Obey Your Body

Traversing a mall with a friend recently, we spotted a booth selling some crap in a bag with pretty ribbons (women love that shit!) over which was a sign that read, “Obey Your Body”. Most people don’t even notice such things, but of course, my response to it was to excitedly exclaim “OK!” and make like I was squatting to take a dump, complete with sound effects. Then I suggested we stand in front of it and piss, and when anyone complained, we could just say, “hey, I’m obeying my body – my body said I needed to piss!”

At this point I really did have to stop my comedy routine as my friend is eight months pregnant and belly laughter can be uncomfortable for a pregnant woman, so in deference to that I gave it a rest. The point is, just imagine if the sign had said “Obey Your Husband”. It seems I can hardly go anywhere anymore without seeing the absurdity of people’s comfortable obliviousness to the demonic, while at the same time knowing that they would react to anything hinting at Jesus like a vampire reacts to holy water.

So why dance around the obvious – they react because their hearts contain the Truth, put there by God. The state they must be in, numbed to God and immersed in what has become essentially a culture of death – one that simultaneously denies/avoids death (“that’s put a bit of a damper on the evening hasn’t it”) yet daily sacrifices hundreds of unborn babies in the name of convenience – cannot allow the light in, because it is too painful and it burns.

Being in the world but not of the world is not an easy path. It is heartbreaking, exhausting, galling, horrifying. But the path of rejecting God, of being numb to evil to the point where soaking the land in the blood of the unborn is looked upon as a right, where hideous demonic concepts that hide behind fluffy, feel-good catch-phrases are treated as Gospel, is the utterly terrifying path chosen by the multitudes.

As the Chinese philosopher Mencius wrote around 300BC:

To act without clear understanding, to form habits without investigation, to follow a path all one’s life without knowing where it really leads, such is the behaviour of the multitudes.

In other words:

Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few. – Matthew 7:13 (RSV)

So-Called Christians

Interacting with Christians on the Internet doesn’t do much for my faith. For a long time I was what you might call a ‘Christian sympathiser’ but I kept professing my atheism knowing it wasn’t worth being attacked for being a Christian and not having enough knowledge or even faith to be able to defend myself effectively. What I didn’t expect was all the sniping and in-fighting from Christians themselves and it’s a disappointment to say the least.

Syrupy coatings don’t do a great job of hiding nasty and vindictive words and I find it unsettling. All the projection and obfuscating that people do in order to maintain an aura of holiness doesn’t further the cause. There are huge problems in the world and one doesn’t have to be a picture of perfection in order to see and to attempt to remedy some of that.

I thought it would be non-Christians holding me to a higher standard than that to which they hold themselves, but it turns out it is other Christians who want to tear each other down. This is not what is meant by “iron sharpening iron”. It is one thing to correct and challenge each other’s ideas; it is another to attack based on sketchy information about the person himself. Is it not so that the greatest of sinners can become the greatest of saints?

I’m not going to let any of this affect the faith I’ve found, but I won’t say it does it any good. I’m not doing this for ego-gratification or fame or what have you. I write what I see as the truth; I look for what is true and that requires getting down in the mud sometimes to see what is beneficial there. I have always been a seeker of what is true and good and it is a lifetime’s work that continues; inevitably, mistakes are made along the way. Being judgemental toward those on the same path of truth-seeking is self-defeating.

It seems that if someone admits to being a Christian, they must write PC stuff that will not offend anyone with delicate sensibilities, which means that Christians do not like being challenged and wish to remain self-satisfied with their often-feigned holiness, while they pretend that they do not think about the things others do. Maybe Shelia’s clinical sex stuff is all they can handle. How sad and boring and backwards that is.

With everything going on, it causes us to question whether this is too little too late and immaterial. After all, this is a world in which a proposal to disallow children to weed gardens or pick eggs, never mind drive a tractor on farms, can be made in the name of keeping people safe; Russian troops are training with the US military; Homeland Security has bought enough hollow point ammo for 7 years. This ammo is banned in war according to the Geneva Convention since it is so nasty to human flesh. Last but not least, CISPA is coming to infringe on Internet privacy and freedom of speech.

With all that, how fruitless it is to nit-pick and pass judgement, as if anyone could know the state of another’s soul or where they’re headed in the end.

Relationship Cycles Can Solidify the Foundation

ALL relationships have ‘down time’. This can be anything from introverts who need time to themselves to minor quarrels to huge, catastrophic events. The key for any kind of down time is having the patience to wait and the willingness to talk through it. This is different than wanting to ‘work it out’ on the spot, which is something women tend to want to do more than men. Men are not so fast moving or as emotional as women; his periodic withdrawal is not so laden with insecurity as hers.

We can recognise that relationships have cycles and that, so long as emotional distance isn’t left to go on for too long (I think Athol Kay’s two-week limit is a pretty good time frame), this is normal and nothing to worry about. Many of us have experienced this withdrawal as beginning of the slow deterioration of the relationship because it never gets dealt with properly and so is left always partially unresolved (and we all know how women want resolution – popularly termed ‘closure’, a term I dislike).

It is sad how many people end up like this:

It is impossible for a relationship to be nourished unilaterally. It is true that everyone is flawed, but it is also true that some will absolutely refuse to allow themselves to be vulnerable enough to work through the difficult emotions. A couple will inadvertently hurt each other, but we can choose whether we take this clumsiness (that we all have) as a deliberate personal slight or not, and that is the indicator of our respective ability to forgive truly.

Of course, we should never allow attacks on character to pass our lips; we have to guard our own words and watch our own thoughts and re-frame it in terms of how something made us feel, rather than what a poor excuse for a human being our partner is. Furthermore, we need to accept that sometimes we will hurt each other so that we can accept the other’s emotions as valid and real, that we were the cause of them, but in a way that this is not one attacking the other or purposefully hurting the other. We can avoid escalation by accepting whatever each has to say, not being personally offended, and not expecting the other to change who they are.

This is comparable to the life of faith. Sometimes it is rather dry – sometimes more often than not – and the rewards seem few. It is a human tendency to expect rewards to be forthcoming and to desire a life of bliss, and then to be disappointed when it is not delivered to us. Do we persevere or do we give up? It can be tempting to put up a pretence of perfection otherwise known as keeping up appearances, but when we do that, does it help us to grow?

In the same way we ought to practice patience with each other, we know God is patient with us and that we cannot make demands on Him to conform to our schedule or to relieve our suffering. If He relieves it, it is only through His good grace, not because we deserve it. We need to practice that kind of love with each other. We will always have to be hurt and forgive, over and over, just as we must see ourselves unworthy of the presence of God, yet He doesn’t stop loving us. When our prayers seem to fall on deaf ears and our spiritual practice seems dry, do we feel forgotten and curse God’s name, or do we wait?

If our partner hurts us, do we close our hearts, or do we remember that “wounds from a friend can be trusted”? In the latter case, there is the possibility of finding a deeper love, even of falling in love all over again. In the former, we will likely lose the love we had.