2022-11-02 A Meditation on Beating Out the Conventional

“You were running well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth? This persuasion is not from him who calls you. A little leaven leavens the whole lump. I have confidence in the Lord that you will take no other view, and the one who is troubling you will bear the penalty, whoever he is. But if I, brothers, still preach circumcision, why am I still being persecuted? In that case the offense of the cross has been removed. I wish those who unsettle you would emasculate themselves! For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another.” (Ga 5:7–15 ESV)

The conventional dynamic says we hold out for the payout. We act with an eye towards a handled, intended outcome. But for the Christian, bright tomorrow is some kind of undeserved and unexpected gift. We had no choice; we were running a slog, a dastardly race, and now see clearly some paragon of virtue and object of amour. That is, we reboot, and we see each of our friend circle anew; our family is strikingly outfitted with holy garment, in our mind, each busy with their work. So that is the difference between the occupation of the Christian, and the occupation of the secularist.

Somehow, to grab the bull by the horns, is to alleviate any notion of us being in control. So we go towards the crime, towards the ignominy, not away from it. We make startling self-discoveries: “I truly discover something in myself when I stop trying to please God”; “I am inundated with this notion that yes I am a sinner, but in discovering that about myself, I am for once available to God, to a Higher Power”. Because God is with us in the prisons and in the prison of the mind and the addiction. God is with us in that celebrated wedding feast, the one that couldn’t be stopped for lack of wine. He wanted the party to go on: for the sake of the people, real people, here in front of Him. He saw people coming to eagle-eyed vision and apocalyptic decision, in such environs, perhaps. We might guess.

For to toss caution to the wind, to reckon truly with a heart that falls in love with its own lawlessness, that races to play catch-up with the illegal party or drink or toke or smoke, is a life lived in a kind of free-fall, a controlled embrace, a secret fanciful and reverent, oblate, sense of sin and righteousness, only this: that we, illuminated, are not trying any longer to master the righteous half of that exchange. We know our pride and ambition will take care of that pursuit all on its own. But we are using the drug or the fleeting romance or the inhale as some catch-all for everything that’s wrong with our person, everything that’s wrong with our decision-making, every workaholic alternation between hastening to labors then to downtime over-indulgence: work hard, play hard. That is, the workaholic had us fooled: their contentment in laboring is no proof that life follows “normal” contours, even for other people.

In summary, the conventional dynamic discovers as precious and a paragon of virtue, something and someone and some player in the game, just getting by, eeking something out, by no means a given just because one attends church and says their prayers and reads their dailies of Scripture. Instead we respond to that self-righteous coming to ourselves with needed rest and chance to let the fixtures rearrange themselves around our, yes, decrepitude. Somehow life takes on a living hue in the wake of our pained waltz around a God who made all that indulgence and would-be guilt too. Somehow we are those married to Experience rather than to controlled, manageable, self-chosen works. Somehow it is the first layer of self-righteousness that is the one He takes us to task over, and today, in mind, we can all over again be the gladly celebrating, the partier at least in spirit, the grateful and ones making bold proclamation: we love, this is our friend and our dear brother, sister; we are endeared to a life lived existentially for this our immediate hour alone, nevermind caution nor prudence.