2023-02-17 A Meditation on the Saga

“For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.” (Ro 7:14–19 ESV)

The saga: you think we get attacked when trying to live a godly life in Christ Jesus? Middling concerns, unfortunate counter-ballast, hearkening to the call just to put aside the indulgence, for fear that it has turned sinful. And all this in the wake of alive and alert statement, encounter, recollection, of the upward designs of good friendships past, of cheering up, of full-on panoply and uninvented real care.

The “Not this again!” dream work where we were still addicted to substance or smoke, pill or cigarette: we have come to retreat to this perch because it meant something in a former life. It meant we were hopeless, without hope in the world, dependent, “I just went for it one more time… I know it’s bad for me…”. Yet we were middling and incautious; trying to live up to a hope and a calling, but falling back flat on the existential self-denial, healthless, now awake but at what cost, tyranny of sin.

So to the dream and the godliness designed in wakeful time: it is a dream we live unto, and allot all things unto Christ Jesus because of this we are certain, that any trial is indeed a flattery of how far we have come. We are tried precisely because of a good work underway; the step forward unleashes the hounds of hell for a moment, to reveal what was binding us secretly all along. We can say that we are wakeful and watchful, not fearing what the night watch has brought to light. We can say we only stay godly because of Grace, not our own resolve.

Indeed, what a word for us this Grace word is! For it would be easy to despair, that we showed less judgment in a sleepy time, whether literally awake or tuckered out in bed. It also calls to account those ways the healthsome Holy Spirit, prayed of to have in abundance, is blemished, with a blot, when holy vestures are maddeningly used for unholy purpose. Thus the Pentecostal believers stark call unto holiness: we make a big fuss over holiness of life, even as we claim all things are the work of God via the Spirit. So we see repentance rather than perfect posture. We fix up the blemish and the blot by internal sense and taste for what is Good and Holy and True. We leave some things out of the prayer-space, if they will lead astray or excite stranger wanton passions. For see us self-composed, not lusting, not unchaste, and then see suddenly the attack not just of a distant longing, but of one front and center and near to our good things.

For our good things are under attack. Our good things see us firmed and resolved around fighting a manifest enemy “out there”, and then Satan decides to jest and humble us by resurrecting enemies “in here”. Only we say all is a passing fancy. All is a nearness to what is of love and feeding and faith and good things. Our faith in that pill or that substance. Our longing to be for each other home and health and substance. Our impure readings of someone else’s sins, not our own but now ours to cope with on their behalf. For we can absolve ourselves with such thinking, but know it is the servant warrior’s job to be sacrificial towards the social milieu. What sins society has, we soldier right on through. And we do not call the consensual or the loving acts by any name other than beauty. That is, the hearth, the home, the plain language around what to some goes by the name of rebellion against father and mother, is a familiar sensation to us who are beleaguered and fear to rebel.