But for the Grace of God...

One of the, if not the most important teachings of Christianity is the ideal of Grace. Paul taught it, St. Augustine expounded on it and helped to use it to shape Christianity into what it is today and Christians everywhere profess to believe in it. It is the core belief of the faith; that no matter what sin we commit, from the most vile rape and murder to the most simple covetous or lustful glance, God's grace is enough to cover it and to redeem us from it with no questions asked and no remembrance of the sin. Paul was a persecutor of the early church to such an extent that after his
conversion believers were still terrified by him, yet he believed in this ideal so strongly that he was able to say that as Paul, he had not sinned. Grace is not something that allows the believer to sin with the intent to repent only to go back to those sinful ways and repent insincerely. Even the most wretched sinner can be saved, if his heart is truly set on repenting and receiving forgiveness and grace for his sins, and this is the subject of the hymn "Amazing Grace," which is universally recognized for both its power and truth. With grace, our fears are relived. We no longer worry about our eternal destiny. Those fears are gone, nothing more than powerless shadows deserving of nothing more than our scorn. It is the Grace of God that allows the believer to exist in the fallen state that he is in and still perform his duties for God here on Earth. That divine Grace, totally beyond our comprehension in every way is the cornerstone of the Christian faith and what separates the faith from so many other beliefs and what truly allows for one's life to be freed from bondage and to live as God would have them live on this Earth. It is something to remember for when one feels like they are nothing more than a wretched sinner undeserving of any respite, which is a feeling that everyone has had at some point. When sin crouches at your door desiring you and you open it and are taken by it do not waste time in self-condemnation rather offer your sin up to God and receive the grace that was bought and paid for by pure and righteous blood and it is in that blood that we find our solace and our redemption and our strength and it is but for this Grace of God that we will go into His kingdom instead of eternal damnation and separation from His presence and Love.

Wish

I'm not someone with tons of ambitions. I'm pretty easily contented, and whether that's a good or bad trait is another debate entirely. But something I've wanted to do for nearly as long as I can remember is to trek on foot somewhere absolutely remote, such as the Yukon Territory and simply survive. There's somehting that's always intrigued me about that part of the world, just the sheer loneliness and harshness of it appeals to me in a way. To be alone for a long period of time surrounded by nothing but the vast wilderness in every direction just surviving and trying not to die is something I truly hope to accomplish one day before I die. I'm not sure why, as most people don't find the idea of trying not to die to not be one that is super appealing, but the idea really just stirs something in me, and when I think about it for long periods of time I have to really resist the urge to throw away everything I have and run off into the wild. If I had to guess I'd say that it's the last little bit of primal instinct that every human has that also accounts for our inherent fear of rain and the dark and it's something that in myself I wish to preserve because I believe that in that primal wildness lies a part of the nature of God that we are close to forgetting and losing.

Perhaps one day the chance will be granted to me to live out this wish I have. Until then I'll content myself with my urban existence and life of school, work and thought.

You know, its interesting...

How the love of God works.

I was driving home from work tonight during a heat lightning storm, which, if anyone here hasn't ever witnessed one, is one of the most beautiful things you can see on earth. I was listening to a live version of "Awesome God" by Rich Mullins and he was talking about how bizarre the love of God is from our point of view being that someone so utterly alone and so far above humanity would desire us so much that He would create us in His image and become one of us in every way so He could help us be more like Him. 

While I don't entirely agree with every part and parcel Rich Mullins believed, I do believe he was one of the greatest men of God to ever live and certainly one of the most heart-after-God men since King David. Just to read his songs is enough to know that he had a relationship with God that is like that you would have with your wife or husband or lover in the most intimate way and it is this kind of relationship that God desires with every single human being that has ever been created and not only does he desire it but his love goes so far beyond what any lover could ever give you that it makes even the most close of relationships seem pale. 

I'm going to quote one of my favorite dialogue from recent literature, which I believe makes the point far better than I ever could.

TAKEN FROM WATCHMEN:


Doctor Manhattan: Thermodynamic miracles... events with odds against so astronomical they're effectively impossible, like oxygen spontaneously becoming gold. I long to observe such a thing. And yet, in each human coupling, a thousand million sperm vie for a single egg. Multiply those odds by countless generations, against the odds of your ancestors being alive; meeting; siring this precise son; that exact daughter... Until your mother loves a man she has every reason to hate, and of that union, of the thousand million children competing for fertilization, it was you, only you, that emerged. To distill so specific a form from that chaos of improbability, like turning air to gold... that is the crowning unlikelihood. The thermodynamic miracle.

Laurie Juspeczyk: But... if me, my birth, if that's a thermodynamic miracle... I mean, you could say that about anybody in the world!

Dr. Manhattan: Yes. Anybody in the world... But the world is so full of people, so crowded with these miracles that they become commonplace and we forget... I forget. We gaze continually at the world and it grows dull in our perceptions. Yet seen from another's vantage point, as if new, it may still take our breath away. Come... dry your eyes. For you are life, rarer than a quark and unpredictable beyond the dreams of Heisenberg; the clay in which the forces that shape all things leave their fingerprints most clearly. Dry your eyes... and let's go home.
-Watchmen

What a powerful ideal...the miracle of birth and life in itself is possibly the greatest testament to the value and worth of a person. Like the above characters, I forget by how many miracles I am surrounded by every day. Think how God must feel, with that love for every single person as if they were the pinnacle of his creation, which they, I and you are. To not consider a human just a set of cells and electrical impulses and animal instincts but the greatest single miracle in existence changes how you look at people. In a sense, yes, humans are nothing, dust in the wind, vagaries of perception, with love and emotions being no more than the temporary constructs of a feeble human intellect trying desperately to justify an existence that is without meaning or purpose. 

But in another sense, in the greatest sense, we are everything. The apple of God's eye. The greatest miracle he ever conceived. The thing he created out of nothing less than a pure burning desire to fellowship with in the most intimate way possible. Something that God loves in a way no human can even remotely begin to fathom. In that sense, we as creations are nothing less than the most immense and essential thing ever created, birthed out of a love so fiery and intense and so beyond comprehension that the Creator would take on our fallen and feeble form and die a sickening horrific death so that we could be with him if we so desired. 

Which is what he desires.

The Border Trilogy

I fished the Border Trilogy by Cormac McCarthy roughly a week and a half ago, and I've not been able to read anything since. The trilogy really knocked the wind out my reading sails, and I don't think I've ever had that happen to me before. Not even The Lord of The Rings trilogy was quite as much of a punch in the stomach as these books were, and that's really saying something. There was so much simple and profound truth in the Border Trilogy it was almost hard to take in, and the style made it a harder task than usual to read. They were something of a chore to get through at times, as three books of stream-of-consciousness writing can be a challenge to read one right after the other. But what I loved was that without writing a single emotion into his stories, McCarthy made them some of the most emotional stories I've ever read. There's a level of personal honestly and feeling that tells me these books had to be a reflection of the author.

This post isn't really much more than my rambling on about what I think about this trilogy, so I'm going to wrap it up now and just say that I highly recommend this trilogy. This is a moving, powerful and profound set of works that really show Cormac McCarthy's strength as a writer and prove why he is among the best living writers we have today.

An Early Memorial Day Thought

Since tomorrow is Memorial Day and I'll likely be too busy to post anything here, I'm going to do it a day early. 

I read the book Flags of Our Father some time ago, and that book really changed how I thought about World War 2. The utter hell that millions and millions of men and women willingly went through to preserve the freedoms enjoyed by America and many other great nations is something I can't really grasp. I then went to Europe for 3 weeks and basically did a WWII tour with my uncle, an historian. We walked along Point du Hoc, where hundreds of artillery craters still stand and barbed wire still lines the tops of the cliffs. We walked along Omaha beach where 65 years earlier our soldiers were being riddled with Nazi bullets. I walked in foxholes dug by Easy Company in the forests around Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge and saw buildings still covered in bullet holes. We visited countless cemeteries and museums and historical battle sites and monuments. 

It was really an eye-opening experience for me and a trip that I'd encourage every American to make at least once. 3.5 million people since 1776 have died on our Armed Forces in order to preserve the freedoms that we hold so dear, take for granted and sometimes don't even realize how much of a privilege they are to have.

I'm sure everyone has heard this before, but freedom truly isn't free. I could post countless quotes by many people way smarter than me on the subject, but I'll keep it simple. Freedom is not free. Period. There will always be those who want and hate freedom and want nothing more than to take it away from others, and it is in defense of that freedom that 3.5 million people have died.

 There are just wars. There are necessary wars. There are times when it is necessary to kill. That's just how it is. That's how it will always be. Regardless of the opinions of countless anti-war groups, people, etc, that's how it is. To quote a member of Easy Company, Herb Suerth Jr.:

"It does no good to wish that other countries would simply lay down their arms and be nice to us. It ain't going to happen. Unless you stand up and be counted for what you believe in, you will lose all the freedoms that are important to you. Freedom isn't, and never will be, free."

3.5 million people have died to ensure that everyone who came after them would not have to. Freedom is not free, and to all those serving in the Armed Forces, and to all the veterans who given so much to keep us free, thank you. Thank you. 

A Rorschach Test

In case you don't know, I'm an avid fan of Watchmen, both the novel and film. I'm particularly drawn to one of the central characters, Rorschach, named for the ink-blot test commonly used in psychotherapy. His mask is one of ever changing Rorschach patterns, but the black and white never mixes and are always symmetrical. This is a reflection of his thought process, that while his views do change, they are always absolute in their conviction. This is his greatest strength, more so than his immense physical strength and his extremely agile mind.

He believes in absolute good and absolute evil, often to a fanatical degree. That which is good he will protect, by punishing that which is evil in any way possible, often by killing it outright. While his views do lean towards the extreme to the point of impracticality, its his unwavering devotion to his ideals of good that I admire. His refusal to compromise in any way, even at the expense of world peace and in the end his own life is a spirit that is sorely lacking in todays world of moral relativism. Instead of taking the easy way out, instead of compromising his ideals and beliefs, Rorschach trudges on sullenly, doing his part to rid his world of evil in the form of killing all those who threaten the good and innocent.

While I don't necessarily advocate vigilante justice (though it is a topic I would be willing to argue in favor of) the thought process being it, that of absolute uncompromising devotion to good, is something I do advocate and try to practice in my own life, though with less than stellar results in many cases.

The challenge in all this is determining what really is or isn't "good." There's only one standard that I can really call absolute, and that is the Bible. Attempting to hold fast to any other thing is, while maybe with admirable devotion, in the end doesn't amount to much. There's simply no other book of absolute good in this world. There are some fine teachings from ages and ages of philosophizing and thinking, but when you boil it down, the Bible, being the written word of God, is really all you can call absolute. I make no claim to be perfect, but I try my best to simply not compromise on things that are in that Book.

It's not something one can do on one's own though, and despite Rorschachs godless world, it is only though God that one has any chance of adhering to the Bible at all. Through God.

Anything else, any other attempt through any other means will be, to quote Rorschach, "Nothing Short of compromise."

Father and Son

I was recently talking to a fellow blogging (and real life) friend about various books we've read, and one of the books I had out was The Road. If you've read some of my posts you'll know I'm a big fan of both the book and movie, and of course, the author. I was making a point about one particular line of narration, my favorite in the novel and my favorite from recent times. It describes how the Man and Boy sustain each other in their hellish world:

"Each was the others world entire."

What a powerful idea...the love between father and son is so strong that that's simply all there is to their existence. That's quite the love, if you think about it. Love so powerful between two people that it literally is the only thing keeping them alive. I wouldn't imagine there's too many people who would use something like that to describe how they feel about most anything or anyone.

I don't really have a profound statement to make on this subject, but I suppose my conclusion is that that's the kind of love that really should be manifesting itself in ones life and that one should be striving for. Again, I have no deep thesis on this, this is just something I was rolling around in my head. Give it some thought.

"Each was the others world entire."

Harmony

The 2004 film The Alamo was a flop. It did terrible at the box office and didn't come anywhere close to making its budget back. It's too bad , really, because it' a really cool and really intense movie about the Battle of the Alamo that deserved a lot more recognition than it got.

Billy Bob Thorton plays Davy Crockett, a man who's as equally adept at killing Mexicans as he is at playing fiery tunes on his fiddle, and towards the end of the movie he says and does something really profound.

As the Mexican army plays its nightly reveille, the American men remark how much they hate the music they're hearing. Davy Crockett promptly takes his fiddle and plays a perfect harmony with the music of the Mexican army, and after the song is done a dead quiet falls over both camps. He then turns to his men and remarks:

"It's amazing what a little harmony can do."

Not a single shot is fired, insult hurled or sword raised for the entire rest of the night.

Carrying the Fire

In Cormac McCarthys book The Road (and to a much lesser extent in No Country for Old men) the characters frequently reassure themselves that they are "carrying the fire." What does that mean? In the context of The Road, it means carrying all the good traits of humanity, like love, courage, hope, when the rest of the world has almost literally gone to hell. It is this "fire" that keeps them alive and is something that the characters have to constantly say to each other. This is obviously something everyone should try to do. However, to a person of Christian faith, it means something different. Well, perhaps not so much different in what it means, but in exactly what the fire is is what's different.

The fire a believer is supposed to be carrying is not the qualities of a person (though it certainly isn't bad to carry these qualities). It is the qualities of the the Author of our faith. That is the fire that a believer is supposed to carry. The same qualities in name (love, courage, hope, etc) but instead of simply carrying your own of these qualities, carry those of the Author and Finisher of Our Faith.