the world’s as dull a place as you say.'”
Philosophy majors have it tough. There's a continual onslaught of facts and ideas in every class I walk into, and there comes a moment in every argument where I have nothing else to say. You argue every point, fight every line, and then you realize that 21 years of life has nothing on 2500 years of philosophy, and you just sit, totally defeated. One option is to start to doubt. Another option is to pout and think how wrong everyone else is, and if only they listened to you they'd be right.
The third option is to be a Puddleglum, and to let logic fall away and analysis die, and realize that there is a point where your brain will always fail you. You don't have anything left - allow yourself to have nothing left. Be wiped totally clean. There are no more proofs for God's existence, no more logically valid argument for a human soul, nothing that shows that there is morality or beauty or Truth. There's no logic left but love.
"I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't an Aslan to lead it." That's not the voice of stubborn insistence, I don't think - it's the voice of pure, rock hard love, the kind of love that doesn't let go even if everything else dies. There's something to be said for being intellectually stubborn, and for refusing to see the Truth when it's presented to you. But there's also something to be said for standing on something that will always be deeper and stronger and more powerful than any brainpower we'll ever have - love. Love God, and that will hold you stronger than "believing God" ever will.
"We know that we all possess knowledge. Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. The man who thinks he knows something does not yet know as he ought to know. But the man who loves God is known by God." - Paul, 1 Cor. 8:1b-3
My favorite part in The Silver Chair (and there aren't many) is when the children and Puddleglum are captured underground, and the witch is busily placing a spell on them with the help of her magical lute and fire. She's convincing them that the only world is the world they're in now, the Underworld, and anything else they think is real from above ground was invented from smaller, "realer" things from the Underworld. “'You have seen lamps," the witch purrs, "'and so you imagined a bigger and better lamp and called it the sun. You’ve seen cats, and now you want a bigger and better cat, and it’s to so called a lion. Well, ‘tis a pretty make-believe though, to say a truth, it would suit you all better if you were younger."'
Between this logic, the lute, and the fire, everyone goes down except Puddleglum.
"But Puddleglum, desperately gathering all his strength, walked over to the fire. The he did a very brave thing. He knew it wouldn’t hurt him quite as much as it would hurt a human; for his feet (which were bare) were webbed and hard and cold-blooded like a duck’s. But he knew it would hurt him badly enough; and so it did. With his bare foot he stamped on the fire, grinding a large part of it into ashes on the flat hearth. …
“'One word, Ma’am,” he said, coming back from the fire; limping, because of the pain. “'One word. All you’ve been saying is quite right, I shouldn’t wonder. I’m a chap who always liked to know the worst and then put the best face I can on it. So I won’t deny any of what you said. But there one thing more to be said, even so. Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things – trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that’s a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We’re just babies making up a game, if you’re right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That’s why I’m going to stand by the play world. I’m on Aslan’s side even if their isn’t any Aslan to lead it. I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn’t any Narnia. So, thanking you kindly for our supper, if these two gentlemen and the young lady are ready, we’re leaving your court at once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for Overland. Not that our lives will be very long, I should think; but that’s small loss if the world’s as dull a place as you say.'”
Philosophy majors have it tough. There's a continual onslaught of facts and ideas in every class I walk into, and there comes a moment in every argument where I have nothing else to say. You argue every point, fight every line, and then you realize that 21 years of life has nothing on 2500 years of philosophy, and you just sit, totally defeated. One option is to start to doubt. Another option is to pout and think how wrong everyone else is, and if only they listened to you they'd be right.
The third option is to be a Puddleglum, and to let logic fall away and analysis die, and realize that there is a point where your brain will always fail you. You don't have anything left - allow yourself to have nothing left. Be wiped totally clean. There are no more proofs for God's existence, no more logically valid argument for a human soul, nothing that shows that there is morality or beauty or Truth. There's no logic left but love.
"I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't an Aslan to lead it." That's not the voice of stubborn insistence, I don't think - it's the voice of pure, rock hard love, the kind of love that doesn't let go even if everything else dies. There's something to be said for being intellectually stubborn, and for refusing to see the Truth when it's presented to you. But there's also something to be said for standing on something that will always be deeper and stronger and more powerful than any brainpower we'll ever have - love. Love God, and that will hold you stronger than "believing God" ever will.
"We know that we all possess knowledge. Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. The man who thinks he knows something does not yet know as he ought to know. But the man who loves God is known by God." - Paul, 1 Cor. 8:1b-3
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