A theology of suffering

Suffering is a word that we do not like in modern day American mainline and independent churches. Suffering brings to mind the plight of the poor in Africa and the third world. Suffering brings to mind wasting away from terrible diseases. Suffering brings to the forefront intense emotions and questions about ultimate reality and the reasons for suffering. The church in modern America has not helped in the way it deals with suffering. From evangelical to fundamentalist to pentacostal to Baptist, we do not like hearing the word "suffering." The problem is that the Bible talks quite a bit on the subject, and not in the way that modern churches in America have taught it. Pastor Matt Chandler, of The Village Church in Dallas Texas, said in a recent interview for Justin Taylor's blog for The Gospel Coalition (http://tiny.cc/ybrgm), "There was no real understanding of what was going on in suffering. The theology most people had been taught was erroneous. They felt lost and confused." The overall context for this comment is that Matt Chandler is a pastor in Texas who last year was diagnosed with anaplastic oligodendroglioma, which is a malignant brain tumor. A year later by God's grace he is still alive, the tumor seems to be in remission, and he seems to be in recovery, but he is still undergoing chemotherapy and radiation treatments. During this time he has been prayed for by many ministers from multiple denominations for healing but so far none has been forthcoming. God for whatever reason which are his own, did not heal him of the tumor. During the process, and even years before the process Matt taught regularly on the topic of suffering because he saw that teaching on the subject has been incorrect and indeed antithetical to what scripture actually teaches on the subject. Reading the above mentioned blog brought to the forefront of my mind things I have been thinking about for years on the subject and how what I was taught did not match up with what scripture taught and what actually plays out in our daily lives in this regard.

This is a major topic and it is impossible in a blog to summarize the mountains of books and commentaries and teaching on this subject. The main point, the one the church needs to be biblical about, then is this: we will suffer in this life. God does not promise to take suffering away, Jesus did not suffer so we would not have to suffer in this life, and scripture makes no claim to a worry free, stress free, or suffering free life for the followers of Jesus. Anyone who teaches otherwise is either selling something, is ignorant, or is both. That is a hard statement, but it is one I'm willing to stand behind. Now if you're reading this your initial reaction might be to say "Well this minster said, or that author wrote God wants us to live in victory because we are champions that are to be always up in a down world, untouched by the ills and pains of this life" or "Hey suffering might come but stay positive God will deliver you out of it." There is a problem with this though and the problem is Jesus and the apostles. Jesus did not live above the pains and suffering of this life. His friend and cousin was beheaded, his family thought he was crazy, religious leaders sought to kill him, a mob tried to throw him off of a cliff, and he was beaten, tortured and crucified. We have two false images of Jesus. The first is that he sort of sailed through life as if he were floating on a cloud, and that he didn't experience pain or hunger. The other false image of Jesus is that he endured all suffering so we would not have to. Jesus was a flesh and bone human being, just as human as he was divine. He sweated, breathed, went to the bathroom, was hungry, tired, sleepy, and at times grieved. Jesus suffered so we would not have to suffer eternally in hell, he suffered so we could be reconciled to God, he suffered so that we could be justified and righteous in the sight of God, not so we could live a suffering free lifestyle of ease. The beauty of what Jesus did is that we have a God that bleeds and suffers with us. We have a God that loved us so much that he entered into our world and bled with us, suffered with us, and died like us. If we believe in his name we will rise like he did and when this happens then every tear will be wiped away and every pain will be healed. Not now then but soon.

Do not misunderstand me I am not saying that God does not heal. I am not saying that God does not care or that God will not intervene and that somehow our suffering does not affect him. God is good, just, loving, compassionate, abounding in mercy, and rich in grace. He cares deeply for us and as a result of that through Christ he suffers with us. The apostle Paul was mightily used of God. The apostle Peter was mightily used of God. Both died as martyrs. Peter was crucified upside down, and Paul was most likely beheaded. Peter was miraculously freed from prison but he was not delivered from being whipped. Paul escaped a city by being lowered in a basket but he was stoned, whipped, shipwrecked, hungry, in pain, and attacked by a messenger of Satan. Paul suffered greatly. The thing is though Paul had an incredible attitude towards it. He called his suffering light, temporary afflictions. Why? Because he saw that all of his suffering, all of his work, was eternal and was working out an eternal reward not only in him but for the people that came to Jesus through his ministry. God does not afflict but he will use affliction to work his purposes in us. God does not make us sick but he will use sickness to work something in us or through us. God does not hurt us to teach us a lesson but he will use those hurts to highlight that we are utterly reliant on his strength and grace and like Paul we can say in the midst of pain, "Your grace is sufficient for me."

My church background focused so much on material blessings that we expected God to heal everyone and to grant all our requests so we threw out the fact that God, who is not the author of suffering, will use our suffering for his purposes. C.S. Lewis wrote, "If you're approaching Him (God) not as the goal but as a road, not as the end but as a means, you're not really approaching him at all." Our problem is that we have seen God as the means to happiness, to prosperity, to riches and when we do not gain those things we hate God or disbelieve in him because we equate what he sometimes gives with who he is. Romans 8:28 (ESV) points out, "And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good for those who are called according to his purposes." Notice it doesn't say that all things that happen to us are good or that God promises nothing but good, it says that God will work all things together for good. Regardless of our pain, regardless of our suffering, regardless of our pain, God will redeem it and turn our deepest pain into something redemptive and good. Philip Yancey wrote and I agree, "God's goodness does not mean we will not get hurt, not in this fallen world at least. His goodness goes deeper then pleasure and pain, somehow incorporating both."

Surprised by Hope review

I recently wrote a mini-paper about a book I read called Surprised by Hope. I decided to post it here and share it with you all. It's related to doctrine so if you're not into that sort of thing you may find the rest of this very boring:

If N.T. Wright is correct, then for the past few hundred, if not thousands, of years Christian theological development has been wrong concerning the doctrine of heaven, hell, the resurrection and how it relates to our lives and the implications it holds in sway between doctrine, belief, and practice. During a sermon preparation and preaching course at the bible college I attended a student delivered his sermon on the resurrection in the vein of how N. T. Wright presented it and it was one off the more memorable messages delivered in the course because of the discussions it sparked after the sermon was over. That event stuck in my mind, not just because of the discussions, but because it was very theologically sound and the more I thought about it the less fault I could discover with it. That reaction was very close to what I experienced while reading this book: it was well thought out, he presented his ideas clearly and gave a lot of, what should be most important when hammering out doctrine: scriptural evidence balanced out with supporting historical evidence. I agreed with his central thesis but rather than rehash what I liked about the book in the rest of this paper I am going to address several concerns, disagreements, and observations about his thesis and the way it plays out in the local church and in our lives. Before I get into my thoughts on the book and it’s ideology I will recap his thesis. He asserts that the modern church’s theology on the afterlife is incorrect since they teach a disembodied afterlife with God in heaven as a means of leaving behind the world. He says the early church adopted the Jewish belief in the resurrection of the body and that the resurrection of Jesus was historical and efficacious. Historical in the fact it actually happened and efficacious because as Jesus resurrected we will also resurrect at the last day after a period of rest with God. Also as a result of his resurrection and his promise to redeem our own bodies we work to further his kingdom until the fullness of time when God descends and recreates the heavens and the Earth and gives us new resurrected bodies.

The first area of concern is with the church falling into the trap Western liberalism and secular humanism falls into: enacting means of social justice or reform by believing in the inherent goodness of humanity and that humanity will, as technology, our standard of living, and education improve, better themselves and achieve a sort of societal perfection and unity. This, of course, is patently unrealistic, politically naïve, and scripturally untenable as humanity is fallen and in need of redemption and no social justice program or acts of works can cure the condition of our souls. Wright mentions the shortcomings of Western progressive culture wherein science or God would cause all things to work together towards becoming good and whole and rightly points out it’s failures but we must be careful because defining salvation as working on Earth for the good of the kingdom coming can lead to the kind of misguided idealism he has spent previous chapters rejecting. To his credit he does address that issue later in the book but caution must be taken to where we work for the advancement of the kingdom here and know, doing the work of Christ, feeding the hungry, clothing and serving the poor, aiding the widows and orphans and ministering to the spiritual needs of people but neglect the redemption of the soul. John Piper said once in a sermon and his words ring true here, “Works are not the roots of justification, they are the fruit of justification.”

The other concept I have trouble agreeing with is his de-emphasis on hell and inability to succinctly clarify his view of what awaits unrighteous sinners. He did a masterful job describing what awaits those of us that enter into his kingdom upon resurrection and paints a beautiful picture of Gods people aiding in the healing of the world, but has no answers about hell. He rejects the picture of hell, rightly so, that reigns in modern churches as medieval and based on Greek myth and not on scripture. I can see his point but if after we die we are joined with Christ and God the Father in restful bliss awaiting our resurrection then it is not a stretch of the imagination to say that the unsaved dead are in a state of unrest and possible terror awaiting their final judgment. This would also make sense doctrinally given how resurrection works and how life after life after death works. However he also talks about how our resurrection fully humanizes us because it restores us to what we were before the fall. One has to be careful here that salvation and redemption do not get reduced into a sort of super self-actualization where we become our true human selves. This is close to the liberal evolutionary belief in the inherent goodness and development of man. In his view, as I understood it, hell is a separation from God during which the unsaved become further and further dehumanized until they have no knowledge of themselves, lost forever. The problem is that if we are going to take the New Jerusalem descending from heaven as a true and literal event, that the coming of God and heaven to the Earth to redeem and recreate the Earth as a true event then we cannot take away the picture of eternal punishment in the lake of fire as a true and literal event. I find it problematic to explain away the New Jerusalem as something that is going to happen and the lake of fire as just a picture. We need to be consistent in our interpretations and not pick and choose what we want to believe as fact and what we want to be imagery just because it may or may not sit well with our modern sensibilities. We will all be judged, some to death, some to life but Christ will judge us all.

Wright also mentions in the book that if churches believe in a disembodied spirit floating in an ethereal afterlife then they will tend to not be focused on doing the work of the kingdom because if the world is going to be destroyed and God will rapture the church away then why bother with doing anything other than saving souls? In my experience he makes a valid point but there are many churches that hold on to that theology that still do the work of the kingdom. In South Africa I was involved with a large church with a focus on winning souls. They had a very large charitable ministry and worked with drug addicts, AIDS sufferers, the homeless, orphans, and the disenfranchised. At the end of the day many churches will continue to reach ouch to the poor and needy because it is the right thing to do, and because Jesus told us to help those people. However I do agree with his point because for every church that reaches out there are many that only looks inward.

This book has been very challenging to me as I had taken for granted the doctrine of the afterlife I had been taught and saw no need to analyze it in light of scripture mistakenly thinking I had it down correctly. I do believe that right belief produces right action but as a caveat I would add that will only happen through the power of the Holy Spirit moving in our hearts. I believe that Wright has hit on something that needs to be examined and he makes a very compelling case. Where do we go from here then? If modern western Christianity has been mistaken how can we address and redress this? How can we begin to stem the tide of incorrect doctrine that comes from Greek and medieval philosophers and not from scripture? I do not have the answers for this but for groups of Christians that believe in, and pride themselves on, Sola Scriptura we may need to reevaluate this doctrine in order to be faithful to the credo of the great reformers and the Holy Spirit of God.

Processing...

As many of you know, or may not know, I am in the process of applying to seminary, Biblical Theological Seminary in Hatfield, PA to be exact. The reactions I've gotten when I've told people has ranged from "Why would you want to do that?" to "Go for it!" Some have not opined as of yet and honestly I don't quite care to hear everyone's opinion on the matter because it has no sway over my decision. the journey towards this has been a long one and I think I went the roundabout way instead of the straight and narrow way. After I came back from South Africa I didn't quite know what to do with myself. The first few months I took a well deserved rest, but after some time I became a bit stir crazy and tried my hand at various things but did not see them through. Everything I tried to do for myself seemed to not stick. I applied to some schools, attended some classes and even started master's degree program but did not make it past a term. I have always wanted to learn more and to study more but nothing caught my attention and I quickly became bored with it all and stopped. The desire has always been there and the ability, I hope, is there to complete a program but for a few years I've felt listless, but not so much anymore. For about a month now it's been slowly building in the back of my mind that I need to do this that if I don't pursue this then I may not get another opportunity. I heard a pastor once say that God is patient but his patience doesn't last forever. That feeling hasn't left me.

I've been feeling a mixture of regret and excitement. Regret because of all the time I have wasted in finally getting to the point where I've said to God, "Not my will, but your will be done." Excitement because it finally feels like my life has a trajectory again that's not dependent on the mood swings of a fiance or on taking what's around because life has nothing better to offer. I don't think it is wise to be too harsh when judging myself concerning this because everything I've done and seen have all shaped me into who I am. Could I have come to these realizations sooner? Probably. Maybe two months back I blogged about my trip to PA and what it jump-started in my heart. After years of running and trying to live my life for myself I have finally come to understand that my life is not my own, my life belongs to God. When we choose to follow Jesus we give up our lives to his will, not ours. Grace extends salvation to us for free, we cannot do anything to merit it but once it is received we owe God our lives in service to him and to others. As a result I have been immersing myself in the word and in teaching. I've been devouring sermons from Tim Keller, Mark Driscoll, and John Piper. As I have been doing this God has slowly started to open my heart again and I have been remembering things he had previously shown me. The other day I was listening to a sermon on the spiritual gifts and while the speaker was teaching I was struck by what he said because what he was discussing was similar to experiences I had in the past, and I felt God remind me of occasions where I was able to use those gifts. It was a really beautiful experience because I was reminded of what was and was given a glimpse of what could be. Oddly, it was frightening as well because it brought up things that I had thought were either dormant or no longer there. I am being vague on purpose but only because I'm still trying to process everything.

Some of you may read this and think well good for you but not understand. Many won't understand because it is difficult to explain the call especially when I've done my best to either avoid it directly or push it into the background in the hopes it would fade away. One of my professors once said that people blithely pursue ministry not understanding what it entails, what it requires of us, and what God requires of us. The fact that I've spent so long trying to avoid it just reinforces the fact that it is what God is requiring of me. The prophet Jeremiah spoke of it when he said, "But if I say, 'I will not mention him or speak anymore in his name' his word is in my heart like a burning fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot."

Lent and beyond

(I wrote this awhile back but added a lot more to it today)

Lent: the time of year when Christians give up something they desire, want, have, or struggle with for 40 days. (Because that's what Jesus died for: us not being able to eat meat on Fridays, abstinence, and giving up something trivial like chocolate. What happens after the 40 days are up? Is it okay to do again the behaviour we were trying to give up when Lent started?) Okay maybe sarcasm here is not warranted. I actually like Lent a lot and the whole idea behind it. Sometimes it pains me that I grew up in an independent uber-pentecostal denomination which eschewed any sort of liturgical formalism because to do so was being traditional and dry. Such things were frowned upon and our denomination considered itself "full gospel" (whatever that means) because we were free of the shackles of ritualism. But a little ritual and tradition is good, some of us need structure and a degree of formalism. I like Lent because it structures a time when we are to focus on the unselfish act of Christ by giving away a part of our selfish selves to prayer and discipline.

The point of Lent is for us to give to God something we need to give away, whether it be chocolate, sex, swearing, or alcohol. But the focus is not and should not be for us just to try and change our behavior. The Bible is filled with stories of people who tried to fulfill the law and failed miserably. Lent is about aligning our nature with God's nature, to let our will give way to his will, even if its just for 40 days. It's a time where we strive to loosen the bonds of the lust of the flesh and attempt to live a life focused on the spirit. So I may not rub ashes on my forehead, and I may not attend a formalized service, but as a believer I can still celebrate in my own way.
There are some things I have decided to lay down this season which I hope by the end of I will be able to leave behind, hopefully I can. My prayer for myself, and for whoever reads this, is that as my own strength lessens that the strength and will from God will increase, and that I will be able to hear the still whisper of the Father whilst drowning out the cacophony of voices trying to sway my attention away from him. I like a verse in Ecclesiastes which reads something like this," Don't make rash promises to God. When you make a promise to God don't delay in following through for God takes no pleasure in fools." I find that quite sobering. I have also found that the things I've vowed to give up aren't necessarily bad things in and of themselves, but they can be indicative of a greater struggle against something inside.

This year I feel a pressure like never before. It isn't necessarily a bad pressure but I feel something on the horizon taking shape and forming out of a sort of spiritual primordial ooze. Something important is coming and I need to be ready, not just outwardly but inwardly. At the same time though I feel a lethargy trying to sneak in and direct my attention away, combine this with a loneliness that comes and goes and it makes for a potent distraction. That's why Lent is so powerful because like I mentioned earlier it shifts the focus from our needs or wants to Christ who ultimately being the Alpha and the Omega is the salve our searching souls need. I may not keep all my vows this Lent, but I try my hardest and hopefully this year my spiritual discipline will keep me focused past Easter, and like Kara hearing the music that shows her the way to Earth, I'll be able to stay on course to where I need to be regardless of whatever distractions arise.

The psalmist wrote that the sacrifices God accepts and desires are from a contrite heart and a broken spirit, may my heart and soul be broken and contrite before him.

Selah

Selah.

This little word appears throughout the Psalms and Habakkuk and has generated a firestorm of debate on what the word means, its etymology, and it's proper use. Luckily for me there is a general consensus on its proper use and meaning, or else this would be the shortest blog in the history of blogs. An example is found in Psalm 66:4,

"All the Earth bows down to you; they sing praise to you, they sing praise to your name." Selah

It's use here can indicate either a break or musical interlude in the Psalm, or it could mean a pause to stop and reflect on what previously said. Regardless of its literal usage both meanings have one idea in common: to pause. More specifically to pause and weigh what has been said. In all probability when this word appears it usually means that something very important has just been said and that the listener needs to think and reflect back on what was said and done. This fits in line with Jewish traditions specifically because when you look at Jewish tradition you see a theme of remembrance and promises running through it. The Psalms are replete with people worshiping God and remembering the things he has done for them in the past with the expectant hope that he will continue to work for their good in the future. The temptation while writing this is to go down the expected path and mention something along the lines of we should all slow down every once in awhile and enjoy life, or listen more often to others, or sit in meditative silence. I am not going to go that route however because everyone else has and I see something different at work.

The more I think about it the more I believe that Selah is more akin to awe then to a mere pause, interlude, or reflection. Think about it, in the scriptures where God is exalted it usually comes after a passage of importance. This happens not because we need to consider if what was said is accurate, or true, or profound because the very fact it appears already means those three things. What it does mean is that the reader should take what was just said and through it become more aware of the character and person of God resulting in awe of who He is, what He has done, and what He will continue to do for His people. Abraham Heschel defined awe as something that is not just an emotion; it is an act of appreciative insight into meaning greater then ourselves, and what higher meaning beyond ourselves is there other than knowing God? Heschel also said that awe is the answer of the heart and the mind to the presence of mystery in all things. Colossians 1:26-27 says,

“This message was kept secret for centuries and generations past, but now it has been revealed to God’s people. For God wanted them to know that the riches and glory of Christ are for you Gentiles, too. And this is the secret: Christ lives in you.

Christ lives in me. If you believe in Him then Christ lives in you as well. Everything spiritual, mystical, temporal, and eternal all culminates in the person and work of Christ, and he lives in us if we believe in Him and what his sacrifice accomplished for humanity. What else could be our response to something like that except gratitude, humility, and unquenchable awe? Selah indeed.

Motion

One of Sir Isaac Newton's laws, I believe it is his third law of motion, states, "Every object in a state of motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it." For example if you roll a ball across a floor it will continue to roll unless somethings stops it. In this case that could be divots in the carpet, or friction with the air but it will continue to move until something makes it stop. (If you're reading this then don't worry, there won't be any more science for the rest of the blog so breathe a sigh of relief unless you like that sort of thing). I have noticed that this principle works not only with the physical sciences but also with a myriad of other things we experience even spilling over into our emotional and spiritual lives.

Since it's a blog, and blogs by their very nature are borderline narcissistic anyways, I'm going to use my own experiences as an example to highlight the point I just made. Many times in our live we have goals, dreams, things we strive to do and be. No matter how high a goal we set for ourselves most of us start off with verve and zest and as time passes the verve and zest turns into apathy. God may give us an idea or we may make decisions about our lives and things we want or need to do but then we lay those decisions down or not take steps to implement them. For myself I was just in PA visiting some friends and had some very intense and intelligent conversation about every aspect of my life which led me to a radical re-assessing. I have some decisions to make about a lot of things and it's been weighing on me since I got back into Florida. The point is I have all this going on inside but already there are external or internal forces trying to get my mind and focus away from what I may need to do and focus it back onto what is. Last year I looked at my life and thought to myself that I should just lie back and accept it and that what was going on was as good as it was going to get. Quite a fatalistic attitude I know but I felt like this is it and I need to get used to it because nothing is going to change, this is how it's been so this is what I have to look forward to in the future. Of course that kind of thinking is wrong and the trip I took knocked me out of that loop but it is crazy how life and the things I've grown used to are trying to work their way back into my head. I find it amazing when decisions or realizations are made how quickly outside forces rise up and try to strangle it.

Luckily though we have the ability to defy the laws of physics. We have an agent that helps us knock those external or internal forces out of the way so we can stay in motion towards where we need to be and what we need to do. (Of course science buffs I'm not speaking of defying the laws of physics in the natural world, I'm referring to the spiritual). This agent of change isn't an Obama speech or half baked change platitudes, we have God himself in us and working through us to bring about the change he desires and in many cases inspired. I've found that this process can be broken down into something like this:

1) We identify a need or are inspired to make some sort of change, so we get excited and talk about it and plan for it and begin to make the necessary steps in a particular direction

2) We lose momentum and we allow cares of this world, worries, situations and complications, and apathy to set in and our motion gets slower and slower due to the forces acting upon it

3) We cease pursuing wondering what happened, why are we still at the same place, and why hasn't anything changed? And here its where motion stops.. The good thing though is that it is at this point where God will nudge us and get us back in motion and have us rolling again to where we need to be or what we need to do. We have to be open to that nudging and when we start moving again to keep it going by not paying attention to what's trying to steal or halt our motion. J.R.R. Tolkien wrote a poem, 3 different versions appear in the the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, that I think describes this process in a nutshell:

The Road goes ever on and on

Down from the door where it began.

Now far ahead the Road has gone,

And I must follow, if I can,

Pursuing it with weary feet,

Until it joins some larger way

Where many paths and errands meet.

And whither then? I cannot say.

Thirsty

Currently I am in the great state of Pennsylvania. I am fairly mercenary about states though, my favourite one being where I find myself. So right now PA is my fave in spite of the bitter cold. I am here visiting my oldest and closest friend Mike and some other really good friends I've made throughout the years I've been visiting here (One of whom is graciously putting me up for a few days.). Mike's father is a pastor and this morning I went to their service and Mike preached this morning about how God cuts our story out of us and gives us his own story. If you stop and think about it it is really quite profound: God imparts himself to us empowering us to live a life above what we could make for ourselves. The agent of this cutting being the sword of the spirit which the books of Ephesians and Hebrews says is the Word of God, and that Word of God is alive, sharp, and powerful enough to pierce our souls. It is already understood that Jesus is the Word made flesh, incarnated if you prefer, and dwelt among us. There is a lot of teaching on that aspect but not a lot of teaching on the aspect of the Word of God being alive. Today I think that some puzzle pieces clicked together in my mind concerning this and I felt like sharing it.

For the past few months I have been reading more voraciously then normal, and for me normal is quite a lot so for me to say that I'm reading more then my usual is saying something. (You may be wondering what this has to do with my previous paragraph, but if you stick around it will make sense). Needless to say I have been devouring books. While reading I have been feeling sort of like a traveller lost in the Sahara Desert: that almost frantic feeling of fear once the realization hits that I don't know where I am. It’s been like that when I've been reading. Something in me has been yearning for something MORE and none of the books I've been reading have been able to assuage that feeling. True I've read some books and am reading books that are striking emotional resonances within me. I'm currently reading God in Search of Man by Abraham Heschel and it is a profound book of religious Jewish philosophy and his comments on the nature of God are amazing. I'm reading through Encounters with Merton by Henri Nouwen and am gleaning a lot from it and even though it is a slim volume it has a lot of insight. However there is a profound difference between books written about God and the book that contains the Word of God. As I was listening to the sermon this morning I was reading along in my Bible with the scriptural quotations being used and I realized that this was what I was missing and I felt like an idiot because the answer was there in front of my face the whole time. As I was reading it I could feel the disconnect in my soul reconnect with the divine and I realized that I have spent far too little time in the Word and with the Word and spent too much time reading about the Word. As I read scripture the yearning I had inside was satisfied.

One of the Psalms says, "As the deer longs for streams of water, so I long for you Oh God." Thinking about that passage took on deeper significance for me this morning. One thing I love about scripture is that there can be a passage that you've read over and over again, then in one moment it becomes alive in your heart and takes on a meaning it didn't previously have. If Christ is the Word incarnate, made flesh, I do not think it is a stretch to say that as we read the words of God that THE Word of God incarnates in the words we read in scripture piercing our hearts and transforming us more into what we are supposed to be and what it is possible for us to become. Thomas Merton wrote, "By the reading of scripture I am so renewed that all seems to be renewed around me and with me. The sky seems to be a pure, cooler blue, the trees a deeper green, light is sharper on the outlines of the forest and the hills and the whole world is charged with the glory of God and I feel fire and music in the earth under my feet." I really like that but I also like the fact that this not only happens to us without, it also happens to us within: truth is illuminated, will is discerned, paths are made straight, chaos gives way to peace, and emotional tumult gives way to wholeness.

If love was a plane..

This one has been a long time in the making. When I mentioned to a friend the subject of what I'm going to write about, he looked at me and said one word, "Why?" I thought for a minute and replied, "Because I need to."

I let go of Candice last year and am back to my usual chipper self but this has been running around in my head for a while. Possibly my compulsion to write about it, to get it out in the open, which is antithetical to my usual desire for privacy, will serve as a final expulsion of anything left in me that cared for her. At the end the whole episode turned out to be fairly brutal and painful and while going through it I did the opposite of what I normally do, I clammed up. I never wrote about it, I put off talking about it after it happened and when I finally did the first person I told lives a few states away. The first few weeks I was numb and it felt like I was living in a state of perpetual fugue. Hurts like this always take time to heal, and hurts on this scale irrevocably leave scars, but such is the peril of love I suppose. Brad Paisley quips that if love were a plane, no one would get on because statistically the chances of love working out is substantially worse then the statistical probability of a plane crash. But we all line up anyway and board a plane that sometimes only has one engine and half a wing that serves terrible food, and is piloted by drunken chimpanzees. Yet we gleefully and with expectant hope line up anyways, boarding passes clutched tightly in our hands eager to get on board and get flying. As cynical as my previous statements sound though I'd gladly grab my ticket and queue with everyone else because eventually I'll board the right flight and survive the trip even if my previous travels never took me where I wanted to go.

I think that I latch on to women too quickly. I don’t know why I’m wired that way. All it takes is a few good dates, a couple of kisses and I’m sold. Combine that with another person who was also searching for love and romance and you get a potent mélange of neediness and codependency. I have to say though when I finally started talking about it my friends really stepped up to the plate. They constantly called, never judged, were always quick to take me out and not leave me alone if I was especially down. I have to say though Silas called it from the very beginning (his predictions about women in my life are surprisingly prescient). Ah well regardless the whole situation left me well aware of a few things:

1) I am supremely unlucky at love

2) I tend to latch on too quickly rather then let things develop slowly

3) I have no idea how to be in a relationship that lasts longer then 6 months

4) I’m getting too old for this crap

Socrates said, “And in knowing that you know nothing, makes you the smartest of all.” By that rationale I should be a pro at this but I still feel like I’m playing in the Little League. Maybe my stats would improve if I didn’t draft from the injured list, but when injuries are internal it’s more difficult to judge. When you consider that along with my very linear approach to problem solving and desire to help whomever I care about creates a situation that may be detrimental but Ill still try anyway because it’s better then being alone. At least my focus is off myself and on someone else. That may be wrong and I’m pretty sure it is, but at the end of the day maybe the philosophical question I should focus on is “know thyself” rather then “give yourself away.”