“4 What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? 2 You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. 3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. 4 You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. 5 Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, “He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us”? 6 But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” 7 Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you. 11 Do not speak evil against one another, brothers. The one who speaks against a brother or judges his brother, speaks evil against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge. 12 There is only one lawgiver and judge, he who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbor?” (Jas 4:1-12 ESV)

Presenting behavior and life change: aptly to face Penitence met with Contrition does remind us Christ is our surety, but also, we rarely see it through to the end. We rarely fuss and stumble about the Life Change. We have our “good moments” of despair, but forget the sentence or punishment therein implied. Somehow, to fast and pray through one Presenting Behavior or another, calculates as not quite urgent enough to See it Through.

The alternative viewpoint, the basic Remedies to a life gone mad: to humble ourselves in the presence of others, to compliment and to acknowledge the Manners and Modicums of Others, all this captures to long-sighted vision, the Tomorrow Game, our Momentary Inspiration in the battlefield. See, O Soldier, how Righteous your cause though immediately it be attacked and compromised—as if—on all sides. See the Righteous very close to the Mundane or Profane. But fight on, because Friend serves Friend with ultimatum and with peaceable miasma, cohort, confluence of Spirits, of rivers, of Coming Together, and if today one dies at the hands of another, it is Peace.

It is Peace insofar as to win or to lose bears up a little more scrutiny than just arguing life and death, boots on the ground and the concomitant Dangers. Peace is to win some elusive Goal not even shared by all the pundits of that War, but shared by the Father in Heaven, the Spirit in the people, the Son in the cherished One, the Favored Ones, the Ones Blessed with a placement of hands.

To change our nagging thoughts to Peace, this is about learning a style of prayer not rooted in Law, but rooted in helplessness and in Christ’s Response, Grace. We pray not, “help me change into this or that better person, the desire is there just not the persistence…” or, when praying this, we complement it with, “Peace to me a sinner!”; “Help me in my helplessness!”; “I can’t do this any more!”.

Life Change is a fraught enterprise because we haven’t yet learned to rest soulfully in the Master’s Arms. More, His feminine qualities—like a Mom—we have not unconfused from His manliness. Life Change means to cure the simple bad habit… today, the Men and Women who Observe, us on the carriage or train, in the city, on the bus, these fine folks of working class stock, of fraternity and sorority or union of labor or worker, for these we are unstartled that our Home, our Unction, our Belonging is so lowly. Christ worked with the lowly. And church folk do well to acknowledge, rarely do they go beyond the notion of pity for the poor to address: the poor have sin as well, the poor will ape us, get our goat, frustrate us, as legally-minded pastors argue they are incorrigible. But if they flatter… if they kiss up… if they wisely compliment the Rich in their midst, they will be rewarded.

The soldier’s unction is her or his battle-ground-tested Realization that all souls Matter yet accidents of history have set this cabal rampantly marching in antithesis to that cabal. To that cohort. To that conglomerate. It pains us to see it through, that the rich have a hard time getting in to heaven, because again: the penalty is felt for a moment, but not long harbored, the penalty of His Blood for our sin. Somehow simply to adjure of one’s wealth, to pass it on, to put it in holy trust… all this sounds nice on paper but the recipients… they are no less sinful than us, when it comes to wise management. More, even our most dearly obtained Truths, these we can approach with weasel words, with compromise, with fluctuation. It takes the Law-abiding One within our souls, the “Jew”, the “Muslim”, the “Abrahamic” ones, who have the Law in written form, to be fussy and no-nonsense. It takes the Christian in us to Characterize our family’s sort of person, our style, our no-go-zones, our peace and “that’s nice, dear” acknowledgment of the love for any and all, any and all who are within the perimeter, perhaps, but any and all notwithstanding. God preserves His trusting ones with some automatic, naturally-obtained perimeter. People simply shy away from, or more, they obtusely avoid the Christian or Jew or Muslim in the mix (insert your religion here). The Perimeter is a holy Fact that the Christian lives in some abject Poverty, yet is rich in words that are so tragically harbored in secret and not indulged, not spread widely, their Love not exercised.

Also, the Christian is suggestible and is trying not to be in league with the Satanic “Other”, the enemy who wishes them to go down some suggestible route, to acknowledge some give-and-take truth in even the most terrible accusations. No, the faultlines are already in stone, and we are those who walk Cleaner than most, Healed more than most, Dreamy more than most, dreamy of a Tomorrow where Peace Reigns and we shake hands with those dispersed, those we sent to Heaven by our antagonism and Warring. Maybe it was inspired. Maybe it was God-sent. But always it is that crude humor so close to the error zone, but still Life-Affirming and Good for the cohort.

Life Change originates in some Trauma we would never wish upon ourselves even in the knowledge it leads to Eternal Life. It simply isn’t in our calculations. God moreover does not counsel us to seek degradation or heartbreak, loss or futility, but instead waits while the world does its worse to us (see God the observer of stoic Job) and uses what Reality has already pronounced, as Invite to His Spirit and brand of Judgment. More, it really is flattering to our selves when we pass up on the food or do a fast, but also it doesn’t do a thing by way of teaching us good decision-making.

The New Normal of war, this is to some a Relief: so long has the oppression waged on. But to some it is also a tragedy, one couched in needful Action but still mourned. The ones Sapient, Cognisant, and Aware, to these we submit in Hope, that is, in Surprise we were able even to find them amongst the rabble. Never couch a posture in backwards-thinking, going “Back in time”, avenging some old wrong: instead, Forgive, move ahead, get with the program Here and Now, that though we Forgive, the life change isn’t there, isn’t Desired nor Sought. And so Confront, but do so in Christian fashion, first in private, and then if the sinner refuses to listen, in company of two or three others. The fact people “sue” their own religion, is sad but observed. And when they do, when they argue against separations of church and state, against freedom of religion and such, then we pray to Ape the right ones, but to be approachable and Peace to the second line of their defense, to the average Judge in the community. Daring, we must say, to abide in a self-image, self-conception wherein we are always feeling like the one mildly “in trouble”, “hiding out” in the periphery lest dad or mom see us… always Guilty, always at odds. But this in itself is a Confession, and is brought to the altar as a Sin because it takes us away from the gladsome good-tidings of the companionship. Or perhaps it shelters us, in some clever fashion, for the Right Hour and Moment to come about. When our Religion shall be known to all. When our contrition shall be Time and Circumstance and Plausible Outcome.