2024-10-12 A Meditation on Thesis-Antithesis

“11 But as for you, O man of God, flee these things. Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness. 12 Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. 13 I charge you in the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, 14 to keep the commandment unstained and free from reproach until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, 15 which he will display at the proper time—he who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, 16 who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see. To him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen.” (1 Tim 6:11-16 ESV)

Talking ourselves up to a stand, is to embrace Christian work as thesis-antithesis, a ghostly line in the thought sphere, and either we are pushing towards or against. This rubric, however, falls flat upon simply the more outlandish or true-to-life walks down the street: our chip on the shoulder is no longer so theoretical and ideal; our chip on the shoulder becomes a hastened, urgent need to get by. Our fright factor around any and all vocational fender benders lose steam: we are those called to see Jesus in an arena called Defeat. We are no longer high-minded and theoretically perfect, but rather blabber and sputter out from a bedrock we at once know, by familiarity, by upbringing, by accustomization, and simultaneously cannot talk down, belittle, replace with the rapid-fire gun show of Pristine Thought.

For, what after all is it to be a Christian? In the company of fellow parishioners, yes, here is a light show, a saber dance, around some technical jargon and wonkish excitement. But what is the bedrock—walk down the street—place of the Christian in society? What is the occasion to amp up, when all we feel is Absence: Absence of Cause, Absence of Dichotomy, Absence of heave-ho? It is the Occasion to delve into a faith writ large, to trade yardage for mining a vast jewel-laden mine: to accept at once any and all vocational insights, here and there and everywhere there being Cause and Occasion to Serve.

That is, see how to lend ourselves to a contrarian vein of thought, serves to make us misfits for the largely status-quo-oriented congregation. See how, meanwhile, that newfound cynicism only brings with it the occasion to preach, gladsomely to make hay while it is sunny, to marvel and wag our head at what Persecutions our fellow believers are bleary-eyed staring down. What have we to do with the Pentecostal or Urban church scene, the megachurch in the ‘hood? That no church makes its parishioners better people than the average Joe in the street, but all do inform and educate around some Potential or Distant Vision. See for example, that we can whip up a swarm of words positive around how we were cured from addiction and what not. But see those words fall flat if the emphasis is not on Total Impossibility: that the real lube and axle-grind is some new person in our lives, or some better career prospects to distract us, or some patient going a bit farther than any would accept in our testimony: they will not accept, that we heard of eyes gouged out and limbs torn asunder in the New Testament Scriptures, and yes this was what was needed: some wow, wholesale Complete Inability ever to make ends meet. Some wholesale Complete Inability to fend off depressive spirits. That is, we are ever and still on a precipice, and Testimony—attestation, conviction, firm words—is a measure of what we really are as people: false testimony, too grand on how much we’ve changed, denies and robs our spirit and our person. We must face a Reality deeper and more pessimistic than what passes muster in the casual church-going community. We can do it a day longer because… because some strange confluence of affairs is in place. Because some deeper sense of Celebration accompanies our daily walk. Because the urge to mess up every so-called perfect setup meets a refusal to be insincere or fraudulent or duplicitous. We learn to party in those terms Jesus made out, of meek party spirit, of meek meal, of defeated nothing-else companionship (which disciple, given a flowery career, would have stayed a disciple?). All this so we can find the Sincerity in a testimony, sincerity that we are still works in progress, that we are still in need of something intervening, Divine Intervention; and that our personal testimonies matter: what we say about ourselves matters.