“12 For all who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law. 13 For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified. 14 For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. 15 They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them 16 on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus.” (Rom 2:12-16 ESV)

Always skirting the periphery, never quite in the fold, the Journey Christian brings its catharsis to Real, Actual mind-boggling oppression. The Journey Christian separates the sinner from the sin, the insane demons from the possessed one, the self-incrimination, self-ruin, self-immolation, from the self-antagonist.

For we dare not in fact Rise Up, or we agree without forethought, only to toe the line but never to Engage. Some sacramental “Center” is never ours quite, never found quite, never entered in upon quite. Only this day let it be heard, that Christ’s center, His bosom, His embrace, in fact we already owned, never paying respect to the false signs nor the proud boasts. After all, it was a lonesome death He died, but He was at the center of that fold. He was strangely warmed in the heart, to have found an Elixir that dispels, saturates, overtakes, any secular arrangement however central. His words, His deed, these have Power.

Plain thought reinvents Christian doctrine: that the Saint’s worldview is no passive observation, but a rough-and-tumble Occasion found outside the fold of society’s totems and idols. Only this, that also we must avoid even the appearance of pride, of greed, of ambition, of idolatry: our words, they are too glib, too wondrous at times, that easily the finger is pointed our way: heathen! Impersonator! Scoundrel!

Therefore plain thought reinvents Christian community: that so much is necessarily overlooked from the moment two or more gather together in His Name. These two or more are happy and probing of the veneer and shell around a heartwarming Testimony, each being possessed of the opposite of a Demon: of a substance, a coherence, a mimicked style, a taste, Divine. And this makes us happy.

The years of frustration, these approach us now with a set of circumstances, perhaps with some concessions to be made; but in light of what Gospel has saved us, we know a humility that occasions to accept all and sundry Trials and Judgments. Even if tainted by the cruel world, we know the prophecy: that all things will turn to arrows pointed at us, that we will be asked for more and more, and when we’ve given our all, asked for yet more. So to the testimony and to the self-awareness so Humble: please pray that we will be found Coherent in that hour of trial. Found comprehensively-bound into Service-minded, Sacrificially-minded, acceptance. Even of the demons of our age, class distinction, all those ways we forget in the hour of trials to avoid even the appearance of stereotypical sins: though we be in fact free of this or that alliance with sin, we must also not be so clever or wise as to avoid mentioning it; we must assume and guess at the ways we shall be slandered. And this is no easy walk, for the one free of sin has ceased even from imagining it.