“3 If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. 3 For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. 5 Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. 6 On account of these the wrath of God is coming. 7 In these you too once walked, when you were living in them. 8 But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. 9 Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices 10 and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. 11 Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all. 12 Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, 13 bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. 14 And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. 15 And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. 16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. 17 And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” (Col 3:1–17 ESV)

Let’s kill sin is met with the gracious nature of an Enlightened atmosphere, enlightened Camaraderie, enlightened Cohort. Always and to every Body the Juncture of therein being Met, heightened Alert levels swept up in the Atmosphere of Trust and no-joke Forgiveness… because it is Embarrassing, our willful past ways, it is Deprecating to the Self, our refusal to Accept any mercy that feels like a zero-sum-game, feels Contrived, feels like a carrot on a stick designed always and forever to Mock us and Aggressively Stock Up on the Charges.

Killing sin, the trigger finger has been Forged, rather—no litmus test of “Forged in the furnace of Affliction”—the trigger finger has been Anointed and Blessed as evocative of each and every soldiers’ personal Bout with killing their Sinful, Willful, just let me squeeze this into my day, escapism and Defiance, Refusal to go feng shui and absconding from the Learned Perch: I’ve Learned, to bide my lust or passions, to surrender to Christ’s Cross, to go a more banal or rather more Holy route most loving, un-lascivious, lusciously Esteeming His Sacrifice as Real and Blood-drenched and held in the pocket of the uniform for each and every Rainy Day.

Let’s kill sin is met with the trigger finger that Hopes… salvation day’s end for All Comers, even those in the cross-hairs… I erred, perhaps, or I jumped the starting gun and went full hog too early, perhaps. I was irresponsibility in my Mission and my Charge, my Duty and my Call. I blamed someone else, in panicky fashion. Yet the Call to Discern and to weigh on our shoulders the Weight of Glory alongside the Weight of Eternal Ruin if only Christ hadn’t Died for our bad decisions. We literally led the Whole Flock astray, perhaps. Yet again to the carrot on a stick: shouldn’t we most of all be Forgiven? And Forgiven for speaking a Language—of experiential residues, of experiential atmospheres, of experiential Education on lossy and deathly, death-defying and winsome, counter-aggressions to a Spirit who has made us all the more Mature than our peers—for speaking a Language that sadly titillates: Oh, I have this insert-your-experience-here that I must speak of only allegorically or carefully, for the pastor, the vestry, the pew-sitters at large, are Children on some accounts.

That being the Experience of literally life-and-death Encounters with a Judgment Day I don’t think that “they” believe in. Judgment the, “It’s not you it’s me… we have to break up”. Judgment as in, “Weep and murmur, the friends have dispelled and disappeared, only I remain and it is a lonesome day’s end”. Judgment as in, “I hurt someone, a parent with my willfulness, a peer with my slander against them thinking unheard, a lover with my infidelity”. A church, with my violation of their no-go-zones, mostly we admit, in matters of the Flesh.

The crushing weight of Glory, then, rewards Upwards Eyelines and Tilted upwards Heads and bodily frames. That we deserve Judgment but receive a gladsome Exchange. That we have to go a harrowing route, but have a Helpmeet by our side, a bride or groom in the Faith named Jesus. So to that killing of sin, to that blatant Atmos of Mercy, the spill-over into the city street of an A.A. meeting as it gets out, the person smiling at you because you can read in their expression, they don’t think themselves the ones showing, rather receiving, mercy. And for all our secret sins, for all our flipside of times we’ve judged others, for all our ungentlemanly disclosures or such, we are Forgiven, we are excitedly Racing left and right, filling the community we do hope with that same gladsome tidings.