How Bad The Fall

                                                  

How bad the Fall must have been. If the first cut is the deepest; how great the gash that severed all flesh. Angel and flaming sword separating us. The tale sung in aeons. Angel Eve, can you bring us back to Eden? So sweet and simple we were. Freely tasting all we were offered; unashamed by the wetness on our lips. Flowing as one.  

Why call it a fall at all? Simple bite of the forbidden? So it’s portrayed. No, rather a spit in the face; fist flung in the air. As lovers encompass one another; so we were encompassed by our Lover. Was it the flesh of the fruit I wanted so badly? Oh to know good and evil! How did we not know how safe and secure we were?

Though I love my fellow man it is easy to see the cracks and fissures emanating from that first fist flung high. Broken at every juncture. It’s genetic or it’s the way we were raised. Self-soothing every way. We can barely connect with ourselves. Our children at war to find their selves. The line of good and evil flows into our progeny. Children born bereft of innocence. In search of the perfect meme.

The voice of Abel’s blood crying out, “Can you bring us back to Eden?” the line stretches down the ages as another cries out. How great the fall that even perfect blood in perfect sacrifice didn’t set all right again. Certainly death the most horrible. Yet how harrowing the expulsion.

Aching pain, unrelenting emptiness and a reaching out only to grasp nothing. This is the pain of the first break up. Producing the fear of ever giving yourself away again. Not surprising then how difficult to let ourselves be loved. Though the destination is future we fight healing in the present. We are scarred visibly from that first encounter. No wonder that we do not give to the Scarred One unreservedly.

How bad the fall must have been. Eden awaits. We have run from Eden even as Eden was wrung away from us. Now we are living in this present place. How easy that first laugh; embrace, and release of self. Bending to believe it was all about me. How much work to learn to love. To give of self to another. To come out of darkness. To be loved by The Lover. The fall was great. The adventure into fulness; reclaiming what was lost; the greater adventure.

Photo by Andrik Langfield on Unsplash

A Hopeful Call

There are two ways to argue.  The first is to use facts and principles to arrive at a solution.  The second is to degrade your opponent hoping that he will just cave under your attack.  For example in a marriage in the first solution you both are looking to solve the problem so you might say, “Going out to dinner isn’t in line with our budget.”  You are using a solid measure; the budget as a principle and trying to arrive at an agreement.  The second argument might sound like, “You are a stupid moron and don’t care about my hunger!”  In this instance the attack is personal and less concrete. I am dismayed in believing that individually and as a nation we are not principled unless the principal is me.

The John Adams quote, “A government of laws and not of men,” is often heard. We are girded under by law, by principles which find their precedent in the Bible. These are principles of truth and logic which have been held to for thousands of years. As a nation when we argue we should seek solid outcomes based on law. Not based on opinion or name calling. As individuals we should seek truth (and peace with all men) via solid basic facts. Our heart and our feelings are not rational determinants of the highest good for one or all.

The heart is deceitful above all things. As Solzhenitsyn says, “But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.”  We dare not argue without compass or plumb line. Then we may see only our truth and be guided by our perception; not the highest good of other or outcome. We may sink to name calling; and it is difficult nay impossible to improve if you’re being called a dork—What does ‘not a dork’ look like?  Can we do that?

I hope for more. I think we can argue rationally; honestly, and with respect for each other. I have a friend that lives in Berkeley, CA. He believes it’s impossible to argue rationally because people will cite social media and tidbits. I think higher of my fellow man that this. We have the ability to listen to each other and to hear. It’s got to be more than ‘he said, she said.’ There is truth. 

Though constantly saddened by the evil that men do I still have hope. Hope that we will choose light over darkness. That in our striving and arguments we rest on principle, law and the highest good of the other. For law has as its outcome the highest good of man.

The Reason For My Paranoia

“Every man always has handy a dozen glib little reasons why his is right not to sacrifice himself….As for me , I kept silent for one further reason: because those Muscovites thronging the steps of the escalators were too few for me, too few! Here my cry would be heard by 200 or twice 200, but what about the 200 million? Vaguely, unclearly, I had a vision that someday I would cry out to the 200 million.”---Alekandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

There is one key reason for my paranoia. Of the forty books on World Magazine’s Top 40 Books of the 20th Century about half have to do with the failure of government when government exceeds its God-given authority. So it is no wonder that I have such difficulty with Obamacare or even with the new Core curriculum for schools. It doesn’t take any imagination to see America moving that direction (see The Life of Julia).

I’m currently reading “The Gulag Archipelago,” in which Solzhenitsyn describes the horrors of communism. Some years ago I read Manchester’s, The Last Lion—Alone, the biography of Winston Spencer Churchill. History is full of many that complacently follow their leaders into evil and ruin. However in any age there are only few voices willing to say that the prophets lie when they say, “Peace, peace when there is no peace.”

If you followed me around for a week, besides being bored, you would see little evidence of my anti-state, anti-union mentality. It is only inside my mind that I store up these grains for winter. I am fairly certain the storm is coming.

What of it? We are not to be paranoid. We are to be aware. We cannot all be the voice of a Solzhenitsyn. Yet we must be a voice.

“We have to condemn publicly the very idea that some people have the right to repress others. In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep with us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousandfold in the future.”---from The Gulag Archipelago

Lisa Whelchel, Identity, and Survivor

If real life were like the movies----In the movies the good guy turns in his Sherriff badge so he can get the bad guy without his job (and it’s ethics) getting in the way. Even in the movies you can turn in your badge but you can’t change your identity.

I keep coming across articles about motivation. I read articles pertaining to motivation and men and motivation and positive thinking. The reading got my head spinning about motivation. The reading and one more thing got me thinking about motivation; this season’s Survivor: The Philippines.

One of the survivors this season is Lisa Whelchel from Facts Of Life. She is a professed Christian and is trying to play the game with a level of integrity. That takes us back to the badge imagery. For some Christians playing poker is decidedly difficult. You have to allow yourself to bluff. I had the same experience as a teen playing Dungeons and Dragons. To be the evil wizard meant setting aside your world-view for three hours. Easy enough for a teen, harder for a poker player—impossible on Survivor?

It comes back to identity. Identity is the person you are when no one is looking. It is the ultimate motivator. It was his identity as a preacher of the gospel that allowed John Bunyan to “choose prison and a clear conscience over freedom and a conscience soiled by the agreement not to preach.” It was his belief (later realized) that he was a modern day prophet calling Soviet Russia to account that led Solzhenitsyn to cry, “As for me, I kept silent for another reason: because those Muscovites thronging the steps of the escalators were too few for me, too few! Here my cry would be heard by 200 or twice 200, but what about the 200 million? Vaguely, unclearly, I had a vision that someday I would cry out to the 200 million.”

Ultimately it is our identity that motivates us. It is who we believe ourselves to be that denotes how we will respond to life as it bears upon us.