2024-07-13 A Meditation on Church Logic

“8 Already you have all you want! Already you have become rich! Without us you have become kings! And would that you did reign, so that we might share the rule with you! 9 For I think that God has exhibited us apostles as last of all, like men sentenced to death, because we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels, and to men. 10 We are fools for Christ’s sake, but you are wise in Christ. We are weak, but you are strong. You are held in honor, but we in disrepute. 11 To the present hour we hunger and thirst, we are poorly dressed and buffeted and homeless, 12 and we labor, working with our own hands. When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; 13 when slandered, we entreat. We have become, and are still, like the scum of the world, the refuse of all things. 14 I do not write these things to make you ashamed, but to admonish you as my beloved children. 15 For though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers. For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel. 16 I urge you, then, be imitators of me.” (1 Cor. 4:8-16 ESV)

It’s hilarious how predictable church logic goes, wherein would-be friends emphasize a no-go zone or a confession only in theory, not married to the actual nature of the flesh and of the soul. We can see this dynamic rampant, when our own subconscious puckers up with fright and fearsome what-if’s. We can lose sight of the living in community that does not fault us for an umpteenth time to forget: sir, ma’am, I am no perfect confessor, you would disdain my forgetfulness if you yourself were any less merciful, I am no timely prodigal.

For all of us are prodigal and deeply hurt, embarrassing mistakes, that being that the worst sins are in fact not headstrong but are embarrassing or hard squarely to stare down. We grow up out of that would-be new friend’s hasty absolution: our preferred Absolution does not quibble around if one of us is more “deep” in the malaise, the mess, the luscious desire or embarrassing swan song or pied piper’s flute song.

Therefore to the battle stations: it is a warm day when we adopt the Elder Brother or Sister magnanimity: we are too principled to get down and dirty with a fight; we are too servant-minded to resent or reproach these whom God has sent our way; we are too composed, confident, to complain the dialog is too fraught. Then, we are too joyful to say that the battle is joined, alongside those whom we dared simply to love and care for. They may not be “ours” per se, by man’s accounting, but ours they are in mutuality and shared submission: friends, let us allow the spirit to move and see what all He gets up to.

What She gets up to, the absolute brokenness where you can’t win: either you are heard as boring, unspiritual, unrepentant, or you are guilty of not caring, of judging the meeker soul (Competitive soul) in the room. You are pressed to save everything, and come to the surface for air having pleased no one. Yet in all this is an intoxicating Love Affair, an Estate called juvenile and promising, called Job’s kids free because he the father was making sacrifices on their behalf. We are inspired to flourish, we are half-crazed to thrive. We are half-maddened to blossom. The mystery called Mutuality serves not one out of the two or three, but serves All, and All nod to a Mystery Not Understood. How for example the songs of the saints, in the air, assure us: we may not be able to fix anything, but things are after all Okay.