Justified

That title is best read in a fun whisper, with a little Michael-Jacksonesque hand motion at the end.  (Like the hyenas say Mufasa's name in Lion King: "Mufasa... oooohhh... Mufasa... oooohhh.")

I digress. I was reading in Job today. I started reading it because I was at a point in my life when I didn't feel like things could get any worse, and felt like I needed some perspective on that.  Perhaps this is a bad reason to begin a study into a book of the Bible, but I did it anyways, and it has proven to be fruitful. (I mean, it IS the Bible, of course it is fruitful.) In chapter 32, a man named Elihu walks up on this scene of Job agonizing over his situation and his friends scolding him for the things he is saying.  They tell him he is wrong, but they have no capability to correct him.  Elihu flat out tells Job that he has been justifying himself rather than justifying God.  (Insert a little bit of my seminary education here: justify does not mean to make just, but to declare just. So in Job justifying himself, he is making the claim that he is just, when in reality it is God who is just.) --That was a lot of justice--
How deeply I felt the sting of that comment.  Every word that escapes from my lips, and 97% of my actions are meant to declare me just.  I am obsessed with justifying myself. I am addicted, consumed, engrossed, infatuated. I wonder how different my life would look if I were instead fixated on declaring God's justice, rather than my own.
In two chapters, Elihu turns from rebuking Job and his friends, to declaring the glory of God and I am as excited as a kid who is about to get Lego Star Wars on Wii.  For now, I shall contemplate the little bit of God that I understand and pray that my love for him will be radically grown and my justification will be Christocentric rather than egocentric.

(I hope this particular post does not reveal the true scatter-brainedness I am experiencing right now, but as I fear that it does, I apologize.)

wha-wha-wha- what!?

I am constantly tempted to get caught up in ego trips and pursue activities and fabricated futures that accomplish very little except my own gratification and pleasure. It is at this point that God then sits me down and strokes back the nausea that arises in my gut at my awareness that I will never be good enough to actually find pleasure in those things, and reminds me that he has provided a way out of that cycle through the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. He has paved a path for me that highlights him rather than me, and is so filled with purpose that my tiny little heart would burst if I could actually see all the ripples in the pond.  The anxiety that I will never be the best crawls back into it’s hiding place in the dark corners of my soul, until I am ready to let those frivolous and meaningless dreams go. In the meantime however, I take solace in the knowledge that my way is futile, but God’s way is perfection.  God is perfection.

Start with Despair

I'm reading John Piper's mini-book When the Darkness Will Not Lift, right now, and I just came to a passage that is becoming quite revolutionary.

"Bunyan went home rejoicing when he saw this his righteousness was outside himself. It was Jesus Christ. I pray that this will be your experience too. Where should you start? Start at the easiest place for those in darkness. Start with despair. Despair of finding an answer in yourself. I pray that you will cease from all efforts to look inside yourself for the rescue you need. I pray that you will do what only desperate people can do, namely, cast yourself on Christ. May you say to him, 'you are my only hope. I have no righteousness in myself. I am overwhelmed with sin and guilt. I am under the wrath of God. My conscience condemns me, and makes me miserable. I am perishing. Darkness is all about me. Have mercy upon me. I trust you.' . . . The light will rise in your darkness in due time. God will hold onto you )Jude 24). You will make it. The glory is coming. In the meantime [and this is possibly my favorite verse] 'this slightly momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to things that are seen, but to things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.' (2 Cor. 4:17-18)"

It's easy to try and find hope in myself. It's even easier to pursue some sort of intellectual enlightenment, believing that it will be my hope.  The only deserving object of our hope is Christ, who was crucified and resurrected.  All others will fall short, leading only to despair.

Confessions of a ...

Today was an excruciatingly hard day. It was the kind of day that makes reality seem like a figment, and makes me absolutely resent everything that goes on within my mind.
I feel like I lead three separate lives: one at school and etc., one at work, and one that really only exists in my head.  They rarely coincide, despite the fact that I live all three in one day, and often even simultaneously.  Today two of my worlds took shocking blows, right to the left eyebrow, and I've been left feeling nauseous and uncertain.  The problem, however, is not really that I got punched in the face, because I am, by nature, a boxer. The problem arises in my attempts to address the ramifications of the shots, i.e, the blood dripping down my shirt.  After the first hit I tried to get a little help stopping the blood and cleaning up the mess, but it was made infinitely worse. You see, the person I so eagerly pursued for help unintentionally (or maybe intentionally) elbowed me on the side of the face . (Now this analogy is getting confusing and beginning to fall apart, but I feel I must hold it together for the sake of my own security.)  And this second blow crippled me.  It ripped out all of my sanity and left me lying on the floor of an alternate reality.  Nothing in the former reality was (or is) tangible, and this new reality is spinning in such a way that I can't get back up. My soul seems to hurt, and resentment for that elbow and its owner is quietly growing within me.
I don't like leaving things without conclusion, but that is where I am left.