I just finished a book, on recommendation of companionableills, called Story, by Steven James. It was very good. Highly recommend it. There were a few things I would depict differently, I think.
Anyway, tidbits:
James talks about light and darkness in this story a lot. They don't seem such opposites to me (fighting forces, though, yes), because darkness is the absence of light. Darkness cannot exist without light, it is not without light. It is not.
And light and darkness (as good and evil) work their wonders in such different ways.
At one point James says, "...i need some of your light to glow in my life/and burn away the darkness...i still have an echo of your image within me,/battling with this creeping stain upon my soul..."
I wrote notes:
"wash away
Rain. Leaves its own stain?
Washes in light.
Light can be heavy."
For a while I've been struggling with expressing the reason I enjoy rain so much and, specifically, Arizona rain and not necessarily any other rain. (I am determined to hate Arizona, so maybe this is why I have so much trouble.)
I have come up with this: Rain is substance.
I think I know what I mean now. I think that light can be heavy in the same way that rain can be heavy. It may wash away impurities, stains, but it also leaves a stain of its own. It penetrates and illuminates and leaves things raw and real. I am definitely blending light and rain now.
I'm sure I'm being completely incoherent.
I think that our fallen nature is not our desire to do evil, for that does not exist in that pure sense. It is our loss of touch with God and our weakness to Satan. It is our tongues and ears wrapping themselves around, becoming fluent in, the language of dark and sin rather than of light, of love.
There is so little focus on God becoming Man and I believe that this is a mistake. There is an implication, I think, that God's sole sacrifice/gift for us was His death for us but His life for us is immensely important. Because of Jesus' death, our sins can be forgiven and we can break through death, but only because of His life can we bring Him into ourselves. God became Man when we had fallen so far from the image He created us in, allowing us to don the Jesus persona. He gave us a model to mold our lives after but also made it possible. God wants us to be like Him. And so He became Man and somehow reconciled His perfect nature with our worldly, sin-stained one, making it possible for us to do the same. He found a means for cleansing our bodies so something as perfect as Christ can exist within them.
This is so difficult to explain.
These posts always form themselves at absurd hours. Not nearly as intelligible in the morning.
Current music:
Fallen Man, Relient K
Hallelujah, Rufus Wainwright
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3 comments:
"I think that our fallen nature is not our desire to do evil, for that does not exist in that pure sense. It is our loss of touch with God and our weakness to Satan. It is our tongues and ears wrapping themselves around, becoming fluent in, the language of dark and sin rather than of light, of love."
I have heard "evil" defined as the perversion of the will of a free and rational being. So that one is evil if he or she does not will the will of God, (which is only perfect love). This kind of evil defines the evil spirits, (fallen angels) and can certainly be witnessed among human beings, and "my(own) heart showeth me the wickedness of the ungodly, that there is no fear of God in his eyes." (Ps. 36) So evil does exist as an attitude and action of the heart, but it has no substance.
I have heard it said that St. Thomas Acquinas defined sin as the "hole in the handkerchief". And that the old English word "naughty" which has different connotations in modern times has an insightful etymology for it literally means "to make naught of". And that's what sin does, it does not create, it can only tear and wither what already exists. The devil is not creative, but only a destroyer, not the architect of any reality, only a deceiver.
Your description of us becoming fluent in the language of darkness is powerful. I still wonder at the innate human hunger for the darkness, and am grateful for the fact of the Incarnation and the possibility of regeneration:
"as many as received Him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name: which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." St. John 1:12-13
Thanks for your thoughts. They make me think.
I think the language analogy is good but missing something.
We were created to speak the language of love; it is our native tongue. If we speak the language of sin and hatred, it is a second language for us. Second languages are hard to learn, as we all know. Why would we bother? What drive is strong enough? I think there's a step before fluency that's more comparable to seduction. Satan is a charmer, a seducer - and he's good at it. He makes perverseness and evil attractive and exciting (at least at first), and he teaches us the language - but first we have to become students of the darkness.
People have asked me why sex outside of marriage is a sin, when it doesn't "hurt" anyone, unlike most crime/sin. I think partly sexual purity is a big deal with Christianity is because that seduction for fruitless pleasure mirrors Satan's attempts to take us "to his place". This fits in with my idea (and James') of the Bible as a literary work with parallels, symbols, etc.
I completely agree with your observation that Jesus' life was as important to us as His death. I with more teachings were centered around what it means that He lived for, with, and as us instead of that He died for us, because His life gives meaning and a model (another parallel?) for ours.
Awesome post, as always.
companionableills-
Here is where I disagree: "We were created to speak the language of love; it is our native tongue."
Those statements are not the same to me. I believe we were created to speak the language of love, but I do not believe it is our first language. We are born into sin. Fallen nature. Naturally fallen. Naturally, we are fallen.
I've been hearing all my life that humans are by nature sinful and only a few weeks ago was I able, after struggling with how easy sin is and my perplexion (made that up -- state of being perplexed) as to why, to come to this conclusion:
Humans are by nature sinful.
Humans are naturally sinful.
Sinning by humans is natural.
Ergo, what is natural is not, very often, what is good.
Dispute me if you think I'm wrong (please), but that was monumental for me.
To me, the second language is the language of love. From my experience, I have much more trouble speaking the language of light than the language of dark, and it takes an immense amount of practice, repetition, etc. to become comfortable in the language of light and uncomfortable in the language of dark. The language of sin comes naturally where the language of love is difficult. The language of love only comes when my will is set before God and I allow Him to mold the speech and ear of my heart around His words of love.
Satan has already seduced us. He seduced Eve at the beginning of time and that's when our hearts fell into fluency of Satan's language rather than His. Our defenses are weakened greatly. Satan charms us so successfully because he speaks our language (rather, we speak his).
Jesus' life isn't only meaning and a model, it's a means. I believe that He lived His life on earth not only to teach us how to live and then died to cleanse us of our sins, but He lived to give us the capability for perfection. (It's hard for me to communicate the difference I'm trying to depict between cleansing of sins and housing perfection.) Jesus is the Way.
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