“42 “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea. 43 And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. 45 And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life lame than with two feet to be thrown into hell. 47 And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell, 48 ‘where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.’ 49 For everyone will be salted with fire. 50 Salt is good, but if the salt has lost its saltiness, how will you make it salty again? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.”” (Mark 9:42-50 ESV)
The devil we stare down is the same devil others wake up strangely complicit with. To be complicit is to be oblivious to just how tempting some things are. We can be oblivious about our secret fascination to see more, know more, embrace more. We can make any and all excuses to do so, oblivious to the fact of, hey, you’re struggling with lust, for instance.
More, the age-old plea: how does it come about? How does it work? What’s with all this lust enacted in the lives of the unbelievers? They, somehow, are the ones without sin! They, somehow, by preceding the introduction or acceptance of Law in their lives, are a little more innocent around the sins of pride or theft or abuse. We who “know more” carry with us a duty and the knowledge we will be “judged more” because of our lofty heights and our knowledge.
Sin is strangely a cozy retreat, and Man is forever inventing ways to “solve things” with a would-be general solvent. A general man or woman “At the helm”. Some dreamed up refusal any longer to be engaged in war, and instead to say, “We have a priest!” “We have a leader!” “We have Someone who can answer the how and they why!” How tempting, to propose to judge and financier, publican and sinner alike: “See all the world is submitted to Christ… yawn over old disputes and problems… but let us also claim His authority…” That is, Christ’s spiritual authority, they try to change it to a demonstrable and bankable authority, complete with frightful threats and arrest and insubstantiated claims rooted in finance or the middling themes.
But are we frustrated, catty, complaining, anything like that? Of course not! For us it is indeed Christ-event after Christ-event that rewards the bleary eyes and strengthens the weak knees. The fact of a self-ruinous church, this only encourages us, though seemingly two decades late to the game, we are back on our heels it can seem, the world has no intention of being “Evangelized” or “Reformed”. Yet the evangel spread forth Early, secret networks and affinities divine, these strangely reward the oddball unchurched with the seed of New Life. These prophesy over a church largely gone mad and even unsaved by some accounts. That the proud shall be brought low, and the lowly exalted: who is there in church who doesn’t secretly assume or clutch to the fact that they are, after all, the moral ones in the community? Scary, then, when the inquisition of cop and lawyer starts with the holy innocence of the church citizen. Who is a cover or front for crime. Who is assuming, “me and mine, for all we struggle with, are by and large more Moral”.
That is, priest and prophet alike believe that as long as they are speaking “Scout’s honor”, that their claims are justified. Instead, we must learn of our own high fantasies and imaginations, more, of our duty to the brotherhood and the sisterhood, to follow biblical terms of not publicly slandering someone before hearing on the side how they themselves respond. More, we keep silence to a fault: our therapy sessions secretly were seeded with slander and priestly secrets of some earlier time, and by keeping holy secrecy, we are led like sheep to the slaughter: because we Don’t address the gameplan as previously spoken of. Because we Don’t address the rumors. Because we Don’t uncover some means to address utterly Judas-like behavior.
Still the Soldier is so close to atheism, as to make his or her faith a Rarefied Thing. No, time and time again we’ve leaned in on God only to come up empty-handed. Yet at the same time, He has spelt life and liberty, happiness and the outcome of prayer divine. This is the dangerous game wherein half the church as assembled, will not be saved. Will have been running on empty, on a false calm and stolen reassurance. Godly reassurance is this: to visit the widows in their loneliness, and to help the poor. Godly reassurance is to maintain holy levels of godly fear. Godly reassurance is to give glory to Him, our Maker.
It all comes so close to being a missed Occasion or misplaced Faith. And somehow this rarefies and beautifies our “through the trials” wizened faith. It makes it more elite and special. We fight on, knowing God is both on our side and is a Divine Judge: the Promise of Scripture is that Already we are absolved and free of sin, in the right, on the side of Justice and Peace, Mercy and Calm. Yet to be calm… when others covet and hoard the “forgiven” place in the community… it isn’t to be stolen! It is ours to share in! It is a status that makes unwitting christs out of each of us, because we started in on our own sins rather than those of our peers.
When we are faced with genuine temptations, half will go along in that dance of complicity, and perhaps half will by some innate nature or preventive Holy Spirit, avoid the temptation. The latter do not boast in their rectitude, only marvel and gasp that they were spared the complicity. The former… these then go aggressive mode, go punchy mode, go rebel mode, unwilling to come clean and utterly offended that their prompter, their convicting spirit, should be someone so… dweebish, loserish, fresh-faced. But all of us stand to have that coming together moment, in a circle of prayer and song: it ain’t so bad after all! It is a divine Treat to have once tasted God’s grace vis-a-vis something Real, not just the vague confessions of pride and sloth and what-have-you. Likewise, the earnest believer, does well to make a list of actual sins-in-the-flesh, because to offload this and get it off the chest, is a liberating breath of fresh air. God lives and sojourns with us through said Encounters with temptation and Made-Over bouts with lust or concupiscence. They were our scholars and tutors growing up, perhaps. But now we turn all flesh into Christ. He literally awaits our genuine Sensation of Peace, that He might make us strong for the journey, oblivious to the utter Trials of a suggestion, of a photo that tempts, of some thought we “know better” than a person and their actual friends, as to what they are, after all, longing for. One team makes jokes about the same things that others take as revelatory and demonstrative of secret longings: that… that was just me making fun of the very thing you are acting so sincere and self-righteous about! The Christian, in church walls, hears so much sex and violence in the speech of the outsider, but doesn’t allow that perhaps they are ministering to each other just as effectively, with such salty speech and flexed muscles.