Thankfulness

"What are you thankful for?" My family is hear. Not all of us, assuredly not all of us. That would involve a bit more proximity and a bit more noise than today as we are gathered around the kitchen table. Its set up outside on the huge deck attached to the back of our house. Being built on the second story of a house that seems to be burred deep in the middle of a forest gives the feel that we are not actually surrounded by trailers on three sides, roads on two, and the ever-present yelping of dogs. As i said, my whole family is not present. Its only my parents, my three brothers, a sister-in-law, my grandmother, one of my sisters, and a friend. Only? Yea. When raised living in a seven by ten room with three brothers and in a thousand square foot house with a family of eight, only is especially relative. My sister and her husband are the missing miscreants. After there wedding a few months ago they moved up north were my brother-in-law grew up.

 We cook through the morning, five at a time in a far to small kitchen. I make an emergency Ingles run for the lacking necessaries. Slowly it all comes together: the long cooking turkey making up the frame for the phenomenal picture of scents, the driveway partially emptied for my grandmothers car, and the table brought out and set. Laughing and frantic, we scramble not to burn our various dishes and sides. Finally everything's perfect (as perfect as could be that is) and everyone's seated. We sing our traditional "Aleluya" round and pray. After a short scripture reading we dig in. Its somewhat like a humanized version of what you would expect of starving and mindless cannibals when they run into a group of exceptionally plump Americans, although with less meat-tearing, crunching, blood and grunting. Midway through the feast we take a short siesta of sorts (comparing to the previous actions) and listen to a second reading from the bible. Although it may be convoluted or even possibly covert the following issuance could be compared to Nagasaki and Hiroshima, or maybe the great flood or the big bang. Never-the-less, I survived, with a bloated stomach, a peaceful mind and a happy conscience.

 

Revelations

A personal essay I finished up today. In lieu of a normal blog post on the same topic I wished to use something more refined and possibly more clear than a hastily written and badly put together post. Some thoughts after reading. What could you do to change this and if you don't think any ramifications are needed to our social structure today, then why? What is it in you that so vehemently denies everything I say? Is it that fact and reasoning are not enough to convince you of such a huge problem? Or is it that you simply are afraid to admit that a system you rely on for your security and anonymity is broken and corrupt?

There may not seem hope in this essay but I did not feel it was a part of it. There is a great hope still! For every man woman and child who yet gives there lives over to Christ Jesus and hopes in him. (Painting above-The adoration of the Lamb, Jan Van Eyck, 1425)

                                                                                The Fornication of Nations

“Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and talked with me,

saying to me, ‘come, I will show you the judgment of the great harlot who sits on many waters, with whom the kings of the earth committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth were made drunk with the wine of her fornication. “So he carried me away in the Spirit into the wilderness. And I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast which was full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. The woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and precious stones and pearls, having in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the filthiness f her fornication. And on her forehead a name was written:

“MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS

AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.”

-Revelation 17:1-5 (NKJV, Tomas Nelson Publishing)

We all define ourselves by things: our physical being, our mental state, our surroundings, our memories, our experiences, our faith. Determining the dominant factor that defines us involves discerning our most valuable possessions: the things we base our life around, our morals around, our souls around. What more precious and intimate a thing than your god, and what more confusing and controversial than your faith?  Religion, having always been the center of state for every great nation, is slowly receding.

 I wish I could say in truth that my faith, my belief in God, defines me. I wish I did not put so much stock in visible and physical things, like every other human being on earth. I wish I could resist temptation perfectly and follow my Father’s laws. I wish that I could be satisfied with the world and live content with God’s promise of perfect grace and salvation - but that would be the flawless world in human eyes with human aims. That reality would not fulfill the goals of my Father.

               

If I were the perfect Christian I would say that my life is defined by my faith. I am far from perfect, and because of that sobering fact , I confess I dwell much more on my physical and selfish state. I define myself, sorrowfully now, with my physicality, my manhood, and my passion. As a man, I associate by instinct with masculine emotions, activities, and thoughts. Every day I spend dwelling on normal human actions. I give the mundane significance by giving it thought. I hand my life over to tying my shoes, brushing my teeth, driving my car, eating food, and doing school work in a defined masculine way.  These things I base my identity on, these things I knowingly and unknowingly obsess with. This is so often the case in the world today, that habitually there is little perceptible difference between professed Christians and non-Christians. Regretfully, this fact is so hidden that many professed Christians base their identity so much so on physical things that they become idols to them, their own personal gods. Thus the Christian community blindly flows toward a self-centered, self-obsessed culture where God is conveniently placed in a comfortable nook somewhere safe and far away.

               

This is the state of religion today, watered down and weak, something only used in great need. The God that created the heavens and earth that in all his majesty holds the universe together and the atoms spinning, some now consider a little pocket thing to be trifled with and used only when convenient. C.S. Lewis, the contemporary author and Christian philosopher, warned, “There must be no pretense that you can have [Christianity] with the Supernatural left out. So far as I can see Christianity is precisely the one religion from which the miraculous cannot be separated. You must frankly argue for supernaturalism from the very outset.” (Lewis, "Christian Apologetics", 1945). The Americanized church is perfectly and frighteningly not described by Lewis. It is so much easier to believe in the physical than the spiritual and as a whole the physical has been embraced. We break further away from Biblical Christianity.

               

Religion has been a center of government for many, many years. The Greeks, the Romans, the Caliphates, the English, the Spaniards, and the Americans all held a religion as standard, all great,prosperous nations. Barbarism spread like a virus and crept over the great Roman empire, previously weakened by insane and corrupt emperors, and the dark ages ensued.  The Spaniards, who held so strongly to Catholicism, wandered along a precarious path with rulers far from any faith that eventually led to their empire’s fall. The United States of America now stands in a remarkably similar situation to these nations of history. Taking the same steps that led toward their eventual fall. George Santayana famously stated "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." (Santayana, The Life of Reason, Volume 1, 1905). We forget ourselves in ourselves: obsessing with the mundane, and reveling in proximate opulence. Thus we forget history and are destined to ever repeat it. When we say goodbye to religion in this nation, we will be embracing the inevitable next stage of brokenness.

It is so enticing to be your own god: with no master over you and bound by no man. We try and throw of any and all perceived shackles, including religion. This drives us into our own destruction. We follow the pattern of history and watch unknowingly as it repeats itself over and over again, not caring for the next generation or the next after it. We jump around in our own little worlds, our own little now's of wants and passions, and lead this country to ruin. Will this ever change while we sit and do nothing?

 “After these things I saw another angel coming down from heaven, having great authority and the earth was illuminated with his glory. And he cried mightily with a loud voice, saying, ‘Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and has become a dwelling place of demons, a prison for every unclean and hated bird! For all the nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth have become rich through the abundance of her luxury’.”-Revelations 18:1-3 (NKJV, Tomas Nelson Publishing)

The Gears of Enterprise

Sherman Alexie states that “human bodies are invaded and colonized by foreign bodies”-Alexie, What Sacagawea Means to Me, (pg. 115, Arlington Reader). Using his own race and background as well as a familiar anecdote, Alexie relates a menacing story of old to our culture today. He brings to light a reality that has always been true and gives it a little more solidity and authenticity so that we may understand the truth through our own eyes. We are all part of the process, the ingestion of the multitudes. The great machine of enterprise that chews you up, strips you down, and taking only what it wants leaves you merely with your soul. There are few exempt from this process, and as such, Alexei addresses his essay with the world as the recipient, we all can relate, we all can sympathize.  This is an extremely effective approach to writing. Start with some basic emotion or experience, gain your readers empathy, and then introduce your radical idea.