20070314

of cost, contentment and cliches

the great things in life never come without a price.
to be married is great, but it costs your singleness.
with every big decision,
we constantly give up one freedom for another,
one treasure for another,
one chain for another,
one debt for another.
such is the way of things.
this would not be so bad,
except that we usually take what we have for granted,
and we rarely count the full cost.
you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone.
don't get me wrong here.
it's ok to want more,
and it is good to mourn the loss of good things.
to be content is not not wanting or not missing good things.
one can even be in great need and be content,
for contentment is to know that all we have is from God,
to be grateful for all that He has given us,
and to understand that we cannot have our cake and eat it too.
there are a thousand cliches for what i am saying here,
and more than a few of them, i've already used.
but cliches are cliches for a reason.
again, the great things in life never come without a price.
the price for expressing the profound in a simple way
is that it will one day be dismissed as a cliche.
my advice:
do not treat such things flippantly,
however trite they have become.

20070308

where soul meets body

I've been told that the modernist view of salvation and sanctification is wrong. that ideas of "making a decision for Christ" and "choosing to follow" are misguided. God does not save us by empowering our will to overcome the wicked desires of our wayward hearts, but rather, God captures our hearts. He gives us new, pure desires to combat the desires of our fallen flesh. God comes as a benevolent seducer, not a compelling logician. A theology of the affections, this is called, and i doubt i have done justice to it here.

But i fear the swing of the pendulum! One said it is about the will, and the other, the heart. Back and forth the ages go from modernity now to post-modernity, and soon we may return. I can see nothing new here. We're just shuffling the same boxes, drawing the same lines upon humanity in different directions and different shades. But i can draw no such lines upon my self.

Where does my will end and my heart begin? How can i divide my thoughts and my emotions? In this life, even soul and body cannot escape the consequences of the other. We are messy creatures, intertwined and woven tightly with threads we should not lightly discount. I recognize precious little of myself in such diagrams of the soul.

Please know, i do not protest curiosity here. Certainly, one should seek to understand the paradigms of the day and be willing to challenge them. I do not think these debates are worthless, but their questions are not mine. I can't accept the premise; i cannot see the lines between these things. But what are my questions? I'm not sure...