November 2000
November 5, 2000
A dear friend saw fit to say some rather complimentary things to me. I am ashamed nearly to the point of telling her that she is wrong. I surely would if I thought she'd believe me.
I want to convince myself that she really is right. I really am all the things she says. My objections arise only from a low self-esteem.
But it isn't true. I am thousand times more superficial and carnal than she suspects. It hurts that she doesn't see it because it indicates that I've been such a fake to her.
She thinks I know what's going on. She thinks I'm sensitive. She thinks I'm a lot of things I'm not.. anything but what I am.
Don't believe it. Don't believe me.
November 25, 2000
"The two ends come back around to meet one another. The endpoint of each path is the same."
The speaker gestured to make his point by tracing each half of an ellipse in the air, his finger tips meeting at the bottom of the completed figure.
It's the sort of conclusion anyone might come to if he worked on the problem in his mind. But only a few people would ever have reason to sort though it. I have. I counted it a small comfort that someone else had as well.
It unfortunately was, and is, no solution. Only a more concise definition of the problem.
Legalism verses Grace
I have no real intention of actually commenting at length on the topic. Let the real theologians smash their brains against it. I have a feeling that any formulae they work out will be meaningless in the light of day where real living must be done.
The conundrum is this.. We know that we are saved by grace through faith; works are powerless to help us. Yet we know that a true faith will bear good fruit. Writing that almost makes me feel warm. It's simple enough on paper.
The breakdown is an experential one. I'm here, and I have faith, I think. But does my faith manifest itself in works? How many and what sort of works are enough? That last sentence began to sound like the "salvation by works" that we've all come to know and hate. The razor's edge on which we walk becomes clearer in that light.
I grew up singing a hymn on Sunday mornings called, "Blessed Assurance." It's about how we know that we are saved. If you look up the common "proof texts" for assurance, do you know what you get? More things about fruit. You're led in a circle.
The simple fact, I'm afraid, is this: The Bible wasn't joking when it said we were to work out our salvation with fear and trembling.
Bonhoeffer called it "cheap grace" and a newer fellow named John MacArthur called it "easy believism." The speaker I mentioned first commented on both Bonhoeffer and MacArthur. Their ideas were a little different from one another, but he contended that what they were arguing against was the same. Spiritual laxity, or the idea that we can maintain some dim intellectual assent to Christ as savior and hope to ride it by the skin of our teeth into Heaven.
I'm going to try this one out on you. Our faith in Christ must be something like our faith in gravity. Our faith in gravity prevents us from jumping off of tall buildings. What does our faith in Christ do?
That makes me jump. Why do I do the "good" things that I do? Duty? I hope it's for the love of Christ, but I know it's frequently not. I want people to think I'm a good fellow, or I'm in it for some reward, even if it is just gratitude or that warm, fuzzy feeling. A more frequent problem for me is cowardice. I resist doing something rather inflamatory because I don't have the backbone to stand up to anyone (I say it's a problem.. by now I know better than to pat myself on the back because I was too scared to be mean).
Anyway. Here I am, a college student, and the future doesn't even worry me. And it isn't because of any great trust I have in God; it's because I'm too spineless to worry. I know i'll take whatever I'm handed without complaining because I don't want to seem like a malcontent. Hardly meekness. Or hardly the sort of meekness Jesus would want. It's not that the fire in me is directed throught the proper channels. It's that I've no fire to start with. All I can do is write.
November 26, 2000
I drove myself back to school today. I was returning after Thanksgiving break. A mood held me loosely in its hand, rolling me along the back of its fingers as a gambler would roll a coin. It seemed so nonchalant, but I couldn't help but wonder whether is wasn't actually calculated to make me believe precisely that.
I worried about how I view the world. It used to drive me crazy to realize that all I really had was my five senses to take it all in. I made every judgement based on data I'd been taking in since a few months after my conception. I had no good reason to believe that anything I believed was real or objective. It had all been filtered through my eyes, ears, and fingertips.
But this time, it was different. I got over all that. Alow me to follow a tangent.
Last Christmas, I went through a full-blown crisis in my faith, more or less revolving around the issue I just described. The only reality I know is subjective, life is meaningless, blah blah blah. In simple terms (blindingly simple), Jesus came to my rescue. The "Rock of Ages" became my foundation. In technicolor and dolby surround sound, everything anyone had ever said about objectivity in God came to a head. It was distilled and dynamically spliced into my thinking. It was a turning point for me. I have never since doubted the existance of God. I must admit that this is only because I am afraid to doubt him. I also admit that my sanity is riding on my belief.
Now, back from the tangent. It seems the tangent went so far as to overshadow the meager point I was orginally trying to convey. At any rate, earlier today I was driving and wondering about how I take things in. The way I've been indoctrinated, and the egocentric filters through which I pass things. So many things get automatically processed that I'm afraid a lot of significant information may be getting junked as noise. That's about the extent of what I was ever going to say. It does give me an idea for a nice, rambling oral presentation for my tech writing class, though.
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Contact me: adam.stephens@ttu.edu