Idiocy

*This one was really hard to publish but here it is, being real with ya'll!*

I’ve been studying the book of Daniel and reading and reading and reading and learning to recognize the ‘babalyonian’ mentality of the prosperous west. The babaloynian mentality being characterized by the attitude of “I am and there is no other.” The tendency toward unapologetic materialism and superficial and physical focus have been the primary idols discussed. In this context something came together that has been forming in my mind for quite some time.  Where did I get the idea that I deserve or have some sort of right to and easy and prosperous life?

This world is so indescribably hard and I would venture to say this is likely the best its ever been. Even the poor of our society have access to their most basic needs. The world I live in is not the norm. Not the norm for history and not the norm for a large portion of the earth’s present inhabitants.

How many women over the course of human history did not lose a beloved child to death? Certainly far fewer than those that did. The nasty, brutal, dirty living conditions of our ancestors is simply not acknowledged by our culture. We ‘westernize’ history.

Rome in the day of the early Christian church was a place so packed with people that it far outstripped the per capita of even our most crowded cities. There was no sewage system. There were virtually no doctors, and even those often did more harm than good. Women were not even allowed in the front rooms of their homes and were almost invariably mothers by the age of 13-14, with absolutely no say in who they married. People died, usually before they left infancy.

This is just one historical society but most weren’t much better. And here I’m told ‘Because you’re worth it!’

I ‘deserve’ to have a vacation on the ocean, certainly not in a tent in the woods (how appalling)! I deserve a large, air conditioned house with a flat screen TV and my car should certainly not be more than a few years old! After all, I deserve better.

I most certainly deserve to live happily, to avoid catastrophic suffering and to die peacefully in my sleep. I certainly deserve to raise my babies to adulthood and watch them become parents!!! I think the roughly 70 million Christian martyrs to date would most staunchly disagree.

How many times does God tell me that I will suffer? It’s not as if I had no warning. He certainly was honest about it. Jesus said it, Paul said it, Peter said it… this is one of the most consistent themes in the New Testament, second only perhaps to LOVE! Yet, I tucked it behind the nearest Hobby Lobby accessory and assumed it didn’t apply to me. It applies. It sucks and it applies.

I am suffering… deeply, desperately. I am suffering. And it pisses me off, what the crap? This can’t be real!

I’m not entirely sure what this means to me but it means something. It doesn’t make me hurt any less, just as I am certain that a mother who lost her baby in a culture where it was more common than uncommon hurt no less because it wasn’t unexpected. She sobbed and mourned and screamed. I’m sure she did, just as I do. I don’t miss Damon any less because I know he joins countless children in heaven.

However, I do think that my mindset needs serious adjustment.

I used to think that to “be a living sacrifice” referred to the sacrifice of living as a Christian, the whole don’t drink, don’t sleep around, love your neighbor, forgive, then forgive then forgive some more stuff. I absolutely do not believe that today. Living as God calls me to live is not a sacrifice… it is fulfillment. When I tried to buckle down and be a good Christian and follow the rules it was a sacrifice, and it sucked but that’s not how it’s meant to be.

When I followed my own path, when I insisted on my “freedom” from those “archaic and restrictive rules” I drove myself into the ground, well, the pit to be more specific. When I tried to check off all of the boxes and “get it right” I exhausted myself and lived under the weight of constant self-condemnation. When I finally let go, submitted and let God teach me to live by His love everything changed and He wooed me into freedom.

Now I wonder if this is what it means to be a living sacrifice. To live in the tension between a desperation to go home and the inability to do so. To wade through chest deep waters of icy pain only when not being battered by tidal waves of screaming agony. To know my Father in my soul but to so often be unwilling to reach Him with my heart. To know truth but be unable to understand it. Is it haughty to feel like a living sacrifice? Is this not a claim I should make for myself? Will I one day look back on this as I do now at my previous understanding of the condition and think “Oh, how little I understood of God then! He is so much more!” I hope so.

Today I read “A Grief Observed” by C.S. Lewis. Wow, like, wow. It was one of those “dude, get out of my head” experiences. I’m so indebted to those individuals who have had the courage to publish their grief journeys. So many things that he wrote were exactly how I feel. I kept thinking “I’m not crazy! He thought this, too!” I was most encouraged by the fact that he faced his most ‘heretical’ and painful questions full on and came out still believing God.

Lewis discussed how God is the shatterer of idols, even idols of Himself. Sounds weird but a false image build of God is still a false image. I’ve had to confront that I clearly did not know God as I thought I did and clearly my faith was not what I thought it to be. God destroyed my house of cards because it’s the only way I would see it for what it was (yeah, that one hurt).

This sucks. I miss my baby. I miss my life before the crushing pain. I miss the bubble of happy I lived in. I miss not seeing the world for what it is. I want to be plugged back into the Matrix. I miss Damon. I miss Damon. I miss Damon.

I don’t understand and I love my Father. Yet another dimension of the ever present duality. I think I may be moving out of a place of hopeless desperation to a place of hopeful waiting; believing, in time, He will answer my questions and prove worthy of my trust again. Not because He has to but because He does and because I want Him to. Not even because He is currently unworthy of my trust but because I perceive Him to be. He’s faithful that way, even when I’m being a complete idiot. So, I get to be an idiot and as long as I am idiotically in search of Him He’ll make sure I find Him.