Back on the Internet after a few days with a fried modem. Posted most of this on the RH forum a couple of weeks ago, pretty much sums up my stance on an issue that's important to me. If the fact that it is scandalises you or fills you with contempt, convince me of my error or stay out of my hair. I'm willing to learn, but not to engage in empty invective, and maybe it's not so unthinkable that I could possibly be learned from on a point or two. It's amazing how many people will line up either to lambast me as a bloodthirsty warmonger because I believe in the God-given right to defend oneself or (especially) others, or to deride me as a limpwristed fence-rider because I'm not itching to pull a trigger at the merest hint of a threat. Stuff them all. They aren't living my life or addressing my responsibilities. I am.
So...
If Christ meant "turn the other cheek" to forbid defence as well as revenge, then the Christian response to all forms of evil is non-resistance. On a personal level, that means to let the pedophile have his way with your child, let the rapist enjoy your sister or daughter or wife, let the assailant do what he will with you. On a national scale, that means no police, no military, no defencive capabilities of any kind for a nation that calls itself Christian. How long would such a nation last in this world?
If obedience to this precept precludes the use of any sort of violence, then Christians have no place in the military or police. If this is true, then my brother-in-law, several good friends, and God alone knows how many more professing Christians are not only walking in sin, but making a living off of it and in some cases leading others into it. Also, were all Christians to take this view to heart and leave such professions, then that means in the case of the United States that everyone who pulls a trigger, drops a bomb, or drives a warship (or issues orders to those who do) answers to no higher authority than Uncle Sam. Am I the only one shuddering at that prospect?
This also raises the question of why Jesus commended a Roman centurion (a senior NCO in the Roman army who likely had spilled a great deal of blood in his day) for faith that put that of all Israel in the shade, yet made no recorded attempt to urge repentance in the form of leaving the legions. Also, if my understanding of history is correct, the soldiers who questioned John the Baptist on what true repentance meant for them in practical terms were likely Roman, i.e., armed agents of a rapacious pagan empire. Yet John (who was Spirit-filled from birth) never suggested that they leave the service of Rome, only that they conduct themselves therein in a manner that reflected the fear of God and love for those He loves.
As an aside, I find it telling that although police organisations tend to favour gun control, individual officers (and I know two well enough to call family) tend to be some of our nation's most ardent supporters of the Second Amendment. Yet perhaps no demographic is at greater risk of injury or death by a firearm in the hands of a private citizen. They simply make the distinction between a law-abiding citizen and a criminal. It's a judgment of actions, not heart or human worth.
Just to be clear, let me state my own position:
I do not own firearms because I fear death. I don't. I know where I'm going, and frankly, the sooner the better. I own firearms because they expand my options in the face of unrestrained evil. They are by no means my only options, or even my first. I will avoid trouble if at all reasonably possible. I will pursue peace with all as much as it depends on me, though sometimes peace is achieved because the one who would gladly and callously break it chooses not to because they don't want a load of 00 buckshot in their thorax. I will risk my own life tremendously to defuse a confrontation with someone who wishes harm to myself or those I love without violence. I will never pull a trigger or even brandish a weapon if there is the merest hint of any other reasonable option. I will never, ever take or even threaten a life to preserve mere money or property. I would vastly prefer to deter aggression than engage it, but if armed I am much better equipped to do either. I am prepared to face evil unarmed, but I don't want that to be my only option.
And honestly, I don't know how someone can love an enemy and shoot him to death at the same time, except that an evildoer can make a choice that leaves no other reasonable option for he who would act in love. C. S. Lewis, a former WWI infantry officer, went into much greater depth on this issue in his essay Why I Am Not A Pacifist, from his collection The Weight Of Glory. I tend to trust the perspective of those who have been there, because frankly, I'll be happy if I never do.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Monday, November 9, 2009
scenosaur
So long ago. No internet or cell phones or iPods. Cut-and-paste involved sharp things and chemicals, both of which we were already intimately familiar with. Vinyl records and scratchy radio shows on far-off college stations at weird hours. Piles and stacks and oceans of cheap cassette tapes, endless combinations of nameless songs by bands whose names we never learned. A pathetic few of us huddling together under the disapproving stare of the rest of our species, and reveling in it. Sick of the masses sieg-heiling their pet guitar gods and Spandex-clad generic messiahs, the party-hearty cultural fog of the 1980's clinging to every surface, the faceless dread of being showered with ICBMs resolved into a bitterly cheerful resignation, the fever and push to become a something that does nothing but consumes and conforms and flees for its very non-life from anything that would cause an actual thought.
We were always hated and misunderstood, which sounds self-pitying and melodramatic even when it's true, but we didn't brood over it except for brief spells which we would help each other out of any way we could, be it a kind word or a slap in the head or an explosion in the backyard. What did the normals know about us, or care? We had each other, and we knew there were others of our kind all over the world. The power we wielded to rip holes in the illusory fabric of normalcy was intoxicating, whether at school watching the same tired drama day in and day out, or packing into Bunny's Escort to the Crystal Mall in full regalia to flaunt our outcast glory, or tormenting a house full of stoners and metalheads with "music" so bad other punks hated us.
Been on both sides of the stage at a million shows. Black Flag was my first. Leon and I must have been the youngest there by a fair bit, and damned well the scaredest, pasted up against the back wall of UConn's Student Union Ballroom. The Ramones, Husker Du, Supertouch, Sheer Terror, Chronic Disorder, Bloodbath, Forced Reality, Killing Time, Big Mistake, Hatebreed, 25 Ta Life, Eastcide, Follow Through, Stepkid, Smackdown, The Afflicted, Rotzkinder, The Enemies, Golgo 13, No Innocent Victim, Headnoise, Flatfoot 56, The Dropkick Murphys, The Last Hope, Madball, pH, Under Investigation, Suiciety, Think Tank, Crossthread, Warpiper. Some were huge, legendary, eternal, others were gone as fast as they formed with barely ten kids to remember they even existed, but it was still heat and sweat and leather and nicotine and beer and blunt-force trauma and grins and yells and boots and fists and patches and ratty old Chucks and one big happy dys-f*ckin'-functional family.
They are my tribe. I love them. Some are older than me, some young enough to be my progeny. They are all wonderful. I love their honesty, their feverish yearning for reality, their refusal to pretend that the world isn't going to hell. I mourn that their best efforts all too often short-circuit themselves, yet even so they struggle with all their heart to be so much more than just another clique with passwords and secret handshakes and uniforms. I grieve that they are millimeters away from understanding the One Who died at the hands of the authorities whose sham and hypocrisy He exposed, yet they revile Him because someone fed them the lie that He and the "authorities" are on the same team.
I fed that lie every time I caved in to the pressure to be someone else's idea of holy, every time I poked around someone's life and made arm's length judgments out of fear rather than speaking truth in love, every time I worried more about what my new church "friends" would think than what those beautiful, ragged, heart-kicking kids needed to hear from a God Whose love for them put Him on a cross.
I don't know what to do for them anymore. I don't know if I can even go back again. I want to, somehow. On God's terms, not mine. But dear God I want them to know Him. Fuck religion. If they meet - really meet - Jesus, they'll fall in love with Him, and religion will slide off them like snot off Teflon. They'll be just what the church needs. I think they already are.
We were always hated and misunderstood, which sounds self-pitying and melodramatic even when it's true, but we didn't brood over it except for brief spells which we would help each other out of any way we could, be it a kind word or a slap in the head or an explosion in the backyard. What did the normals know about us, or care? We had each other, and we knew there were others of our kind all over the world. The power we wielded to rip holes in the illusory fabric of normalcy was intoxicating, whether at school watching the same tired drama day in and day out, or packing into Bunny's Escort to the Crystal Mall in full regalia to flaunt our outcast glory, or tormenting a house full of stoners and metalheads with "music" so bad other punks hated us.
Been on both sides of the stage at a million shows. Black Flag was my first. Leon and I must have been the youngest there by a fair bit, and damned well the scaredest, pasted up against the back wall of UConn's Student Union Ballroom. The Ramones, Husker Du, Supertouch, Sheer Terror, Chronic Disorder, Bloodbath, Forced Reality, Killing Time, Big Mistake, Hatebreed, 25 Ta Life, Eastcide, Follow Through, Stepkid, Smackdown, The Afflicted, Rotzkinder, The Enemies, Golgo 13, No Innocent Victim, Headnoise, Flatfoot 56, The Dropkick Murphys, The Last Hope, Madball, pH, Under Investigation, Suiciety, Think Tank, Crossthread, Warpiper. Some were huge, legendary, eternal, others were gone as fast as they formed with barely ten kids to remember they even existed, but it was still heat and sweat and leather and nicotine and beer and blunt-force trauma and grins and yells and boots and fists and patches and ratty old Chucks and one big happy dys-f*ckin'-functional family.
They are my tribe. I love them. Some are older than me, some young enough to be my progeny. They are all wonderful. I love their honesty, their feverish yearning for reality, their refusal to pretend that the world isn't going to hell. I mourn that their best efforts all too often short-circuit themselves, yet even so they struggle with all their heart to be so much more than just another clique with passwords and secret handshakes and uniforms. I grieve that they are millimeters away from understanding the One Who died at the hands of the authorities whose sham and hypocrisy He exposed, yet they revile Him because someone fed them the lie that He and the "authorities" are on the same team.
I fed that lie every time I caved in to the pressure to be someone else's idea of holy, every time I poked around someone's life and made arm's length judgments out of fear rather than speaking truth in love, every time I worried more about what my new church "friends" would think than what those beautiful, ragged, heart-kicking kids needed to hear from a God Whose love for them put Him on a cross.
I don't know what to do for them anymore. I don't know if I can even go back again. I want to, somehow. On God's terms, not mine. But dear God I want them to know Him. Fuck religion. If they meet - really meet - Jesus, they'll fall in love with Him, and religion will slide off them like snot off Teflon. They'll be just what the church needs. I think they already are.
Saturday, November 7, 2009
jones
this hurts like f*ck.
I am being crushed under something I never thought I could have too much of. love.
some things really are so good that there is no "too much", except that my capacity for them is pitiful.
God, do You understand what it means to be so needy that nothing ever assuages the ache for more than a moment, and those moments so rare and precious rocket through Your soul like emotional heroin? did You have friends here on earth who filled you with this yearning, this terror that the love You have for them will never find its mark but choke the life from you because it's so huge and inexpressible that it turns Your spine to water?
why is it so natural to believe that they don't understand, don't care (they don't have to), don't need anything they will ever find in me? why the need to be needed? I wouldn't wish this on anyone, least of all them. they have done nothing to make these doubts realistic, it's my fault, not theirs.
why can't I make them see, or if they already do, why can't I know that?
the glory of You they reflect used to inspire and revive me, now it makes me want to flee and hide my poverty of life and mind and vision.
when will I ever learn? why do I still feel alone and unseen?
I want to honour what they have invested in me, because it comes from You.
God I believe. help my unbelief.
it hurts it hurts it hurts. there is no pretense to strength or might or power left. I am undone. I've heard this is a good place to be. wish it was easier to agree.
how will I ever offer this love to someone who needs it if I can't grasp it for myself?
I am being crushed under something I never thought I could have too much of. love.
some things really are so good that there is no "too much", except that my capacity for them is pitiful.
God, do You understand what it means to be so needy that nothing ever assuages the ache for more than a moment, and those moments so rare and precious rocket through Your soul like emotional heroin? did You have friends here on earth who filled you with this yearning, this terror that the love You have for them will never find its mark but choke the life from you because it's so huge and inexpressible that it turns Your spine to water?
why is it so natural to believe that they don't understand, don't care (they don't have to), don't need anything they will ever find in me? why the need to be needed? I wouldn't wish this on anyone, least of all them. they have done nothing to make these doubts realistic, it's my fault, not theirs.
why can't I make them see, or if they already do, why can't I know that?
the glory of You they reflect used to inspire and revive me, now it makes me want to flee and hide my poverty of life and mind and vision.
when will I ever learn? why do I still feel alone and unseen?
I want to honour what they have invested in me, because it comes from You.
God I believe. help my unbelief.
it hurts it hurts it hurts. there is no pretense to strength or might or power left. I am undone. I've heard this is a good place to be. wish it was easier to agree.
how will I ever offer this love to someone who needs it if I can't grasp it for myself?
Sunday, November 1, 2009
thank you
how did you know?
you saved me again.
threw me a lifeline just as I was starting to cosy up to the idea of drowning.
your timing is impeccable.
not really your timing, but His, yet the choice was still yours.
I'm trying, God, I'm trying. don't know why I lose my grip so easily, yet even that helps someone. and what a someone.
it would seem that nothing I do matters because it will all work out for someone's good in the end.
but it does matter, because I still want to choose something better than hate and death.
even more than that I want to see what you see when you look in this direction, to know as well as you do that the contempt I am bracing for when the guts tumble out does not exist, that the love waiting for me is huger than the contempt would be even if it did.
I do not know how to fully believe, live, own what you say about me, but I want to. you're one very large reason why one of my most repeated prayers to God is "Lord, I believe - help my unbelief."
the gift you just offered me in His name gets every scrap of whatever belief I can muster.
and I believe that someday that will be enough, but I will not quit.
I love you.
you saved me again.
threw me a lifeline just as I was starting to cosy up to the idea of drowning.
your timing is impeccable.
not really your timing, but His, yet the choice was still yours.
I'm trying, God, I'm trying. don't know why I lose my grip so easily, yet even that helps someone. and what a someone.
it would seem that nothing I do matters because it will all work out for someone's good in the end.
but it does matter, because I still want to choose something better than hate and death.
even more than that I want to see what you see when you look in this direction, to know as well as you do that the contempt I am bracing for when the guts tumble out does not exist, that the love waiting for me is huger than the contempt would be even if it did.
I do not know how to fully believe, live, own what you say about me, but I want to. you're one very large reason why one of my most repeated prayers to God is "Lord, I believe - help my unbelief."
the gift you just offered me in His name gets every scrap of whatever belief I can muster.
and I believe that someday that will be enough, but I will not quit.
I love you.
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
pause
This is not meant to be an indulgence in self-pity or bitterness, only honest questions and reflections that I'm likely to lose if they aren't written down.
At this moment (I will speak for no other) I am well. Hope is within reach, even close. It is certainly real. More to the point, it is mine. It was meant for me, and it was meant by Someone Who is as willing as He is able to give it to me.
I don't want to squander this, for I know that trials and attacks are ahead, and I do not trust myself to prevail against them. I will, however, trust God to walk me through them. I want to learn and imprint the truth that now seems every bit as huge and all-infusing as it truly is, but which I have all too often lost my grip on. I don't ever want it too seem like the mockery I have been guilty of reckoning it to be in my forays into death. I know He has forgiven and restored me, and will continue as often as needed to see me through to the end of the war. That does not diminish my yearning to stand fast and overcome so He won't have those things to forgive me of again.
I am grateful beyond words for the people He has brought me to. I had no idea this could be real, even less of an idea that it could include me. How did I ever make it this far without them or others like them? Why do they endure me like they do? The things I have invested in them seem so trivial and superfluous compared to what they have lavished on me, the places in their lives and hearts they have freely let me into, the seasons they have shared with me. They are beautiful, and I want that beauty to envelop and define me, to not merely tolerate my admiration from a distance but to invite me to become a part of them, and they a part of me. I want to live forever in the knowledge that they are the gloves on God's hands with which He touches me in this life.
I need them, and at this moment I can allow myself to know and accept that. How could I refuse such a staggering, ever-renewing gift?
I need them because I love them. I need them because they are where I want to be. I need them because I fear the pain that lies ahead. I don't know why; I should be used to it by now, and that's not a self-indulgent whine but puzzlement as to why I can still be so easily set back by adversity.
I don't want to be capable of losing the knowledge that I am just now daring to reach out and caress. I don't want it to be lost in the enemy's smoke-and-mirror show that God has never once failed to expose for the sham that it is.
I haven't been taken out yet. God has borne too monstrous a cost for my redemption to leave my fate in my own hands. I feel the fear, but I will not let it chase me away from Him or the future and hope He has for me.
At this moment (I will speak for no other) I am well. Hope is within reach, even close. It is certainly real. More to the point, it is mine. It was meant for me, and it was meant by Someone Who is as willing as He is able to give it to me.
I don't want to squander this, for I know that trials and attacks are ahead, and I do not trust myself to prevail against them. I will, however, trust God to walk me through them. I want to learn and imprint the truth that now seems every bit as huge and all-infusing as it truly is, but which I have all too often lost my grip on. I don't ever want it too seem like the mockery I have been guilty of reckoning it to be in my forays into death. I know He has forgiven and restored me, and will continue as often as needed to see me through to the end of the war. That does not diminish my yearning to stand fast and overcome so He won't have those things to forgive me of again.
I am grateful beyond words for the people He has brought me to. I had no idea this could be real, even less of an idea that it could include me. How did I ever make it this far without them or others like them? Why do they endure me like they do? The things I have invested in them seem so trivial and superfluous compared to what they have lavished on me, the places in their lives and hearts they have freely let me into, the seasons they have shared with me. They are beautiful, and I want that beauty to envelop and define me, to not merely tolerate my admiration from a distance but to invite me to become a part of them, and they a part of me. I want to live forever in the knowledge that they are the gloves on God's hands with which He touches me in this life.
I need them, and at this moment I can allow myself to know and accept that. How could I refuse such a staggering, ever-renewing gift?
I need them because I love them. I need them because they are where I want to be. I need them because I fear the pain that lies ahead. I don't know why; I should be used to it by now, and that's not a self-indulgent whine but puzzlement as to why I can still be so easily set back by adversity.
I don't want to be capable of losing the knowledge that I am just now daring to reach out and caress. I don't want it to be lost in the enemy's smoke-and-mirror show that God has never once failed to expose for the sham that it is.
I haven't been taken out yet. God has borne too monstrous a cost for my redemption to leave my fate in my own hands. I feel the fear, but I will not let it chase me away from Him or the future and hope He has for me.
Friday, September 25, 2009
days of awe
I don't like what the recent mess on the forum has revealed about me. More to the point, God doesn't like it.
I felt ignored and forgotten, and that I had lost what had once been considerable power to stop the kind of carnage that the forum now seems to typify. Many better people than I'll ever be made the points I yearned to make better than I ever could have, and were lacerated or swept aside. I watched my place among them evaporate, and somewhere along the way I stopped wanting it back.
I'm not sure if that's a sin, but the attitudes I've given place to are. I chose not to be a part of the solution, but rather to watch the problem morph and multiply with a shrug and a bitter smirk. I allowed myself to judge people without lifting a finger to help them. And I regret that deeply.
So God, please forgive me as I forgive these whether they need it or not. I don't wish them anything but Your best. Defeat and division to the enemy and not to them. To them be Your love and grace and mercy and peace, and to You be all worship and honour and glory forever.
I don't know what to do after this, but it doesn't matter. I look in on things and realise how little I know of what's right and wrong and what really matters. I still don't see a place for me there. I no longer feel indispensable, and the fact that I ever did feels slimy and shameful. There is nothing I can bring that can't be matched or bested by scores of others. I guess the only reason that I ever let myself feel vital there is that so many treated me as though I was. That was intoxicating, and when the high wore off, I crashed.
I'm really sorry. I love them, and I love You.
I felt ignored and forgotten, and that I had lost what had once been considerable power to stop the kind of carnage that the forum now seems to typify. Many better people than I'll ever be made the points I yearned to make better than I ever could have, and were lacerated or swept aside. I watched my place among them evaporate, and somewhere along the way I stopped wanting it back.
I'm not sure if that's a sin, but the attitudes I've given place to are. I chose not to be a part of the solution, but rather to watch the problem morph and multiply with a shrug and a bitter smirk. I allowed myself to judge people without lifting a finger to help them. And I regret that deeply.
So God, please forgive me as I forgive these whether they need it or not. I don't wish them anything but Your best. Defeat and division to the enemy and not to them. To them be Your love and grace and mercy and peace, and to You be all worship and honour and glory forever.
I don't know what to do after this, but it doesn't matter. I look in on things and realise how little I know of what's right and wrong and what really matters. I still don't see a place for me there. I no longer feel indispensable, and the fact that I ever did feels slimy and shameful. There is nothing I can bring that can't be matched or bested by scores of others. I guess the only reason that I ever let myself feel vital there is that so many treated me as though I was. That was intoxicating, and when the high wore off, I crashed.
I'm really sorry. I love them, and I love You.
Saturday, September 19, 2009
it's all right not to speak if you've got nothing worth hearing
this is unfortunate, but it has to come out somewhere.
the forum that I once knew as a haven and a refuge, where anyone was safe except those who were looking for others to use as spiritual scratching posts, is now a spiritual litterbox.
not that many, even most, of those who post there don't care, but a pathetic few who don't are ruining it for those who need it most.
if I still had a voice that meant a goddamn thing there I would tear these whores a new hole. how many others are going to give up and die because someone else has to swing the biggest dick in the theological locker room? I won't, I have real friends within minutes of my real-time address, but what about Moriah or all the others who got driven off?
stuff these slaves. to look at them you'd think Christianity was the most Darwinistic game in town. I hope every sodding one of them gets a chance to face the same tests they lambast others for failing.
the forum that I once knew as a haven and a refuge, where anyone was safe except those who were looking for others to use as spiritual scratching posts, is now a spiritual litterbox.
not that many, even most, of those who post there don't care, but a pathetic few who don't are ruining it for those who need it most.
if I still had a voice that meant a goddamn thing there I would tear these whores a new hole. how many others are going to give up and die because someone else has to swing the biggest dick in the theological locker room? I won't, I have real friends within minutes of my real-time address, but what about Moriah or all the others who got driven off?
stuff these slaves. to look at them you'd think Christianity was the most Darwinistic game in town. I hope every sodding one of them gets a chance to face the same tests they lambast others for failing.
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