2024-03-14 A Meditation on Judgment

“Behold, now is the favorable time; behold, now is the day of salvation. 3 We put no obstacle in anyone’s way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, 4 but as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: by great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, 5 beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger; 6 by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, the Holy Spirit, genuine love; 7 by truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; 8 through honor and dishonor, through slander and praise. We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; 9 as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold, we live; as punished, and yet not killed; 10 as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing everything. 11 We have spoken freely to you, Corinthians; our heart is wide open. 12 You are not restricted by us, but you are restricted in your own affections. 13 In return (I speak as to children) widen your hearts also.” (2 Cor 6:2-13 ESV)

The realization we’re on a course, under sail, and somehow judgment does first this and that preparatory course: the gulf only getting wider yet—do we believe?—a strait-jacket that mocks, a need for just a little more resistance than what we willingly will give, to overcome, to break free of the mold, to get ourselves and our souls aright with God the Father.

For divine reckoning sees as we try and get our ticket punched, sees as we unveil—roll of the dice, this person in one generation valued and in another degraded—the zone of familiar ownership, problems owned, domain broad and wide, and comfort, where we feel about our business, masters at our little shop of tools.

The gulf widens, the Spirit of judgment billing by the hour and we… we unable to break free except in the good name of our God and King, who does see and take note when we go for broke, investing in the hour, investing in the love shared, for parents, for siblings, for colleagues and friends. Patent haste meets a sluggish world, a world that will not and shall not face up to its shenanigans, to its neuroses, to its Judas-like betrayals and Peter-like denials. A world that is met with stark Evidence upon encountering the Gospel: Evidence of a rupture and a gulf, widening differences meet widening sympathizing, the amount and extent of our debt cause for dastardly damned souls, or rather souls whose timeline—all shall be presented with a route to salvation—is too vast and incomprehensible for us little folk down here to monkey around with; God’s timing is more patient, more forgiving, more stone-sure, stone-cold, hearthstone warmed, and exuberant, Total, surrounding, mellifluous, superstructured, invasive, determined, dominating, than any meek person’s own hand at saving others. We cannot save them. We cannot do more than have that dazed or crazed look in our eyes of those who have met the Father—in a parent, in a colleague, in a friend—and stand amazed, New Things unfolding on all sides yet new things unseen and under-appreciated by the status quo.

So to the gamesmanship, the tickets punched and yes the atonement for our long absence from the faith. To the half-starved-of-rest yet patient and submitted soul, as it bumbles about and butts heads with others, the group-think, the spirit of the air, too potent directly to face up to: we cannot overcome the course of judgment, except with the firm knowledge that in some wise and ways we are amongst the mercy-received set. And this enables us, invites us and equips us to dismount and divest all patent refusals and block-headed denials and defense-mechanisms. For one brief moment we are we ourselves, with this person God has put before us; with this set of people who somehow were subject to our own refusal to find Peace and Meaning in our present environs, preferring as we do the fantastical imaginings of what a former life brought home to bear. This is what we have; these are the people we shall boast of before the Heavenly Father; this is the work—sluggish, ill-able to go as far or as long as we like—that has begun the solemn task of building Mastery, building Competence, building rather modest Studies and Performance.