A Dramatic Reversal

King's David's infamous episode with Bathsheba in II Samuel 11 and 12 comes as a shock. This Bible character, whom God speaks so highly of, takes a ghastly turn for the worst when he impregnates another man's wife and then has him killed in battle to cover up his sin. And this is the "man after God's own heart," right?

Psalm 51 is his immediate response once He is confronted by the Nathan the prophet of His sin. He utters some intriguing statements:
1. "Against Thee, Thee only have I sinned and done this evil in thy sight[!]"
2. "I acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me."
3. "Behold, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me[!]"
4. "Create in me a clean heart, oh God, and restore a right spirit within me."
5. "Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation, and uphold me with thy free spirit."

...1. When one repents to God, there is more than mere regret. "I'm sorry" and "I repent" are not the same thing. I may be sorrowful simply that I got caught or was reprimanded for an action without actually wanting to change and admitting that I have committed an offense against God. Repentance involves a change of heart, a redirecting of one's self back to Christ.

...2. When I committed that particular act, I must totally stare it in the face, in all its ghastliness and admit that I alone was responsible. No "if's," "and's", or "but's". No excuses. I was totally vile when I sinned and acted upon my own wicked intents and desires. Do I admit these things for the purpose of self-flagellation and condemnation? No. Not out of condemnation, but out of conviction. The power of the blood of Christ is indeed more than enough to cleanse me. But that glorious and sacred redemption is not to be taken lightly. I believe it is only achieved once we totally are honest and admit our wrongdoing. I John 1:8-10 has a lot to say about this, along the lines of If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us...if we confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us... Indeed, God can and will remove our sins far from us, as far as the East is from the West, throw our sins into the sea of forgetfulness, etc. But we must first totally own our sins, before He totally, once and for all, destroys their power. For, He who knew no sin, becamse sin for us.

...3. I am inherently flawed. Society has not initiated my moral destruction, proved the bane of my existence, or corrupted my naturally good self. I have no naturally good self. I slid out of my mother's birth canal, already cheated. Cheated by death, born already damned, lost. I am offered mercy by the God who loves me. I was talking to a friend recently. We discussed the issue, "how could I serve a God who will condemn me if I live my whole life the best I know how, but miss that one point?! [Accepting Jesus as Savior]" I think "the best I know how" is a ironic. Truly, we are held accountable for what we know. At the same time, what we think is best...how can we be sure it is meeting some absolute moral standard properly? What if my best isn't good enough? What if, even my good works toward others, lose their inherent "goodness" through several possible pitfalls: My good works are to make me feel better about myself. Sure, I might be an altruist. But altruism includes one's self. Even the greatest moment of charity contains the thought in the back of the mind, that splinter in the brain: "this is making me feel good about myself. I am being fulfilled as a person by giving to the needy. This must make me alright." This is selfish. I find that even our charity is laced with the survival instinct, with self-preservation. What about a person who is charitable because of his or her religion? Even then, are they not, for example, giving to the poor because they god purpotedly being served through this charity is pleased and will make life easier for him / her or perhaps reward him / her in eternity or...
Coming back. Good works. We cannot do anything good. Not in our own strength. Good is not inherent to us. I find that if indeed there is a God above who has set moral laws and standards to govern his universe, it is He who defines what uprightness is. Therefore, I don't have a knowledge of good on my own. I know what is righteous and what is evil by the law He has created. I am not saved by this law, but I have knowledge and awareness of my sin by it.
Furthermore, because I don't have an understanding of what is good based on some human system of law and governance, I am not able to live my life in a "good" or righteous way. "Doing the best I can" is abominable at best, when our human species has no synthetic law governing good and evil. "The best I can" is more likely to reveal "the vastness I can't".

~TRANSITION~

It may seem I'm being negative or pessimistic. I have told a couple of people recently something that may seem contrary to the nature my friends surmise of me. I have lost my faith in humanity.

I have lost my faith in humanity. There was a time when I took friendship personally. When I took my relations with people personally. If I held them in high esteem, I often set myself up for failure. They would so something contrary to the good nature I ascribed to them, and this would shatter my world. An immoral act by a respected leader, a negligence to care by a friend, a reversal of creed by a person of concrete thought and action. People break down. Their good intentions, their loves, their emotions...don't get me wrong. There are intense moments of wonder and mighty deeds that I see in my fellow human beings. But ultimately, the painful sorrow of failure rings louder than the few moments we do get things right.

I think chiefly of interpersonal communication. For all our purported social adeptness, we are fairly terrible at conflict resolution. One person doesn't have the inherent ability to settle a conflict. Someone gets an entire education to become an arbitrator, or a mediator to help people who can't logically or emotionally or in any way resolve their conflicts otherwise. 10 million people died in the 1910's because of World War I, a conflict that resulted from seemed to be peace. (And what a pseudo-peace it was!) A war started because of alliances. A la The Triple Entente: France, Britain, and Russia. When one declared war on The Triple Alliance (Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy), the others followed suit. How about that. Eh? Don't you love it dearly and tenderly? An alliance. Something that should move us in the direction of peace. Yet these nations had to do the exact opposite. Make war, not love...because of alliances. Oh the horror of interpersonal communication!...governed by interpersonal jealousy, interpersonal accusation, interpersonal suspicion.

Whenever I connect with someone in conversation, it feels like such a God moment to me. That in spite of our terrible abilities to communicate effectively (even with such modern innovations as text messaging, instant messenging and the like) I am able to really love someone through a good, soul-to-soul conversation...this is intriguing to me. And it points me heavenward, realizing some sort of Providence must have graced the two of us to be able to understand each other and effectively communicate to each other.

Getting back to the general concept of lost faith in humanity. I find myself not wanting to get to know people more. It's dangerous being allowed into someone's circle of trust. You learn things about them that may make you not like them as much. When we are judgmental of friends, it's bad, but not that bad. It's understandable, I mean. Because we are often judging out of hurt and lost hope. We had this idyllic image of this friend, this hero, this loved one, and a failure on their part shatters the angelic halo we placed over their head. This is why idols are dangerous. By our setting them up as such, we are setting ourselves up for disappointment.

I think, though, that humanity is made wonderful. "Rome was not loved because she was beautiful, but she was beautiful because she was loved." God, flowing through and in us, makes our interpersonal communication beautiful. He makes us a beautiful race and species of beings. In other words, in losing faith in humanity, I have lost. But what I have lost finitely, I have gained infinitely.

My brain keeps me from God. The breakdown in logic. How, why, who...God, what? Romans 8:7: "the carnal mind is the enemey of God. It is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can it be." It is when I accept something illogical that everything becomes logical. It is so much easier to believe in God than to not believe. Once I take that step and trust His love and believe that He is a Being interested in directly influencing and taking part in the affairs of mankind, His creation, everything becomes logical. Because I see how all these random things are somehow immediately and gloriously connected. I see how a good conversation, a budding flower, a hellaciously hot Sahara desert, claustrophobia, imagniary numbers, and sex...all have a common connection. They're not all random blips in the matrix, lottery numbers being drawn, random subparts of this thing we call existence. I realize they're all God things: they all are in part what He is in whole. They are 1:infinity scale represenations of deeper truths He tries to reveal. And doesn't that make sense? That God would try and reveal the real, spiritual world by natural things to his natural, earthly, human creation?. And reveal is exactly what He wants to do. He's not imposing upon us by making us either serve Him or be damned. Basically, it's a "you don't know what you're missing thing." You know, how they always talk about sexual intercourse.

He offers us infinite life. Our temporal happiness is crap. It's temporal! Tragically, we are content doing "the best that we can" as "decent people" and we don't understand our terminology is wrong. We don't have life. We have a hybrid form derived from original sin in the Garden of Eden. A hybrid form that lacks any real meaning or purpose, which is only found in the Maker. By serving the Maker, we discover that purpose (Jeremiah 1:4ff) and life becomes meaningful. So God certainly isn't "mean" or "vindictive" by leaving us no other real, acceptable option than coming into a purposeful, meaningful, and fulfilling life.

...4. The only thing we have to offer in exchange for this life of total self-actualization is our selves. We have to give up our flighty, fickle, foundering hearts in exchange for a new heart. "Create in me a clean heart, oh God." People speak with much respect for the "heart," the seat of emotion and deep desire within us. And they should do so, that is, to treat the heart with respect. It is a weighty part of the being. Of course, you have the prophet Jeremiah, who informs us that the human heart is desperately wicked and deceitful above all things...who can know it? C.S. Lewis addresses the notion of sins in the "heat of the moment." We often excuse ourselves for moments of sinful passion. "I used the f-bomb because I was caught off guard; I wasn't expecting to stub my toe!" "I pulled my pants off and started grinding on my girlfriend because...she came at me!" "I laughed along with everyone else at that outcast kid who lives down the street because I was caught off guard...I laughed as a reaction to everyone else's laughter." Mr. Lewis affirms, though, that what we do when we have no time to pre-evaluate ofr actions: this is what most defines us. This is what says the most about what is in our hearts. We have no time to "fluff up" the nicer aspects of our being. We "let it all hang out." And this shows that what is in our hearts is not as lovely as what we would like to think is naturally there. We can become cleansed...by a Force external to us, though. We are altogether proud; we think must more highly of our pitiful selves than in deserving. This is not an excuse to a self pity party, friend. It is a reality check. Only when we have completely lost false hope in what has always been hopeless can we have a restored hope in what really works, what really counts, what really matters. A New Hope. I can hear the Star Wars theme music playing...A restored hope...

...5. "Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation." When we sin, our fellowship with God is broken. We are cut off from precious communion with our Friend, Christ Jesus. Repentance implies and insinuates an act of restoration. John the Baptist in Matthew 3:8 commands the people to "bring therefore fruits [or works] meet for repentance." Not that we are forgiven by our works, but that these works will be an evidence of our repentance, our turning around and going back to the level from whence we have fallen. A restoration. A restoration of joy, no less!

Hullo! God is all about joy! You know?! That's what it boils down to. He wants us to accept Him...to repent...to be restored, so that we can rejoice in the sheer beauty of Who He Is and What He has done for us!

Let us consider the full ramifications of what has occurred in this falling from grace and eventually somehow making it back.

What a triumph Satan achieved in causing mankind to reject eternal, perfect life on earth under God's nurturing care. Certainly, the outcome looked awfully grim and irreparable. But to think that through such a loophole as there being a perfect human version of God...Jesus Christ incarnate...to offer his blood as the remission for our sins...! Oh what a glorious coup, that the Father of All Lies has been displaced by the True King of the Universe, He Who is outside of time and space! What a dramatic reversal, that what was meant by the Dark Lord and all his evil conjurings to be the downfall of an entire species...has become the most victorious melodramatic climax of any tale told within or without history! Through the fall of man, we have been afforded the opportunity...the once in a lifetime...to experience a coming back from the brink of total damnation and destruction! We win! At the last vital second, we are gloriously redeemed! Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable his judgments,
and his paths beyond tracing out! [Romans 11:33]

And we are invited into the fellowship of the mystery...