Desire

Here's an excerpt from C. S. Lewis' novel That Hideous Strength:

How it would have attracted him once.

Would have attracted him once . . . Suddenly, like a thing that leaped to him across infinite distances with the speed of light, desire (salt, black, ravenous, unanswerable desire) took him by the throat. The merest hint will convey to those who have felt it the uality of the emotion which now shook him, like a dog shaking a rat; for others, no description perhaps will avail. Many writers speak of it in terms of lust: a description admirably illuminating from within, totally misleading from without. It has nothing to do with the body. But it is in two respects like lust as lust shows itself to be in the deepest and darkest vault of its labrynthine house. For like lust, it disenchants the whole universe. Everything else that Mark had ever felt -- love, ambition, hunger, lust itself -- appeared to have been mere milk and water, toys for children, not worth one throb of the nerves. The infinite attraction of this dark thing sucked all other passions into itself: the rest of the world appeared blenched, etiolated, insipid, a world of white marriages and white masses, dishes without salt, gambling for counters. He could not now think of Jane except in terms of appetite: and appetite here made no appeal. That serpent, faced with the true dragon, became a fangless worm. But it was like lust in another respect also. It is idle to point out to the perverted man the horror of his perversion: while the fierce fit is on, that horror is the very spice of his craving. It is ugliness itself that becomes, in the end, the goal of his lechery; beauty has long since grown too weak a stimulant. And so it was here. These creatures of which Frost had spoken -- and he did not doubt that they were locally present with him in the cell -- breathed death on the human race and on all joy. Not despite this but because of this, the terrible gravitation sucked and tugged and fascinated him towards them. Never before had he known the fruitful strength of the movement opposite to Nature which now had him in its grip; the impulse to reverse all reluctances and to draw every circle anti-clockwise. The meaning of certain pictures, of Frost's talk about "objectivity", of the things done by witches in old times, became clear to him. The image of Wither's face rose to his memory: and this time he did not merely loathe it. He noted, with shuddering satisfaction, the signs it bore of a shared experience between them. Wither also knew. Wither understood . . .

Gradually he realized that he had sustained some sort of attack, and that he had put up no resistance at all; and with that realization a quite new kind of dread entered his mind. Though he was theoretically a meterialist, he had all his life believed quite inconsistently, and even carelessly, in the freedom of his own will. He had seldom made a moral resolution, and when he had resolved some hours ago to [possible spoiler omitted], he had taken it for granted that would be able to do what he resolved. He knew, to be sure, that he might "change his mind"; but till he did so, of course, he would carry out his plan. It had never occurred to him that his mind could thus be changed for him, all in an instant of time, changed beyond recognition. If that sort of thing could happen . . . It was unfair. Here was a man trying (for the first time in his life) to do what was obviously the right thing -- the thing that Jane and the Dimbles and Aunt Gilly would have approved of. You might have expected that when a man behaved in that way the universe would back him up. For the relics of such semi-savage versions of Theism as Mark had picked up in the course of his life were stronger in him than he knew, and he felt, though he would not have put it into words, that it was "up to" the universe to reward his good resolutions. Yet the very first moment you tried to be good, the universe let you down. It revealed gaps you had never dreamed of. It invented new laws for the express purpose of letting you down. That was what you got for your pains.

Resistance

I've been thinking about what the author of Hebrews wrote: "In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood." (Hebrews 12:4) And Jesus from the Sermon on the Mount, "If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell." (Matthew 5:29-30) How many people today come anywhere near this? It seems that our struggle with sin today may go as far as doing what might be a little inconvenient. But God forbid anything which might make a fundamental change in how I live my life. I know that if I chopped off a hand or plucked out an eye, that would seriously change some things. What sort of response might be comparable to that in my life today? How far will I go to "resist the devil, [that he might] flee from [me]" (James 4:7)?

The slightly broader context on the quote above (Hebrews 12:1-13):

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.

In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. And you have forgotten that word of encouragement that addresses you as sons:

"My son, do not make light of the Lord's discipline,
and do not lose heart when he rebukes you,
because the Lord disciplines those he loves,
and he punishes everyone he accepts as a son."

Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons. For what son is not disciplined by his father? If you are not disciplined (and everyone undergoes discipline), then you are illegitimate children and not true sons. Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of our spirits and live! Our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.

Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees. "Make level paths for your feet," so that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed.

Malaise

I've been in a funk recently. Not sure what's up, but I just don't feel too motivated to do much of anything. This is kinda bad, since I'm supposed to be taking my A exam soon to determine my future. I think a lot of what's going into this is not interacting very much with people - it's kind of a vicious cycle, because I don't get much work done, so I feel like I have to spend more time alone in my office, and then I get more into this funk from not spending quality time with my friends. I spent a chunk of time tonight looking at a bunch of my friends' wedding pictures on facebook from the last few months. Apparently this marriage thing is the hip thing to do these days. I'm gonna read my Bible and go to bed.

Confidence

Several years ago, when I was first beginning to come to an understanding of what it means to follow God, I quickly ran into the doctrine of eternal security and election. This is still a very tricky doctrine, but it no longer troubles me as it did in the past.

I read passages such as Hebrews 6:4-6 and wondered about its implications, particularly to those who leave the church. In an Arminian interpretation, it seems like you only get one chance. If you're saved once and fall away, there's no coming back (either for some theological reason, or else because such a person never would come back in the first place). A Calvinist perspective says that the one who fell away is either still saved, or else he never truly knew Christ in the first place. Matthew 7:21-23 tells us that there are many who believe they are Christian, but who Jesus never knew. In either case, I was worried about whether I was one such person.

I talked to a friend at the time, a more mature believer, and he assured me that we can indeed have this certainty. He compared his relationship with God to his relationship with his new wife - while it is certainly physically possible that something could happen that he ends up cheating on his wife, he knew with an absolute certainty -- from a deep personal experience of his relationship in the past and present -- that it would never happen.

I'm not typically quite as confident about my own behavior - I know that I lack discipline and that I'm often liable to do or not do otherwise to what I've previously asserted. In short, I'm prone to fickleness in my actions. But over the past several years, I have indeed grown in confidence of my faith, just like my friend promised. I know now with utmost confidence that no matter what happens, in the end I will turn to God. I know this from past experience - how I've reacted to different situations - and from how I presently understand God. (Of course, I say this with the caveat that only God can truly see my heart, and that better than I myself can see it, so it is possible I'm fooling myself, but that's not really worth considering).

However, I've already briefly mention another area where I lack confidence - my own actions. I find in myself a disturbing doublemindedness reminiscent of the latter half of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, in which my evil and good sides plot against one another for dominance of my body. I can see one minute with tearful clarity the depth of my sin and its effects, and the next minute entertain ideas of further sin, pondering how I can set up traps to tempt myself in the future in an effort to more fully indulge my fleshly desires. I think about the verse in James,

If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does.
-- James 1:5-8

I almost find it the other way around. I am double minded, and have prayed and prayed about the same things, and after all this, I doubt even more because I'm not even sure whether I will fall to temptation in just the next day. I think about the woman who asked Jesus to help her with her unbelief.

I know from experience that uncertainties can change. I've seen my faith grow from infancy to certainty in the last six years. I want the same sort of certainty here too. Right after telling about the false believers, Jesus taught

"Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash."
-- Matthew 7:24-27

I long for a house that won't fall when the rains come down and the streams rise and the winds blow. But it seems almost circular - how do I put these words into practice when that's the whole problem in the first place? All I can think of is this hymn:

My hope is built on nothing less
Than Jesus' blood and righteousness.
I dare not trust the sweetest frame,
But wholly trust in Jesus’ Name.

On Christ, the solid rock, I stand;
all other ground is sinking sand.
-- Edward Mote (1836)

My hope isn't built on my own merit, but on Jesus'. So I'll just keep praying.

Spiritual Buffalo

I've been teasing out a few posts for the last week now, and I think I've finally solidified the first piece out of it all.

Last weekend, I saw my current favorite artist (if it hasn't been obvious up until now), Sara Groves, in concert. She prefaced the title song of her latest album, "Add To The Beauty", with a story. Many years ago she saw the movie "Dances with Wolves" and a scene that particularly struck her and stuck with her was the one where they find a huge number of buffalo slaughtered, with the myriad of useful parts just wasted. More recently in Africa, she realized that she hadn't been using "all of her spiritual buffalo" -- that the various things in her life could be used for much greater purposes in God's kingdom.

This idea is tied closely with redemption. When God redeems us, we primarily understand it to refer to the justification and forgiveness of sins we receive from Christ's death. But another part is sanctification, which I understand to mean that while we are on earth, He is progressively making us to increase in holiness, and in likeness to him. We have the command to "be perfect, as your heavenly father is perfect" -- part of our redemption is the daily steps in that direction, through God's grace.

I now think of passages like Romans 6:13, instructing us to offer the parts of our bodies to God as instruments of righteousness, and 1 Corinthians 10:31, saying that whether we eat, drink, or whatever we do, to do it for the glory of God. These are referring to individual actions and compartments of our lives, and each and every one of them is to be individually redeemed along with the whole. Thinking in this framework has helped me greatly in the past week to look to God in many more ways than I had before, and to flee from temptations. I find myself praying that these little things -- my eating and drinking, my going and coming, my work, school, and leisure, and many more things -- would all be redeemed. And when I find myself considering a markedly "unredeemed" course of action in one of these areas, it occurs to me that God does care about how I use the resources He's given to me, including the situation at hand.

Anyway, here's the song:

We come with beautiful secrets
We come with purposes written on our hearts, written on our souls
We come to every new morning
With possibilities only we can hold, that only we can hold

Redemption comes in strange place, small spaces
Calling out the best of who we are

And I want to add to the beauty
To tell a better story
I want to shine with the light
That's burning up inside

It comes in small inspirations
It brings redemption to life and work
To our lives and our work

It comes in loving community
It comes in helping a soul find it's worth

This is grace, an invitation to be beautiful
-- Sara Groves, Add To The Beauty, "Add To The Beauty" (2006)

Rain

Okay, I have another Sara Groves song. I promise this can't go on forever (there's only so many songs to quote). But it's certainly true that I am heavily influenced by music, for better or worse. I think in this case it's for better.

Anyway, I'm trying to wrestle with trials and temptations, particularly my response. I've meditated on James 1 over and over again:

Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverence. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.
...
Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him. When tempted, no one should say, "God is tempting me." For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; but each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.
-- James 1:2-4,12-15 (emphasis added)

Perseverence. Endurance. I think of a marathon -- for the entire length of the race, the runner just has to keep going. At any point, he could make a one-time decision to stop, but in order to finish the race, he must continuously choose to endure the difficulty and press on to the goal. On a related note, this is part of why I have no hair: shaving takes a one-time decision, but it takes patience to grow it out (not that I particularly want to do this anyway).

So what does all this have to do with rain? The very pain of the work-out is actually a good thing. The sore muscles the next day indicate that they're being actively transformed into stronger muscles. I've been listening to this song a lot in the last few days:

Call it what you will, I call it rain
When troubles come and pan against my soul
Go in if you like, I will remain
And let the washing waters make me whole

Just when I'm sure that I can't bear the rain
A tiny leaf starts pushing through the ground
In a place where the soil was too dry to sustain it
A new tiny flower can be found

Once I was stuck, I thought things would never change
And I watched that cloud pass through the sky
And right before my eyes it took a different shape
And I knew, so would the clouds in my own life

And the flowers come to show
That all that rain was helping me to grow
-- Sara Groves, Past The Wishing, "Rain" (1994)

So I know what I have to do (I've known for ages) -- when the rain comes, I need to stay outside and endure it, rather than taking the easy way out and running for cover. The rain is good for me, but only if I continually make the decision to bear it.

Like A Skin

I've decided that the "essay-style" blog just isn't working out so well for me. Don't get me wrong - writing an essay about something is a great way to really dig into it and think critically about something. But it takes oh so much time and I just don't seem to be motivated enough to do it at this stage in my life, and frankly it may be a bit pretentious. I've a number of times wanted to write something that wasn't a fully thought-out theological treatise. So now I won't be troubled about doing that. I'll still write an essay now and again, but it'll be on a different blog for now. With no committment.

So why the title? It's from a song that's basically the story of my life. The following line in particular,

I’ve been longing for something tangible
Some kind of proof that there’s been change in me

I know full well that God will be faithful to complete the work He began in me (Philippians 1:6). But I get frustrated and sometimes even wonder if He ever started in the first place. Coming to Christ as an adult has ups and downs, and one of the downs is that my "old man" had twenty years to grow in me before he was joined by the new. And while I put to death the "old man" in my baptism (Romans 6:2-4), every Christian knows that this death is not once-and-for-all (yet), but rather a daily taking up of my cross (Luke 9:23).

So here I am again. At times, I really can see a change in my life. For what it's worth, I certainly have a deeper intellectual understanding of God (Matthew 7:21-23, Proverbs 3:5-6). And in some rare (and blessed) occasions, I even find myself hungering and thirsting for righteousness (Matthew 5:6). But by and large, I find myself still falling into the same (and worse) sins as before I was saved. And that's discouraging. One upshot, anyway, is that my reaction to sin (at least, after the fact) has certainly changed. And while Satan may know how to push my buttons, I do understand very well the words from David's heart:

Against you, you only, have I sinned
and done what is evil in your sight,
so that you may be justified when in your words,
and blameless in your judgement.
Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being,
and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart.
-- Psalm 51:4,6

The only source of forgiveness is Christ - the one against whom I've sinned. And as much as talking to people or writing about it may or may not help, ultimately it's between me and God. God has forgiven me, and He keeps no record of the wrongs of those He loves (1 Corinthians 13:5), but He's made it clear that in light of His justice, there is no place for sin. I still have a hard time with that one, but I trust that eventually, through God's discipline (Hebrews 12:4-11), I will learn this too.

I'll leave you with the lyrics to the title song of this blog:

The butterfly can just look back
Flap those wings and say Oh, yeah
I never have to be a worm again

The snake gets tired of being him
He wriggles from that itchy skin
Leaves it lying where he’s been and moves on

I’ve been longing for something tangible
Some kind of proof that there’s been change in me

Feels like I have been waking up
Only to fight with the same old stuff
Change is slow and it fills me with such doubt
Come on new man where have you been
Help me wriggle from this self I’m in
And leave it like a skin upon the ground
-- Sara Groves, The Other Side Of Something, "Like A Skin" (2004)