Law - Grace

I was reflecting this morning on what exactly drives people in their lives and conduct. My church is going through a study of Romans and that was a formative "book" to my salvation and faith.

And one of the core things that really struck me about it in that formative time was about chapters 3-8 about the history of God and man, from creation, fall, law, and grace.

When I was a child, I had great feeling, but poor communication skills. I struggled to channel my energy in a productive manner, as my small, frail, fierce vessel was insufficient to translate being right with the world. I burned myself out on tantrums, because in my state of imperfection, I was mad that I failed to perform to a greater standard. Whether it was something asked of me, or something I FELT NEEDED to be DONE, I was an idealist who took people at their word and thought everyone had a similar drive to live up to their words.

I had internalized some parts of Matthew 5:36-48, and was paralyzed by the last verse in light of the responsibility of the 37th verse about keeping your word. So when people did not keep their promises, I fell to divine rage and disappointment?! How could they not do it? They were big and adult, I was small and weak?! I was not liberal with giving myself a pass either though, as what little control I had, I wanted to be better. A lot of the passage in Matthew 5 above seemed like a lot of work and was to be done as soon as possible. It was a expectation that I would have enemies, that the world would ask much of me, and I was to be a packmule and punching bag at their request. 

God expected this of his bravest, tiny soldier and I was going to hold everyone accountable. This was rash of me, but children are extremists, and I was firmly committed to my internal compass. If my thoughts were wicked, that was a personal failing of not taking every thought captive. I was determined that God was not wrong in His expectation and that I could be made right with discipline and hard practice to improvement.

I must have been exhausting as a child with big thoughts and poor words. Glaring with intense scutiny for imperfection in myself and others and being consistently let down by reality. The Law was perfect for tiny me, as I had the example of external regulations to guide my path and keep me in line. I could point out to others that God wanted us to be better bearers of His name and slacking was for sluggards who should look at ants. (Proverbs 6:6)

But as a child. Ants are just tiny and hated. Rarely is something smaller than you, and maybe they could be despised and looked down on. I guess a later interpretation through reflection is that ants live in community and work together to sustain it and each do their part. There are probably other elements, but as a child, "first idea is best idea."

But eventually my words got better. Some of my pressure from constipation of the feelings was relaxitive from doses of working out my emotions and getting accustomed to people just failing my standards. But what eventually broke through my mind was the gospel of grace in Romans 8. I was stuck on the soundbyte of Phillipians 2:12, without reading a little further. I wanted to be perfect first, then God would be justified in loving me because I was worthy of His love. I had tuned out the idea of grace because that felt like the easy route of knowing God loved you even as a failson. But that was not ideal, I wanted to be a successful Sisyphus, learning nothing more than just push through it up the mountain of this world. I was to live up to Phil 2:14 to do all things without grumbling or complaining, no matter how hard it was, God the schoolmaster wanted that from me. The beatings would continue until morale improved and was right to do so, as He was perfect and had made us. Like in Matthew 5:48, drowning out the other comments in Philippians 3:12 and James 1:1-8.

I don't think I was as unhappy as I was earlier, when words were few and feelings were mighty. But I was blind to the concept of grace, even when I knew 1 John 4:16-19, I did not understand what 19 really meant. Somehow, this Romans study, verse by verse, chapter by chapter, broke my habit of just skimming the Bible looking for applications of the Law so that I could live up to them. I was like Israel and the gospels, maybe even like a Pharisee, who did not understand the message of Christ in spirit and deed more than the letter of the law projected large and extrapolated. I was confused by this grace, as it didn't seem fair. Like the laborers in Matthew 20, I didn't understand the generosity of the vineyard owner at the end of the day with the plentiful harvest. I was the other brother in the Prodigal Son, I did not want to stray in my behavior, and largesse was undeserved?!

But. It broke through. 

God. Loved. Me. First.

What a wild and freeing idea to go through Romans, seeing that from Creation, He loved this world, and worked through man up to Israel, to whom He shaped and guided. And like a rebellious child, it got tired of living up to that expectation and acted out. God repeatedly worked with them in history, preserving a remnant of His plan to ultimately be a sacrifice in the way He had told them in the Law. Sin has a cost, and it is the pain of loss of relationship with God and your fellow man with your actions. Israel worked the land and were farmers. Many of the sacrifices were grain and livestock, the life of their trade. When they sinned against God and each other, the priests would hear the confession and oversee the judgement of assessment for the behavior. To look a pair of goats in the eye, that you raised, and had hope of a future through their growth and offspring. And in Leviticus 16, one is slaughtered for the sons of the people and the other is sent out in exile to wander the wilderness. I wonder about that symbolism and that life. But it is very tangible, more than currency, there is a cost and that cost goes into a sacrifice that costs you, and it goes to provide for some other people in the community, not to give you a license to sin. It is as a reminder that straying from what your God asked of you, His representative people on the earth. It reflects on what kind of God Israel serves, to themselves and other nations witnessing.

This is very general, but overall I got the order of operations wrong. In trying to be made in God's image, I thought I had to be perfect before I could be truly a reflection of Him. But a lot of the Old Testament is a love letter from God to His imperfect people and His fallen world, giving promises of hope in the future, a time when all good things come to pass and what is wrong and evil is corrected.

God led with His great love for others. And that grace transformed my view of life and what it meant to be a Christian. I didn't have to follow the Law, but I got to witness the Giver of James 1:17. And of 2 Corinthians 9, with the keystone in verse 7. Not given out of reluctance or compulsion, but from joy. My works in Romans 3:23 were met with the hope of 3:24-28. I am not playing from behind. I have been redeemed from a great gulf of loss and isolation. My works and own creation, a fortress to seal me from a corrupting world? That is folly and vanity of vanities.

And it fundamentally changed me. Brick by brick, I became a more forgiving person, not by requirement or obligation of the Law, but out of gratitude that I could extend that same grace I received to others. My Father loved me with a great love and I wanted to share that where I could. And gradually, the spirit takes root in me, that I might bear Galatians 5 fruit, with a patient kindness like in 1 Corinthians 13 and Ephesians 4. 

I am yet imperfect, but I am growing in love. I am not as frustrated with the world and how it does not meet an internal measure, or even an external Scriptural law. I want to lead my life with mercy and grace, for before there was law, God looked at His Creation and saw it was good. A few chapters later, He again speaks at the fall of Man, with the judgment of man, earth, and the new work involved, but the ideal was grace and balance. Man decided to do more and defy the request of heaven, and wandered outside of Eden. But restoration was promised through the crushing of the serpents head eventually, though it took generations to manifest. When it comes to the Great flood and God repents of making Man, it is perhaps one of the more dramatic moments in Scripture. But this Creator and Sustainer persisted in hope, and I want to follow that example.

In the end, I think I started with being moral out of fear and obligation of a mighty and holy God, but to understand kindness, I had to despair of the death of my works in Romans 6, in the knowledge of the law's schoolmaster in chapter 7, to relief and release of grace in Romans 8. 

It is a difference of approach and action. Some of my friends are moral and fair, but it took the unfairness of grace to draw me in and learn to be kind, living into Matthew 5:43-48, not to just to love others who love me, but to love and honor those even who do not regard me highly.

Doors - Laundry

Been thinking about domestic things lately. Of routine and clutter from a life lived by convenient habits and distraction. I have had visitors to my house and each caused me to see my living space through their eyes, making adjustments where I could in order to make both my space and myself to be more welcoming.

My day to day life revolves around critical reading and technical writing. But this discipline is a transmutation of my core passion of collecting information from people and telling clever stories back to that audience.

My sister told me that her day to day life is slow and uneventful. Things can take a while to accomplish and sometimes a day is taken by chores like doing a full laundry cycle. I told her that I would still love to hear that from her. Because, it is not always the action that is interesting to me, but the intention behind it. What you notice in the passing moment of being forced to take your time in a process.

I can easily write a thousand words about any book or film I experience, as I try to figure out why it was made, what was trying to be communicated, and what it stirred up in me in response. Even if it is a colossal squandering of time and talent involved - so many hands were involved in the process of bringing it into my view. And therefore, many somethings had to happen for it to get to that release stage, and that process is guaranteed to generate at least one interesting story along the way.

But today, my hamper was full, so I determined to do laundry. This process was dramatized by my annual evidence that living in a mid-century house on a concrete slab makes maintenance troublesome. My drains are rather hard to physically repair or replace when embedded in a firm foundation. I have sought professional counsel on this front, and have been often given advice on dumping enzymes down my drains periodically to eat the buildup and gunk. So I bought a tub of anti-protein powder and occasionally try to debuff the swoleness of my drains. Surprisingly, my service company is never considering bringing along a camera snake to investigate the depths of my flushed sins, despite my confession through submitted service requests in detail, laying out evident consequences of my house being set in its ways. Occasionally each winter, it bubbles and belches back grumbled curses at my single-handed onslaught in attempting to wash away the memories of ever being unclean, like bathing in my own unholy river Styx.

But I am merely setting the background context for the stakes of performing a load of laundry today. Wondering if somewhere in my plumbing, there will be an equal and opposite reaction to my decision to flood the drains for some clean sets of clothes and one set of sheets.

The sheets are always an interesting complication in doing a load of laundry, as the tangles and folds create mobius strip time warps to reduce the expected effect of cleansing and drying the other items involved. Rather than these folds having the effect of wringing the clothes to be cleaner and drier, it instead forms a series of protected pockets to create steamed dumplings of retained moisture. This is on defiance of classic American tradition in the art of deeply frying unnatural objects until they are homogenous, and likely homogenized for good measure.

Indeed, I heard light gurgling as my pipes were flushed and the washer completed its cycle, singing me a light song in triumph of its good service on the submarine wars waged in close quarters. It summoned me from my reading of "Buff Soul" by Moa Romanova, in order to transfer the contents to the aggressive spinning clothes oven. Alas, my efforts were in vain in deconstructing inedible dumplings and I had to extend the timeouts in the hotbox for the items who sought refuge in the black sails, torn from the rigging of my nocturnal vessel to the land of dreams.

Once these stages were completed, I got to transport the load back to my room to organize and compact for storage. It is a centering process to sort out this task, acknowledging the trials to which I put my adornment in shielding me from the elements, then repeating the process which exposed them to external contamination in reverse to cleanse them from that experience.

The small things in life are fascinating and enthralling wonders to ponder that anything happens at all. There is art from the children's comic "Moomins", where one character remarks to another "But you lead such an exciting life." To which a behatted figure with a pipe responds, "Well, I let little things happen to me and then I think they are tremendous." And that encapsulates the spirit I want to reflect in life.

In the secondary part of my title, I was going through my rooms and looking at my doorframes. I haven't had to hang a door for a while, and while some of the paint is scuffed and chipped at the framing of the hinge, each door closes true. And for that I am grateful. I have a secondary reminder of the counter-example of my rear fence's wooden gate, which is exposed to the elements and vacillates between being too loose and swinging in the wind and being swollen in cold and damp weather to be stubbornly stuck shut. I think I am more like the gate than the door, in having to adjust for my environment and season, but aspirationally I admire the consistency in my interior doors' unsung performance which I tend to take for granted. Roman Mars, host of the design podcast "99% Invisible", has a thesis statement that good design is often invisible, as it does not get your attention enough to convince you it needs to be changed to something else which would resolve a perceived problem.

"Blessed are the easily pleased, for they shall be often contented."