AS FAR AS I CAN SEE

The law (self-reliance) is the moon. Grace is the sun. The moon illuminates the night, but once the sun arises, it disappears.

A friend is someone who doesn’t question your taste in friends.

Time molds the fit of the shoe, and of friendship.

The three petitions of our Lord’s prayer seem severally and appropriately – even in their order – addressed to the Three Persons of our dependency: to the Father, as the source of our lives and all their requisite provision; to the Son as the redeemer of our sin debts; and to the Holy Spirit as our guide and protector on the journey to our true home.

It’s a commonplace human reality, emotional and psychological, that there’s an inverse relationship between gratitude and familiarity.  To that generation new to indoor plumbing, every turn of the faucet would early on have occasioned an appreciative response.  As time passed and familiarity with the blessing grew, that response would naturally diminish; and for the subsequent generation, never having experienced its lack, the response would not even be a memory.  Try to imagine duplicating within yourself an experience of gleeful gratitude at taking a shower or flushing a toilet!

The generation evidence of this human reality is obvious, but a moment’s reflection will discover to anyone examples from his or her own evolving experience.   Who remembers the original joy of driving a car around the block after thousands of subsequent miles?  What opera singer still experiences the prideful glee in matching her voice to the sounds emerging from the piano?   The blissful relief of exchanging confidences evolves into a very different experience as the fortunate marriage evolves.

And that’s why it’s so misguided to expect of subsequent generations of Christians the same experience of liberation and wonder of those first drawn out of pagan culture; why it’s also misguided to expect habituated and well-behaved Christians to experience the emotions of the degenerate ‘coming to Jesus,’ or even of that same regenerate to bask daily in the joy of his salvation.   Asking such things of the people involved would be as bootless as asking oneself to burst with pride at being able to read the words on this page.  That’s just not how humans are built, and no amount of spiritual lecturing, however eloquent, however dynamic, can wring tears from a stone.

Which raises the extremely interesting and not at all simple question of what non-evangelical ministry should be about.

Pack dogs tend to be noisy.

The concept of ‘legal ownership’ only has application within a structural reality that has several other elements: membership in a law-articulated society; the content of the laws of that society; adherence to those laws.  I legally own my house because I paid for it in a certain law-structured reality.  Outside of some such reality, the concept simply evaporates.  In a state of complete anarchy, I cannot meaningfully be said to own my house.

The structure of the society in which we find ourselves determines what we can own.  In the particular American society of which I am a part, I cannot own my children, or (thankfully) my neighbor, or the air I breathe.  American society simply provides no mechanism for establishing ownership of these things.

(The language game of which ‘my’ is a part is more extensive than the language game of which ‘legal ownership’ is a part.  I can of course speak meaningfully of ‘my’ child, ‘my’ neighbor, even (somewhat awkwardly) of ‘my air’, referencing perhaps the air in (again somewhat awkwardly) ‘my’ lungs.  But when we meaningfully speak of such things, the context will generally clarify the language game in which we are now engaged, outside of and beyond the context of ‘legal ownership.’)

‘I belong to Christ’ is only true within the structural spiritual reality of God’s law-articulated creation, and my adherence to its laws, which are repentance, baptism, Communion, and self-sacrifice.

Like physical fitness, the healthy Christian life is essentially an exercise in rationality; the difference is that the facts being rationally accommodated are spiritual rather than physiological.

Life is like a school bus – it picks up and drops off.

Our responsibilities, provided we tend to them, are usually the major factor in shaping our lives.  Where we go, when we eat, where and when we sleep, how we spend our hours – these are all largely determined by our various responsibilities.

A roofer’s life has a very different shape from a nurse’s life, as do both from a jockey’s life or a banker’s life, or a farmer’s or a philosopher’s.  A sailor is very differently constrained and occupied than a shepherd or a mother or a plumber or a slave – all because of their varying responsibilities.

When our responsibilities change, the shapes of our lives change.  When their responsibilities disappear and are not replaced, lives, now unanchored, become unmoored, like driftwood, become almost indistinguishable, like sheep.

Prisoners in the penitentiary, even while retaining separate personalities, lead lives that are materially similar and spiritually uniform.  Incarcerated and tended to, they are ironically perfectly liberated, freed from their responsibilities.  That’s why the lives of long-term prisoners tend to become small and picayune, vanishingly uninteresting, colorless and vague.

This is the great temptation of freedom – its demonic allure – the temptation to escape the burdens of responsibility, to render service to no one except oneself.

That’s why St. Paul warns us not to abuse our freedom.  That’s why Christ’s final instruction was Feed my sheep.

And that’s why all demons are wraiths.