H,
“The
Problem with Self”
There is a new self being
introduced into the human experience. It has been going on for a little over
two thousand years and it is still in dispute. There are many angles and slants
to it but it is really based on one central coda: a higher life in grace above
the lower embrace of a normal life.
There is no greater enemy to
this idea of the higher life than the small idea that nothing matters and all
is ordinary. To reduce life to a material reality with no cosmic consequences
is the greatest trick of the dark. To say that things are all relative and our
actions do no matter in the “grand scheme of things” is the greatest lie ever
told.
It is not that nothing
matters it is that everything does. The way you think of yourself, the way you
think of others, the way you act, the way you live, the way you relate with the
world and who you truly are. There is no escape from the victory of the light
over the dark. There is much stock in kindness and much damage in hurtful
living. Words matter and actions mean something and we are not at all
insignificant in the bigger picture of what will happen.
We have had too much
religion but our faith remains irrefutable to those who receive it as a gift. It
is still the thing to learn life from. It is still the creeping light over the
fading dark. The head of our faith is still Christ. His sacrifice is still
sacred. We are still made for better things than we are currently involved in.
There is no hate that is excusable, no cruelty for the faith that is valid and
no space for anything but love.
We still stand at the cross
roads of this new experience every day. It is not an altar call or any sort of
response that establishes this road. That is just the start. Our faith is a
series of decisions to embrace the light, to fall, to get up, to fall again, and
to learn to stay down till you can ask for the grace to stand up. On and on it
goes and it may seem repetitive and it may crush your soul and self-esteem to
know that you are this fallen and this wrong. Do not worry too much though. It is the old soul and the old self.