I’ll be out of town for Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. I’ll see what I can do about posting something Saturday or Sunday, since I don’t want to leave the blog unattended for too long, in case something thinks I’m dead... or worse... (As far as what “worse” might be, I don’t have a clue).
Anyway, that’s the next couple of days for ya.
Men past forty, Get up nights, Look out at city lights
And wonder
Where they made the wrong turn
And why life is so long ~Ed Sissman
I don’t want to grow up and become that man.
Who is pure in heart? Only those who have surrendered their hearts completely to Jesus that he may reign in them alone” The pure in heart have a child-like simplicity like Adam before the fall, innocent alike of good and evil: their hearts are not ruled by their conscience, but by the will of Jesus.
I especially love the “not ruled by their conscience, but... Jesus” section -- for that seems somehow essential to me, in that our consciences are fallible and subject to our own evil desires. It’s more than that, however, and I’m not sure what seems so essential in that statement. It is as if, again, we are brought back to the reality that we are not being obedient to an impersonal force (“good” or “evil”) but to a person. And, as we know that person, we know Truth and can distinguish error. We are not ruled by the concepts of truth and error (perhaps this is the fundamentalist flaw -- for they are utterly controlled by their concepts of what is right and wrong, much like the Pharisees were), but by a Man who is God. As such, our own statements and discoveries carry no weight unless He himself gives them to us.
And impersonal forces are rigid and strict. They are weights and burdens. They destroy those who are bound to them, and wreak havoc on those around them. They repel not because they are true but because they are indeed repulsive themselves. Yet Christ is different -- he is a person, he understands people. His rules and true because he is true, but they are not rigid like an impersonal force. They are to obeyed not because but because they are true. And he is to be obeyed not because but because he is true.
Sweethearts break and sweet spots bleed, and love gives way to loyalty... but nothing’s free or guaranteed... and sometimes love escapes such misery.And it’s beautiful.
-Stavesacre, St. Erik’s Plan
Ah, the dangers of doctrine, the pursuit of truth and rightness, for their own sake.
Take a look at this site Christianity-then-and-now.com.
It wearies me to look at this site, not because it is grieviously and terribly incorrect in terms of their doctrine - for much of what the site discusses is theologically correct, but because the words are dead. There is no life in them, nothing which indicates the presence and power of the Living Lord.
When the personhood of Christ and our corresponding relationship with a living being gets lost in our search for ‘correctness’, this is the result - a factually correct group, lacking the very life they are striving for. For without Christ, without a living understanding of him, all the so-called truth we possess is empty and dead.
We forget who we follow - fundimentalists, charismatics, and pentecostals alike. We do not follow a vague concept. We follow a risen, active, and powerful Lord. And unless we cease to follow some conceptual and theoretical version of the truth and begin following the One who Lives, we will worship and serve the law which leads to death.
The man running this site would disagree with me, it is true. He has a strong sense that what he is doing is right and is to be commended for that. But at some point, his eyes have been blinded to the true goals and purposes of the Lord. His doctrine and mind are right, but he barely knows the man he serves. People such as these cannot be argued with; they can only be shown Christ. And one can only pray that they learn to acknowledge him when he passes by...
In fact, one of his sites says that they abide by the idea that... “[one] can only do that which the Bible authorized.” (link here) What foolishness is this? Our obedience is not to the Bible. Our obedience is to Christ, who lives today, who allows us to understand the Word - for he, himself, is the word. It is he who provides us ultimate authorization for anything which we do. And this makes us alive, for we follow one who is alive.
This is not to say that the Bible is not to be obeyed - only that it can only be understood properly when in deference to the one who teaches it to us - Christ.
What does it mean to be shattered?
What does it mean to be good?
What good is it to be broken,
When I can’t do what I should?
Why then should I try?
Why then should I fight?
Why then should I live,
When what I have is no life?
Who then should I choose?
Who then should I be?
Who then should I seek,
When I merely want to know this life’s... mystery...
Permanent link here.
And if a man has got to listen to the voices of the mob
Who are reeling in throes of all the happiness they’ve got
When they tell all their troubles have been nailed up to that cross -
Then what about the times when even followers get lost?
~Andrew Peterson, “The Silence of God”
I love those lyrics – they speak deeply to me. Specifically, I love his choice of words, the way he uses the words “reeling” and “throes” to describe the mob of people who tell you of their happiness, to indicate a disbelief in the true nature of their happiness. “Throes” means “violent pangs of suffering”. And the mobs are reeling in these throes of happiness; their happiness sends them reeling for it is not true, it is not built on solid foundations, it is not right. And, being a mob, and knowing those around them are experiencing the same thing, they believe that what they are experience is true – for everyone else is experiencing it. Ah, what a great lyric. I mean, to mix the word throe and happiness to describe a place of untruth – its brilliant! And it gives me hope, because I see someone else asking questions, with the heart of a poet.
I’ve been considering the poet and what he means to the world. And I’ve concluded that the role of the poet has gotten lost in this modern world. When most think of poetry, they think of weak men writing little ditties with no inherent meaning, and no ability to affect the world about them. And, largely, that is more or less true – poetry today has lost its way for it, being founded in words, has no hold on the Word. And therefore it is a weak shadow, not carrying the prophetic power it should.
For poetry has the ability to transcend the literal words it possess; it forces the mind to go beyond, to a different realm, to see things in a different light. Poetry should be war-like, powerful, weak, and mindful. It should shatter consciousness and rebuild it. It should carry the power and authority of the One who is the Word.
Poetry is not for weak men. Poetry is for the warrior. Consider the legends of the warrior poet, who was equally powerful with word and sword. That is what poetry should be. That is what a man should be. Look at David or the prophets – all of these wrote some extraordinary poetry and were warriors in their own right. That is what it means to be a poet – nothing less.
Christ speaks in riddles. When he says in John 14 that he is going away and that his disciples should follow him, they ask, “How will we know the way?” Rather than giving a response like, do this, or here is a map, or follow Peter, he says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life…” I don’t like that answer, because once again, I am brought back to the reality that only way to follow him is to know him. The only way of finding the way is to follow the one who is the way. It is circular and disheartening. The only way to find the way is to follow the Way. Again, it is dependent on him. It is dependent on faith in him. It is not dependent on my faith, but his faith and his strength. Because he must say, “Follow me” and show me the reality that he is the way. Christ speaks in riddles and parables because these are the only things we can understand, the only way that we can understand that our efforts can never lead ourselves to him. There is no roadmap, there is merely a person beckoning to us and saying, “Follow me.”
I’m not sure I can follow Christ. His calling is too severe. It calls for the renunciation of all that we were, the reestablishment of what we are. It is a call to death. It is a call to lose all things, with no promise of temporal gain (to be fair, there are many promises of spiritual blessings – but few people I know would consider one ‘successful’ if he ended up living from day-to-day with little money, and great spiritual wisdom. In fact, his spiritual wisdom might be overlooked, because the spirit of this age is so ingrained in Church at large. Money is often our best assessment of spiritual vitality; I don’t care how much we attempt to deny it. It is, along with (for churches) attendance numbers. A Church which had a large following and then drove most of them away would be chastised for doing something wrong. And yet this is what Christ did when he told his disciples that they must drink his blood and eat his body. Our temporal eyes are foolish and spiritual eyes blind).
To reiterate: there is supreme difficulty in following Christ. He is a demanding master. And I am not trying to take away from his goodness, grace, or blessings (many would be getting their hackles up just for my emphasis here) – but what Christ demands is everything. Now. Not in pieces. Not when you feel like it. But now. Give me your life. You are mine, body and soul. Give me everything, or you have given me nothing. This is the God that we serve. He does not like half-measures. If half-measures were enough, then Christ would not have had to die – for the Law would have been just good enough to get some people into God’s good graces. Yet God gave all – his son to die.
I’m also not saying that those who have surrendered to Christ will not sin. They will. But, more often than not, people who have not surrendered fall upon the “I’m human” excuse for their sin and disobedience. And what a good excuse it is – who are we to argue? And we are human. But Christ demands all. And, apparently, if he demands it, he can take it if we allow him to.
“Follow me,” Christ demands. He demands nothing less, nothing more than to follow him. But how can I follow him if I do not know him? How do I recognize the face of the healer when I, myself, am blind? He can touch me, and heal my eyes… but I fail to open them in time, will I see his face before me? And how will I recognize that face? “Follow me,” He says, as if that is the answer to every problem in the world. For it somehow is. And the very fact that he demands it of me means that he is standing before me, calling out to me, drawing me to him. Meaning, that because he has called me, he will hold me, irregardless of whether I am able to recognize him myself. But it is a leap of faith difficult to take – so difficult, for it is a different type of faith, faith in a person, not an event.
For a miracle is easy to recognize and to know. When the rock splits and water comes out, you know something amazing has happened. When a man comes back from the dead, you know God has been there. It takes little faith to believe in these things. But to believe in a person – that is something deep, personal, and difficult. It is more difficult to recognize the character of a person than the character of an event. It is more difficult to know a person than an event (take a look at any historical study versus character study). To have faith in a person is a near impossible thing, for life has taught us that such faith is fearfully ignorant, and will end only in hurt. So it is a difficult thing to have faith in the man named Jesus.
And this is the faith that is so hard, because I’ve for so long had faith in myself – and even that faith has betrayed me. And now, I must throw myself on the mercy of a God? Or even worse, a man-god? To know that I will either rise or fall based on who His character is? “Follow me,” he says, as if my concerns were insignificant – as if his call should be, somehow, enough.
To live is to die,
To die is to breathe,
To breathe is to know,
To see, to be…
As Him, as He,
The Roaring Sea,
The Lion of War,
The Death of Me…
The Living Life,
The Life I lead,
The One I live,
The One I breathe…
For He is life;
He is me,
And in Him I die,
And in Him I breathe…
To live is to die,
To die is to breathe,
To breathe is to know,
To see, to be…
... wrote this the other day, when I was dealing with some severe spiritual struggles, as I watched the lake water and wondered what would become of my life. Poetry is liberating, in a way. It allows me to transcend the boundaries of my thoughts and words into a place where words have more meaning, and things become slightly more real.
I do wonder why I wrote the line “He is me”, since I want to take theological issue with it. I don’t normally go out of the way to explain my poems, but in this case, it is fairly obvious that “he” is Christ. I do not intend to say that I am a Christ, or The Christ. What I think I was trying to put into words was the intense closeness of a relationship with the Messiah - one in which a human is so tightly bound to the Lord that there is no distinguishing between the two, for the one has become as the Other. And in that way, me has become He. For we are the Body of Christ. And I think that is the level of closeness he calls us all to.
And the permanent link is here.
Miniver Cheevy, child of scorn,
Grew lean while he assailed the seasons;
He wept that he was ever born,
And he had reasons.
Miniver loved the days of old
When swords were bright and steeds were prancing;
The vision of a warrior bold
Would set him dancing.
Miniver Cheevy, born too late,
Scratched his head and kept on thinking;
Miniver coughed, and called it fate,
And kept on drinking.
~Edwin Robinson (“Miniver Cheevy”)
I greatly identify with this poem. I often wonder what would have become of me, had I been born a thousand years ago. Would I be the heroic warrior-poet I often dream of? I would I merely be a weak peasant, spending his days dreaming of doing something great?
In the clearing stands a boxer
And a fighter by his trade
And he carries the reminders
Of every glove that laid him down
And cut him till he cried out
In his anger and his shame
“I am leaving, I am leaving”
But the fighter still remains. ~Paul Simon, “The Boxer”
Related to my post on judging is John 7:18: The person who speaks on his own authority desires to receive honor for himself; the one who desires the honor of the one who sent him is a man of integrity, and there is no unrighteousness in him. This verse speaks to the difference between those who possess their own authority and those who possess an authority from another and, therefore, the difference between those who judge for themselves and those who judge for another. One group desires to judge for self-honor – they want the accolades that such judgment would give them. The other group desires accolades for their Father in heaven.