Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Two degrees.  Sixty-eight is arctic.  Seventy is sweltering.  It has been a while since I have not been able to find comfort in my home.  SIGH.

Today my beloved Bettina, her Handsome Groom G-Man, and her two cherubs detoured off the highway whilst traveling back from their vacation in order to give me hugs!  Is there a greater "I love you!" out there?  Conveniently so, they also ferried me to the car rental place so that I might make it to my Greek class tonight.  They had a brief respite from their travels and ate lunch at my abode.  Actually, I think I got three hugs from Bettina Matilda!  I gave her the sermon CDs from Swordman, the 101 Things Jesus Does For You book I bought her to share with her cherubs, and an NASB bible (sadly not the '77 version).  I chattered at her like a magpie, making her look at my Greek homework.  I also got to read Frog and Toad to her cherubs.

Once she called me, I scurried around to prepare: threw the dishes piled up in the sink into the dishwasher; made the bed; scrambled out of my pajamas; and cleaned the broken pot off the bathroom floor that has been lying there since it slid off the back of the toilet Friday night.

The plant was in a beautiful green Chinese porcelain pot.  I have worked to not hold possessions too dearly, but one of the sorrows of this disease is how many of my things I have broken from hands that no longer work right, from banging into things because of eyes that no longer work right, from knocking them over because of legs that no longer work right.  When the pot flew off and shattered on the floor, I merely started sitting on the toilet sideways, trying to ignore the plant which pleaded for its roots to be covered and avoided the shards covering the floor.  I really liked that pot.  It was beautiful...and green.

While cleaning up the mess, I started huffing and puffing as if I were climbing the Matterhorn or the Himalayas or Mount Everest...or all three at once.  Here I was thinking my heart was better, but the merest bit of scrubbing left me trembling and sweating the whole time Bettina and her family were here, sweat trickling down my back at seventy degrees as if it were ninety-nine.

But at sixty-eight, visions of Alaska, no Siberia fill my mind as I shiver, trying to stay warm.  Two stinking degrees.

While awaiting the beginning of Greek class (I arrived way too early for a reluctant student), I finished the first thesis in Forde, coming across the most interesting of analogies.  I mean, Kleinig's receptive spirituality, the portrait painted, rightly so, of us being mere beggars before God, was incredibly illuminating for me, but Forde's similar analogy is just plain fascinating. 

Perhaps we can glimpse the truth behind this paradox by recalling the analogy of addiction.  The law "Thou shalt quit!" is for the alcoholic quite right and true.  It is a "most salutary doctrine of life."  However, it doe snot realize its aim but only makes matters worse.  It deceives the alcoholic by arousing pride and so becomes a defense mechanism against the truth, the actuality of addiction.  That is not what the law is for.  Law is not intended to isolate from God in independence and pride, but to expose the need for God and his grace.  Thus the law doe snot cure but kills.  And so it is, one way or another.  It drives either to despair or to presumption.  That is, of course, most offensive to us.  Something in us wants to hold out till the last for the ability of the alcoholic to "get it all together" and quit.  "Doesn't it work that way at least for some people?" so we cry.  Perhaps this is where the analogy reaches its limits.  In human affairs it may sometimes work.  The addict may not be so far gone as was thought and may be able to quit.  But when we shift to the relationship with God it is another matter.  The "intervention," the cross itself, exposes the absolute depth and hopelessness of our addiction.  (25-26)


Addiction!  How very apt!  For addiction is not merely a weakness of spirit, but a disease that fills and encompasses the body and mind, permeating every facet of life.  The addict might one day learn to resist, but addiction is a lifelong illness, a lifelong battle.  For some is it a raging war; for others it is a cantankerous companion trying to insert himself into their lives.  So it is with our sin.  We might beat down the "beast," but we also lay down with him each evening and arise with him each morning. 

The addict oft denies his addiction and finds many, many ways of talking round it, justifying, explaining, providing all manner of obfuscation rather than admit the truth.  Try as he might, pretend as he might, he cannot conquer the addiction.  He cannot heal himself. 

Before the cross there can only be repentance.  Even when the person is able to quit, he may be dancing on the edge of the abyss of pride and it constant companion despair. (26)

What is righteousness?  It is a sheer gift to be received only by faith, by being called into relationship as an entirely passive receiver.  God, that is, insists on being related to us as the giver of the gift.  What God demands is, as Luther will put it a bit later, "naked trust," pure receivers.  To be a receiver, to believe that the gift is complete,  is to "be right with God."  (26)
That last bit nearly bowled me over!  When I think of all the times I have been instructed on just how it is that I can and should "get right with God," all the things that I should be doing.  Yet we are back to Kleinig's beggars.  All we are to "do" is receive.  Receive.

A long while ago, someone challenged me to read the Gospel of John keeping foremost that God is a giver.  I did not understand the challenge and did not get very far.  I wonder, now, if I could hold that vision long enough to read in that manner.

In any case, Forde is quite blunt about our addiction, the truth of it:

One can be addicted either to what is base or to what is high, either to lawlessness or to lawfulness. Theologically there is not any difference since both break the relationship to God, the giver.  (27)

Whether we are a social drunk or plagued with blackouts, we are still an addict.  Whether we are merely engaged  in recreational or experimental activities or are a hard core junkie, we are still an addict.  There is no good spin on it.  None.

St. Paul says it was given to make sin apparent, indeed, even to increase it.  It doesn't do that necessarily by increasing immorality, although that can happen when rebellion or the power of suggestion leads us to do just what the law is against.  But what the theologian of the cross sees clearly from the start is that, more perversely, the law multiplies sin precisely through our morality, our misuse of the law and our success at it.  It becomes a defense against the gift.  That is the very essence of sin:  refusing the gift and thereby setting the self in the place of God. (27)

Thus, the law cannot save us, cannot bring us to righteousness.  Period.


In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loves us.  For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.  ~Romans 8:37-39

8.  JESUS MAKES US OVERCOMERS.

James tells us to "consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance" (1:2-3).  That's a tough thing to do .  But it gets easier when we remember that  "we are more than conquerors through him who loved us" (Romans 8:37b), because we know what lies on the other side of every trial: the love of God.

"If God is for us, who can be against us?"  Paul asks.  Since God has loved us so lavishly in Christ, what do we have to fear?  His love is more than enough to overcome any trial.


Lord, I believe.  Help my unbelief!

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