2024-12-18 A Meditation on Double-Takes

“18 Children, it is the last hour, and as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come. Therefore we know that it is the last hour. 19 They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us. 20 But you have been anointed by the Holy One, and you all have knowledge. 21 I write to you, not because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and because no lie is of the truth. 22 Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son. 23 No one who denies the Son has the Father. Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also. 24 Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, then you too will abide in the Son and in the Father. 25 And this is the promise that he made to us—eternal life. 26 I write these things to you about those who are trying to deceive you. 27 But the anointing that you received from him abides in you, and you have no need that anyone should teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about everything, and is true, and is no lie—just as it has taught you, abide in him.” (1 John 2:18-27 ESV)

Some would have us do a double-take. To thrive in the midst of ghost stories is not to question the fitness, the suitability, the poised and socialized, nature of our product. The product as we might call our daily endeavors: this is no ghost story but a different kind of climate, a Holy Spirit-led Nirvana and Epitome of class, of judicious Help sold for a pittance, given away for free, of patience and contentedness in whatsoever climate we find ourselves.

No, the ghost story is a request we simply and perfunctorily Cease, that we be haunted by an Accusation, that we do that double take, bend over and humble our own righteous backbone, to the end of mitigating and lessening just how off-kilter our interlocutor feels about themselves. That is, we if haunted at all, have perfected a brand of Momentum, that gladsomely attributes all things—the pushy dream, the sexed-up narrative—to the status of Revelation: if we are revealed to ourselves to have longed after the flesh, then that is only for the express purpose of announcing we have seen the light! We have, by the Advent of proximity to Holiness, begun to see the formerly silent demons cry out.

In any case, we never denied the strange ways Man, Woman, is spooky and careening off of walls made of horrific deeds. All we did, is to say that the momentum is ours to own, today, and forever: that momentum that makes of us Prodigals, if so be the manner of our approach. Yes, by long familiarity I can return to “that familiar sting”, to quote Johnny Cash, of the substance or the communal indulgence. I can return to “the streets are death row”, to quote Tupac Shakur. There was no end to how determined were our accusers, to say that we are ghosted with illicit intentions. And, whether by the power of suggestion or that affinity with the Pauline doctrine: I, the chief of sinners, we no longer recoil but rather Embrace the dissolute and the terminal aspect of our characters, of our dream-life, of haunting Remembrance brought to. We are totally sold on a doctrine of utter depravity. And in this we are amply endowed with such friendships, such as that we literally realize to our own private prayer life, that always there are people, if they asked me to do something—anything—I’d do it. But then those who approach on a basis of enmity, to these we are not willing to submit.

We need not make the double-take. We need not ever think our own sins are somehow worse than that pristine pew-sitter. Instead of acquiescing, tolerating, submitting, to boring resigned middling output, we see all in a stark light recently Renewed, called Total Terror and Utter Answer: God, the answer, we the terrified, who as we stroll about the city, begin to see a fighting spirit in all. We would gladly answer any questions thrust our way, or so glad happily are we predisposed at least this hour. And our joy is Owned: we own what cheers us, and when others are jealous or despondent, we ask that same Holy Spirit for the courage, the humility, to lessen ourselves and be the walking companion, sidekick, to their illusion of illness and ingratitude. That is, we ask only that all of us Cope, and in so Coping, do Minister absolving testimony and honesty. We repent, they Absolve. We feel amazing cohesion even as “the streets are deathrow” begins to infiltrate. We have a solid family in the faith. We have a love that outlasts the center falling out and the middling places falling victim, the borders mushed and confused, the fact one errant deed by one erring soul can ask the entire community to shoulder the burden. And such were some of us.