2023-10-06 A Meditation on Genuine Article

“But whatever anyone else dares to boast of—I am speaking as a fool—I also dare to boast of that. 22 Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they offspring of Abraham? So am I. 23 Are they servants of Christ? I am a better one—I am talking like a madman—with far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless beatings, and often near death. 24 Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. 25 Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; 26 on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers; 27 in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. 28 And, apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches. 29 Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is made to fall, and I am not indignant? 30 If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness. 31 The God and Father of the Lord Jesus, he who is blessed forever, knows that I am not lying. 32 At Damascus, the governor under King Aretas was guarding the city of Damascus in order to seize me, 33 but I was let down in a basket through a window in the wall and escaped his hands.” (2 Co 11:21–33 ESV)

Ours is a genuine faith, no cheap simulacra: easily distracted, the early spiritualist knows not what to listen to, as vocal blessings and vocal temptations flood the inbox and the perimeter of the self. Give us such-and-such, and we will bless you… well that is a temptation! And, take a trust fall and we will catch you… well, that is ambition. So it is the courageous and moral soldier who simply asks after some unplanned deeper spiritual assessment, some test that we do indeed pass, even if we seem ungrateful or unsynchronized with the noises over the airwaves.

That is, the blatant desire to be holier than thou, to attain unto spiritual posh digs, to be the ordained point-person for all manner of things that we… we in sagacity of sight and patience of self-flattered heart, do manage and dispense and circumnavigate. We learn to hide our eager ambition, instead being “reactive” yet not… not until something has clicked and we have learned sincerely to repent and sincerely to love, sincerely not to judge, and not to take the higher road than that of our wounded peer.

For see the hackles rise: “sinner”, it is said. Sinner, it is feared, and the one who fears does invent all manner of personal obstacle to absolution, calling themselves out, blushing at a double-entendre, stammering and faltering in wishy-washy hemming and hawing. Time comes when we cease to see ourselves as fundamentally “good”, yet that is only that we might load-bear that name, “Good”, onto a more matured self, a later generation of the self, a wonderfully gifted servant self, a soldiering self, and a self for once set free from the reliance on parent and tutor, from leader and teacher.