Mail

Dear God,
What is the point of my life?
Love, Laura

Dear Laura,

Love, God.

Dear God,
I wish that you'd answer my question.
Love, Laura

Wisdom of a Took and the Torah

I always sort of wondered what Pip meant in Lord of the Rings when he goes, "the closer you are to danger, the further you are from harm." What does that even mean?

So last week, we finished studying Judaism in my History of World Religions class. We learned a lot about the "Talmud" and "oral Torah", or the sets of interpretations and rules created to help people "implement the Torah into their every day life without inadvertently disobeying it." For instance, the Torah says that "you shall not boil a kid in its mother's milk." The Talmud developed a massive amount of regulations around this passage - it forbids cooking any meat in any milk, forbids eating them at the same meal, and forbids putting dairy on the same table as meat. This because you never know where you bought the meat, you never know where the milk came from, and you might accidentally disobey the Torah and cook a kid in it's mothers milk unless you "put a fence around the Torah." That is the goal of the oral Torah - to "put a fence around the Torah" and help people live purely by not allowing them the possibility of sin.

I like fences. I put up a lot of fences in my life. Usually I have a "good intention" - to stop from sinning. First off, that's wrong because I'm confusing "not sinning" with "following God," and they aren't always synonymous. I can be "not doing" all sorts of things and I'm not necessarily walking closer with God. Secondly, I'm focusing entirely on myself and my sin rather than God. Thirdly, I'm forgetting that God is the one who protects me from sin, not me. But most importantly... I am so focused on my sin, on my failures, on the danger of being close to sin, that I've failed to realize that I'm choosing control and safety over dependence on and intimacy with Him. Because either we will be in control, or God will be in control, but we cannot both be in control. My white picked fences (or barbed wire fences...) aren't about holiness, they're about power and me attempting to keep a pleasant image of myself intact. Any chance that I will cease to "look good" and "act good" and I get nervous. But God calls me to those places where a trip and a fall is only one step away, and when I fall He picks me up, and when I panic because of the danger, I turn to Him.

"The closer you are to danger, the further you are from harm." So the higher up the tightrope is, and the closer to the edge your house is built, and the darker the sky is on the night that you set sail... the more you look for Him. Risk! Strike out! Live where the only hope is Him.

No building fences around the Torah, Laura-girl. Get close to danger. Don't build a fence - let Him make you a sword.

Question

"Free from what? As if that mattered to Zarathustra!
But your eyes should tell me brightly: free for what?"
- Thus Spake Zarathustra, Nietzsche

The plain fact is that the planet does not need more ‘successful’ people. But it does desperately need more peacemakers, healers, restorers, story-tellers, and lovers of every shape and form. It needs people who live well in their places. It needs people of moral courage willing to join the fight to make the world habitable and humane. And these needs have little to do with success as our culture has defined it – David Orr

"For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways," declares the LORD.
- Isaiah 55:8

Where do we go when God frees us? What do we do with our freedom?

What is success? How to strive for holiness without inadvertently striving for success or achievement?

What are we doing here?

"Glorify God"
"The Great Commission"
"Delight in Christ"
"Be Transformed by the Renewing of Your Mind"
"Love the Lord Your God"
"Love Your Neighbor As Yourself"
"Etc"
"Etc"
"Etc"

What is the meaning of life? The final meaning? What big goal are all the little choices pointing towards?

A girl is told that her purpose is to "win." She prepares for a cross country marathon by eating lots of carbs and training seven hours a day. The night before the competition she learns that it is actually a beauty pageant.

How can we know if our choices are right unless we hold them up to a final destination?

And what is it?

Walk the Line

I hate balance! I hate happy mediums and grey areas and moderation.

If something is bad it should go. If something is good it should stay. Money and friendships and school and food and music and movies - can't we always just employ the Jesus admonition and cut off that darned right hand and throw it away?

Sometimes, sure, God tell us to completely throw away something bad. I love doing that. It's so clean and swift and yes it's often painful (yes, there was the fall that I didn't watch any movies because I was going to figure out entertainment and values - no fun at all) but the problem is that it's results oriented, perfection oriented, me oriented, and usually useless in creating a day to day walk with Jesus.

Balance insists on a day to day walk with Jesus. Because like Luther's drunk on a horse, we are always falling off one side or another. And the only way to get back up on the horse after tipping off is to ask for a hand up.

I really, really hate balance. It's so easy to step over the lines because you are walking next to the lines every day. I hate stepping over lines.

And so this post circles back to the same dead horse that I have been laboring over in my head and on this blog for the past two months - it's not about my perfection, it's not about my rules, it's about being with Him and growing in Him. I hate stepping over lines so much that I'd prefer not to step over lines than be with Jesus. That's silly.

But I still hate balance!

Dancing

Swing dancing is a ridiculous thing. Unplanned, unculcated, unrehearsed, unintelligible. The lead is completely in control. His job is to dance and take the follow with him. The follow? We try to look as nice as possible in a state of confusion, instability, spontaneity, and terror. At any second the lead could pull a move that we don't know, or twirl us into another dancer, or lose the beat, or kick us, or drop us. It's horrible, and we're even expected to keep on smiling in this giddy craziness. Supposedly it gets fun, and following becomes natural and easy, and living on the edge of control becomes relaxing. Supposedly.

To follow is to be hyper-aware of the pressure on your hand and your back. It is to totally let go and be totally focused at the same time. It's silly. There's no Plan B because there's no Plan A. Planless and controlless, the girls are thrown into the arms of men that are generally entirely unprepared for the level of power that is being handed to them in the form of a girl in masking taped Converse. Our excuse for refusing to follow is that the guys don't know what they're doing - the truth is that nobody likes to give up that amount of control to anyone, no matter how responsible, prepared, and omniscient the Lead happens to be.

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I want to follow God but I don't want to be A Follow. I want to go where He leads, but I don't picture a dance but a hiking trip - God marks out the pathway, and I study the map and highlight any trails that look dangerous and time how long it'll take me to walk a mile uphill and pack adequate food and leave on time so that the sun doesn't go down before I get there.

But if life is a dance, then there is no map or sign or backpack or even a watch. Following God is different than being A Follow to God's Lead. To be A Follow means by definition that you just - don't - know. To be A Follow means having that connection between you and The Lead that allows you to go wherever he goes on a split seconds notice, even if it's not what you expected. Complete spontaneity, complete submission, and complete recklessness. You just can't know what God is going to do, so asking Him and trying to figure it out means that you lose the connection in the dance. All you can and should do is to focus on the pressure on your hand and trust that He won't swing you into another dancer, and He won't lose the rhythm, and He won't throw a move at you that you don't know or you can't learn.

"Religion should not so much be thought out as danced out." - R.R. Marett

Brother Lawrence and Singularity

We are made for God, and for Him, alone; He cannot therefore take it ill that we forsake all, even ourselves, to find our all in Him. In God we shall see more clearly what we lack than we could in ourselves by all our introspection; which in reality is but the remnant, unexpelled, of self-love, which, under the guise of zeal for our own perfection, keeps our gaze down on self instead of raised to God....But having given myself wholly to God, to make what satisfaction I could for my sins, and for love of Him having renounced all that is not His, I have come to see that my only business is to live as though there were none but He and I in the world." - "Practice of the Presence of God", Brother Lawrence

Is that even... legal? What about the starving children? What about my next door neighbor? And how the heck is that even possible?

"No man can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and be devoted to the other, or love the one and hate the other. You cannot serve both God and ____" - Christ

Singularity... Kierkegaard wrote a book called "Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing" (yes, that is a massive title.) The Psalmist asks God to give him an "undivided heart."

But how to be undivided in a world that we are called to engage and love?

"From now on, let those who have wives live as though they had none, and those who mourn as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as though they had no goods, and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it. For the present form of this world is passing away" - Paul

Singularity... the soul undivided, the mind focused, how does it all fit together?

Delight

Funny thing. Every year or so I got this verse stuck in my head: "...and he shall give you the desire of your heart." I always forget the beginning. I always try and guess and remember what the claus is - what exactly do I have to do to get these desires?!? - but in the end have to look it up. The wierdest part is, I look it up, am puzzled, can't believe that that's really the verse, am confused, and then forget about it. And a few years later my mind starts saying "... and he shall give you the desire of your heart" again, and I remember that it's weird and whacky and that I forgot last time... but I still have to look it up, because whaddayaknow, I've forgotten again.

Delight yourself in the Lord, and.

Delight.

Are you sure, Lord? Not sacrifice? Not serve? Not be good? Not accept Christ? Not pray every day? Not destroy sin? Not obey the Bible?

DELIGHT?!?

Are you kidding?

Not Nice People

Manipulation is a funny, funny thing. I never used to think about it until... I'd catch myself doing it. Excuse me?!?! That's what mean girls do. That's what wicked witches and ugly stepsisters and jealous rejected lovers do. Not nice people.

It's weird to think about because it's never talked about. It's a deceptive thing and a lying thing, and that seems to be one of the biggest taboos in Christian sin confession. Prayer group time, what will everyone share? "I'm sleeping with my boyfriend... I'm struggling with pride... I've been really gossiping lately... I've been looking for revenge in a relationship" - everything comes up but never deceit or lying. Is it because we're ashamed, or because we lie to ourselves just as well as everyone else? If it's the first, it's understandable - "please pray for me, I've been using my emotions to manipulate my boyfriend into treating me in certain ways, and I've been casually deceiving him in order to use him to make me feel good." Yeah. That goes over well. But I'm more convinced that it's the latter - that we don't even know that our emotions are halfway manufactured in order to get an emotional payback.

There's a certain level that that's normal and okay. You're so dead tired, and you just want a hug, and you feel like you're going to burst into tears - and you see a good friend and you let yourself burst into tears because you want to be comforted, and if you don't show that you're hurting, you can't be helped. But there's a difference between showing what you're feeling and getting the natural benefits of that in a close relationship, and manufacturing or extenuating emotions in order to get benefits that your actual state of mind doesn't warrant. You've had a long day, and you want someone to sit and listen to you talk, but instead of saying "I've had a long day - I need to talk" you create imaginary problems and emotional difficulties and drama until you almost or entirely believe it yourself, and then present your friend with those traumas because that will get you the emotional support from a friend - support that you don't technically "deserve."

I only noticed the kinds of ways that I try and get my way "illegally" recently... but how long has it been going on? Do women just do this naturally? Cry a little, twist the truth a little, avert the eyes a little, use emotions to get what argument won't give us? Do we honestly think that all the ways that we use emotions are truly just our emotions, and do we really not see that we are buying love or time or praise or whatever else we're looking for with cheap tricks?

The problem is that once you see that you're doing a little dance for a cookie, you decide to stop dancing... but then you miss the cookie. Cookieless and forlorn, you wonder what was so wrong with shedding a tear here and there....

Sigh. I want a cookie.

Crutches, Anyone?

Saying that God is a crutch for the weak is like saying that food is a crutch for the hungry or that relationships are a crutch for the lonely.

Sunday Lettering

a letter i sent to a friend about our strange reluctance to read the bible. hope she doesn't mind me sharing.

you're asking yourself why you aren’t reading your bible. isn’t it strange that that is your question? the question assumes that it’s normal to read your bible. it assumes spending time with god is a natural phenomenon. it’s like gravity – it’s normal, and any time it does happen it shouldn’t be questioned and any time it doesn’t happen there needs to be an explanation.

we don't just repent of not spending time with god, but we're PUZZLED by it, and we ask why, and we are "tormented" by the fact that we aren't spending time with him. why the torment? why the questioning? why do we ask "why"? because there is an incongruity. What we imagine ourselves capable of, and who we imagine ourselves to be, is incompatible with how we act. if we saw ourselves clearly, than we would never ask "why". We would SEE why. But we ask why because we see ourselves in one particular way and our actions contradict it. "if i am like this... then why do i do this..."

why are we always surprised when we discover ourselves doing something sinful or horrible? why do we reprimand ourselves, why do we swear at ourselves and hate ourselves... unless we expect better. we expect ourselves to be good people. we expect our natural state to be doing the right thing. we don't really think that we're capable of really bad sins.

the truth is, no matter what we may say about natural sin - we don’t believe it. our shock and horror every time we fall short shows that we don’t really see ourselves as we really are. what are we?

we're NATURALLY BAD. we are broken. we are sinful. everything in us, every single piece of us, does not want to come out in the light and be seen. our natural state is doing the wrong thing. our normal behavior is perverted. why would a screwed-up sinner-girl want to spend time with god?!? every natural, normal, inborn reaction revolts. and so we don't feel "drawn" to read our bibles even though after we do it feels wonderful, and even as we do it's like stepping outside after a year of living in a basement.

so we're shocked that we don't want to be with god. what do we expect? what is our picture of ourselves?

we don't really know how deep our sin goes. maybe we never really will. but i think it goes a lot deeper and runs stronger and is more natural to our behavior than anything else.

this isn't catching how i felt it. it's not an idea or a logical thought as much as a a perspective change. switching how we see ourselves. if we're shocked at our sinful behavior than we are still, in a sense, trying to bring something worthwhile to god when in fact - we have nothing. until our sin stops shocking us, our perspective on ourselves is skewed. shock says - "how can it be?!??! i never expected this!" how can we not expect sin?!??

anyway.