Relationships are always in flux

I told Nate I've forgotten how to write prose--perhaps I have. I've been writing poetry a lot lately, mostly for class, and I've written a lot of news stories. I haven't had time to write creative prose. This blog may seem disjointed, probably because I'm out of practice, or because my thoughts are so disjointed.

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What have I been thinking about lately? Sin.

I almost wrote a sin blog a few weeks ago, but I haven't found the time. Even now, even on fall break, I know I should write a lit. analysis or a four-page paper on Saladin instead of blogging--but I need to blog. I have to blog.

So. Sin.

I used to try to narrow all my petty sins back to a bigger, more internal sin. Usually I got it back to pride or selfishness. I think that's true.

What was Eve's sin? She took the fruit from the snake. How was that a sin? She disobeyed God. Why did she disobey God? She thought he was holding back something from her, something she needed. She was insecure. She was selfish.

What I hate about sin is how unavoidable it is. Christ says stuff like "things that cause people to sin are bound to come." You think you're clear of sin: things like lying, cheating, stealing, adultery, gossip? You get all haughty and proud. Good job: you just sinned.

I hate that God's standard for sin is so broad: "Whoever, then, knows the good he ought to do and doesn't do it, sins." I should eat low fat yogurt instead of this chocolate chip cookie ... ah, what the hey. It's the weekend. Whoops, you just sinned.

I hate how sneaky sin is. Thrice (yes, the band Thrice) describes sin as a lion and a wolf. You try to keep the big sins out, but the little sins sneak in without noticing like a wolf in sheep's clothing. (Or, I think of Little Red Riding Hood.) Those little sins let the big sins in the door.

The wolf, he howls
The lion does roar
The wolf lets him in
The lion runs in through the door
The real fun begins
As they both rush upon you and
Rip open your flesh
The lion eats its fill and then
The wolf cleans up the mess


I hate how much God hates sin. George MacDonald said whatever comes between us and God must be destroyed with fire.

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Here's my question, theologians, when you're stuck in sin, how do you get out? If you tell me that to be a Christian I must live a God-honoring, righteous, sin-less, "blameless" life, how do I stop sinning? Is it just my decision? Is it willpower? Is it God? Can the Holy Spirit stop me?

What if prayers aren't answered? What if the cycle of addiction never stops? What if I can't overcome, what if I let sin win, what if I have to give in, what if I'm tired of fighting, what if I no longer care?

You Calvinists say I'm fine.

You Armenians say I'm going to hell.

When will I remember that life is a series of troughs and peaks, summits and nadirs? When will I remember that my relationship with God, like all relationships, is in flux?

In Comm. Theory we talk about Relational Dialectics which states that truth: relationships are always in flux. There are times when everything seems to be perfect, this is called the "aesthetic moment." It never lasts. 

So my aesthetic moments with God are few and far between.

But we're okay.

(God, we're okay, right?)

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At least there's hope.
Believe it or not: there is some.

"There's now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus."

And,

"But sin didn't, and doesn't, have a chance in competition with the aggressive forgiveness we call grace. When it's sin versus grace, grace wins hands down. All sin can do is threaten us with death, and that's the end of it. Grace, because God is putting everything together again through the Messiah, invites us into life—a life that goes on and on and on, world without end."




Ezekiel

who is number one.

I'm glad my view of politics have been shallow for the past few elections.

In fifth grade we had "mock-elections" for the 2000 presidental campaign: Bush vs. Gore. I remember my social studies teacher made Bush sound like this amazing guy and Gore, a bafoon who thought he invented the internet.

Needless to say, over 95% of the fifth grade class at Perry Hill Elementry School voted George W. as president of the United States.

That is why for six years I claimed to be a Republican.

Now, this isn't a blog about politics, because I literally have nothing to say about that (VOTE OBAMA '08!... ha, that was a joke), this is about extremes. In this case: Conservatism vs. Liberal-ism.

But I don't want to end there.

See, this may be extremely obvious to some of you, but others not: EXREMES=BAD. [Let me define this version of EXTREME before you throw a few fits. I mean this: an extreme is something you believe and stand for with no knowledge backing it up (IGNORANCE I call it). It's forcing those beliefs on people HARSHLY and WITHOUT LOVE. It's a belief that you let get between you and God. And though you may CLAIM it draws you closer to God, that can sometimes be the opposite.]

Facism vs. Communism.

I've been thinking and thinking about this topic, not really sure how to even talk about it in a blog or elsewhere. I mean, usually when I have a belief I hang tight to it. Example: Jesus is Lord. Probably not going to change my mind about that one.

[But that's not really what I'm going with either. God is an Absolute, a Constant in this equation so let's not declare Him debatable... not right now.]

But we can discuss the Church. Church of God vs. Church of Christ. (One word difference yet, so incredibly opposites).

My point here is this: people search and search for their stand on one subject or another and once they believe one side, they don't let up. Example: Abortion=Bad. So instead of thinking rationally, they jump off the deep end. Like a particular Pro-Life group who runs around the country protesting at abortion clinics but doesn't take spend anytime loving. They don't even pray for these women who go through this. They hate women who get abortions. They hate doctors who administer abortions. (hate=extreme)

I think probably the worst one ever, especially for Christians, is the gay marriage situation. Yes, the Bible says homosexuality is a sin BUT does it say to hate homosexuals? NO. Period.

I am using very contraversial issues, I know, and I know that I'm probably putting too much unsolicited opinion in here as well. But here's the scoop: when there are extremes, there are footholds.

"And do not give the devil a foothold."

It makes your chosen extreme first priority, or soon to be. God needs to be the Extreme, not this issue or that.

I remember back in fifth grade I made a conscious decision that I, Lauren Deidra Sawyer (10.5 years old) was going to be a Republican because George W. Bush didn't claim to invent the internet.

Whenever I form an opinion on something I think hey, what's the opposite view (the antithesis!) then I rule one or the other out. I'm pretty sure everyone does that one way or another.

And so we have a tendency to hang onto our beliefs... so hard. SO HARD. We are unwilling to let go. We believe gay marriage is so wrong that we exploit the image of Christ and claim no hope for them. We are sinners, but they are worse. Or on the other side, the opposite. We want to show God's love to them SO bad that we "hijack" Jesus and ignore the passages about homosexuality in the Bible.

Neither are right. And both will give Satan leeway to do something not so cool in our lives.

Yes, yes, before Mrs. Pickett calls me on ranting (good thing she's not reading this!) I will acknowledge the opposition. But faith!, you say. Faith? Devotion? Humility? Love? Aren't those all extremes? Virtues: can't those be good in huge amounts?

Yes, but consider this: too much of anything NOT God is bad. That means TOO MUCH humility can be bad. (Humility that, ironically, leads to pride in that way.)

As Uncle Screwtape put it, "All extremes, except extreme devotion to the Enemy, are to be encouraged."

Now I don't want my blog to be misread. I'm not saying it's good to be complacent or lukewarm, I'm just saying know why you believe one thing or another. Know why you call yourself a Democrat or Republican, patriot or pacifist; don't use it to hurt the opposition. Be courteous, respect each others' beliefs.

And don't give the enemy a foothold.

♥ezek.

"Then quietly and gradually nurse him on to the stage at which the religion becomes merely part of the 'cause', in which Christianity is valued chiefly because of the excellent arguments it can produce in favour of the British war-effort or of Pacifism. The attitude which you want to guard against is that in which temporal affairs are treated primarily as material for obedience. Once you have made the World an end, and faith a means, you have almost won your man, and it makes very little difference what kind of wordly end he is pursuing. Provided that meetings, pamphlets, policies, movements, abuses, and crusades, matter more to him than prayers and sacraments and charity, he is ours--and the more 'religious' (on those terms) the more securely ours." The Screwtape Letters

The Law of Undulation

I have this pretty pink frame above my desk in my room. Inside of it, in big pink lettering, a verse from the Message Bible reads:

"Distress that drives us to God does that. It turns us around. It gets us back in the way of salvation. We never regret that kind of pain. But those who let distress drive them away from God are full of regrets and end up on a deathbed of regrets." [I Corinthians 7:10]

Usually after I have a Bench Moment [when I meet with God and He reveals something to me] I have a spiritual high and am on a so-called "mountain." Life is good. But not so this time.

I guess this period of my life is marked with Change, so that must mean that because of change, there's going to be what they call a valley. Welcome Mr. Valley.

Things will get better this I promise you

I know you won't feel this way forever

Things will get better this I promise you

And I know loneliness won't last forever

And so I'm taken back to this concept illustrated by CS Lewis in The Screwtape Letters. "The law of Undulation," Uncle Screwtape calls it. It's this picture of troughs and peaks, ups and downs, valleys and mountains. In other words, sometimes bad times happen and you just feel dry. And I feel dry. And there's nothing wrong with that.

I'm going to put a big portion of that letter in this blog because I have no way to describe my feelings BUT through this. Through the conversation of two demons I can learn a thing or two about myself, ironic, huh?

But I wanted to tell you why I tagged you all in this blog, because as you can see, I rarely tag people in notes. And when I do it's because I know it's interesting or funny. But this one is from my heart. And though the majority of it is written by people NOT me, it is how I feel. Take what you can.

My dear Wormwood,

So you 'have great hopes that the patient's religious phase is dying away', have you? I always though the Training College had gone to pieces since they put old Slubgob at the head of it, and now I am sure. Has no one ever told you about the law of Undulation?

Humans are amphibians--half spirit and half animal.... As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time... Their nearest approach to constancy, therefore, is undulation--the repeated return to a level from which they repeatedly fall back, a series of troughs and peaks. If you had watched your patient carefully you would have seen this undulation in every department of his life--his interest in his work, his affection for his friends, his physical appetites, all go up and down. As long as he lives on earth periods of emotional and bodily richness and lieveliness will alternate with periods of numbness and poverty. The dryness and dullness through which your patient is now going are not, as you fondly suppose, your workmanship; they are merely a natural phenomenon which will do us no good unless you make a good use of it.

To decide the best use of it is, you must ask what use the Enemy wants to make of it, and then do the opposite. Now it amy surprise you to learn that in His efforsts to get permanent possession of a soul, He relies on the troughs even more than on the peaks; some of His special favourites have gone through longer and deeper troughs that anyone else.... But the obedience which the Enemy demands of men is quite a different thing. One must face the fact that all the talk about His love for men, and His service being perfect freedom, is not (as one would gladly believe) mere propaganda, but an appalling truth. He really does want to fill the universe with a lot of loathsome little replicas of Himself--creatures whose life, on its miniature scale, will be qualitatively like His own, not beause He had absorbed them but because their wills freely conform to His. We want cattle who can finally become food; He wants servants who can finally become sons. We want to suck in, He wants to give out. We are empty and would be filled; He is full and flows over. Our war aim is a world in which Our Father Below has drawn all other beings into himsef: the Enemy wants a world full of beings united to Him but still distinct.

And what is where troughs come in. You must have often wondered why the Enemy does not make more use of His power to be sensivly present to human souls in any degree He chooses and at any moment. But you now see that the Irresistible and the Indisputable are the two weapons which the very nature of His scheme forbids Him to use. Merely to override a human will... would be for Him useless. He cannot ravish. He can only woo. For His ignoble idea is to eat the cake and have it; the creatures are to be one with Him, but yet themselves; merely to cancel them, or assimilate them, will not serve. He is prepared to do a little overriding at the beginning. He will set them off with communication of His presence which, though faint, seem great to them, with emotional sweetness, and easy conquest over tempation. But He never allows this state of affairs to last long. Sooner or later He withdraws, if not in fact, at least from their conscious experience, all those supports and incentives. He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs--to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish. It is during such trough periods, much more than the peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature He wants it to be. Hence the prayers offered in the state of dryness are those which please Him best. We can drag our patients along by continual tempting, because we design them only for the table, and the more their will is interfered with the better. He cannot "tempt" to virtue as we do to vice. He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take aways His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles. Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy's will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.

Your affectionate uncle

SCREWTAPE