2025-04-16 A Meditation on Wild Thoughts

“2 Make room in your hearts for us. We have wronged no one, we have corrupted no one, we have taken advantage of no one. 3 I do not say this to condemn you, for I said before that you are in our hearts, to die together and to live together. 4 I am acting with great boldness toward you; I have great pride in you; I am filled with comfort. In all our affliction, I am overflowing with joy. 5 For even when we came into Macedonia, our bodies had no rest, but we were afflicted at every turn—fighting without and fear within. 6 But God, who comforts the downcast, comforted us by the coming of Titus, 7 and not only by his coming but also by the comfort with which he was comforted by you, as he told us of your longing, your mourning, your zeal for me, so that I rejoiced still more. 8 For even if I made you grieve with my letter, I do not regret it—though I did regret it, for I see that that letter grieved you, though only for a while. 9 As it is, I rejoice, not because you were grieved, but because you were grieved into repenting. For you felt a godly grief, so that you suffered no loss through us. 10 For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death. 11 For see what earnestness this godly grief has produced in you, but also what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what longing, what zeal, what punishment! At every point you have proved yourselves innocent in the matter. 12 So although I wrote to you, it was not for the sake of the one who did the wrong, nor for the sake of the one who suffered the wrong, but in order that your earnestness for us might be revealed to you in the sight of God. 13 Therefore we are comforted. And besides our own comfort, we rejoiced still more at the joy of Titus, because his spirit has been refreshed by you all. 14 For whatever boasts I made to him about you, I was not put to shame. But just as everything we said to you was true, so also our boasting before Titus has proved true. 15 And his affection for you is even greater, as he remembers the obedience of you all, how you received him with fear and trembling. 16 I rejoice, because I have complete confidence in you.” (2 Cor 7:2-16 ESV)

Somehow held in our present far-from-kosher center, we dispel any and all rumors, pride, panicky claims unto intrinsic Holiness, and we accept the loving arms of the Holy One. We accept His “blasphemous” claims that such as these, such as we, are those to whom the Father has sent His Son. We feel sickly at times, we feel compromised at times, we lament we can’t show pluck and dedication’s reward for the desire, the wish, the ambition, to be intrinsically Holy.

Far from kosher, it becomes a rather joyous romp in the sickliness, in the embarrassment, in the punishing dream or waking morose thought. We are embarrassed; we are compromised; we are feeling unworthy to Claim, to Boast in, to Draw Near unto, the Holy lifestyle we so astutely, radically, boldly, were claiming. Sinners, after all, we are. Far from of course His purity, we are. And that romp, that muck and little sinners’ club, actually becomes in itself strangely joyous, strangely apropos, a cause for a smile and a hug or pat on the back. Because Christ begins precisely where our efforts fail. He begins precisely where our readiness lags. He begins precisely where our composure seems, feels so dastardly and unkempt.

Is it Felt? Is it Real? This endeavoring to grasp in holy Certainty the actual locus of persons, their actual Affairs of the Heart front and center not as a boast but as a plea: save us! Save us, O Son! Save us, we whose inner scales of justice do punish any and all boasting with its counterpoint: desire, lust, compromised relationships, unholy strange things. And yet, in fact these morph and meld; we only need lift up our sickness unto death (to use Kierkegaard’s term: we ain’t going it alone!) to the Father, and He makes saints and priests out of the most strange materials!

Laugh at yourself, then, O sinner! God has deigned and willed to us both the “good days” and the “bad days”. The rotten core pulses with a warmth that marks it Already Cleansed. The muck and lugubrious lush of it all is penetrated and instilled, marked Already Cleansed. We need not have the answer: when will that awful dream just Leave Me Alone! Yet we hold out faith that the marriage supper of the Lamb will invite us in, mark us dressed for the occasion, hear our weakness almost with refusal to hear: yes, I heard you, but I’m not worried about that… in the meantime, do you know you are loved? You are beheld? You are used and of great Value to the Master? He loves you in positives about yourself you had nigh forgotten about! He sees farther! He holds out this strange Long Vision that you will go higher and farther than anything you might have dreamt up! And by day’s end, our dream life is now prepped for the healing variant. For the forward progress birthed in the certainty we were under spiritual attack from a suggestive Satan. It wasn’t us, it was an Enemy! A spiritual War! A lack of self-confidence, that is, forgetfulness that Christ earned our Holiness and dispelled our demons. It was never a given, for Him, that we’d naturally be presentable in our deepest secrets; no, these He has healed and made fun, made natural, made part of swinging through the pitch.