100. Ready to write again

I had lunch with a friend of mine last week, we have started a tradition.  It seems that three years in a row a tradition makes.  We have known each other for almost forty years.  This man, my friend, I have always seen as being older, wiser, and just generally more together.  It is somewhat interesting when I think that the age difference is only a couple of years – but when we met those two years were a significant difference.  First impressions do last.

          After we got caught up on family and career nonsense, we got down to other subjects – including a lot of theology.  Which in turn brought up the blog, which if you have been a follower you know that I have stopped posting.  We talked about the challenge of remaining central to the message of Christ in our work, in our lives and in our writings.

          I know that I am opinionated, and despite my introverted nature, I do not mind sharing those opinions at volume with others.  And there are times when I have written in reaction to some of the opinions that I find objectionable.  When I wrote edgy pieces holding the church – you and me - to task I would get great numbers of readers and great comments.  But slowly I found myself becoming part of the problem.

          As I read scripture I see so much of it addressing our – my – tendency to engage in self-justified condemnation of others.  My desire to prove that I am better-than by tearing down the other.  It is the sin of the religious; righteous indignation.  When Jesus tells people to “go and sin no more;” it is this tendency that I think he is referring.

          Much of what I see as the point of developing righteousness is practicing humility and mindfulness of who we are and our place in the world.  It is the understanding that compassion is of the highest value and utmost importance. 

          So, writing a piece that is angry, or as my friend puts it “Shrill” is actually just joining in the problem.  In short, I am just another angry white man telling you what to believe about God.  And that has been the issue behind my not having posted in so long. 

          So much of what is presented as Christianity is repugnant to me.  It is filled with hostility and judgement and just pisses me off.  I have struggled by seeing such ugliness in others that I wonder if they have experienced the same grace that I have.  Maybe, just maybe, my atheist friends are right; my spirituality is simply a delusion best addressed by good medication and growing up.

          Yet, in my desire to rail against the ugliness of the Christian masses, I realize that all I am doing is being one of them.  St. Paul writes of this in Roman 2:1 “At whatever point you judge another you condemn yourself, for you do the very same things.” And thus, I fell silent.

          And I have waited to write again. 

So I think I am ready.  Ready to write reflectively about receiving God’s grace and love, striving for righteousness, and what I believe that I am called to – to do, to worship and be.  If my first set of writings was, as was put to me by another friend, a purging of my soul.  Maybe what I write now, is what fills my soul anew?

          Maybe now the fight is drained out of me?  Age and exhaustion are often the very things that lead us to salvation.  It once was confessed to me by a man who had struggled with lust and pornography, that it was the loss of his libido that had brought him under obedience to the Lord better than any prayer or striving of the soul.

          Maybe like the first set of writings which was the purge, this new set of writings is the infilling.  It is the act of my writing that I work out my faith.  Thus, you not only get to watch, but you get to participate in my maturation.

          Maybe, I have finally come to understand that the need for hostility and anger never was needed.  In my world, that has so often been depressed, hostility and anger has seemed useful.  When one is beset by everything, being well defended is wise.

          Maybe, it is that finally God has softened a heart made hard through circumstance.  I carry enough scars of the soul that bitterness is justifiable.  But in order to love one’s neighbour one needs to be loved.

There will still be some things that I will be prickly about – telling someone that you will pray for them when you are not willing to help them is about helpful a fart in a wind storm.  Your faith no matter strong it is, does not make you a better person, your actions do.