Thoughts Negligible

“If any message from the core of reality ever were to reach us, we should expect to find in it just the unexpectedness, that wilful [sic], dramatic anfractuosity which we find in the Christian faith. It has the master touch—the rough, male taste of reality, not made by us, or, indeed, for us, but hitting us in the face.” --C.S. Lewis

Up stood an old man, frail and pale, looking as if he were suffering from a deadly consumption, he began to whisper something barely audible to his audience. He closed his eyes to the light, seeming too hard to remember the lines of a long-passed third-grade play. Speaking with dire weakness, his words held a pointed authority built up by years of life, a strength that juxtaposed his physical state. And everyone listened, quieted, listening for a humming bird’s wings.

“I stand as one dead,” he whispered, his breath already short, “yet I stand somehow. I stand humbly, and I stand in awe.

“Today I awoke unable to breathe, fatigued, with a crushing headache, pain in my chest, unable to open my eyes to the beautiful morning’s God-light. And I thanked our Creator for that light, even though I could not bear it in my present state. My eyes watered as I struggled for breath, until finally my lungs were opened; I smiled as I breathed—as if for the first time. Today I was reborn, from ashes I came. Brought back from the dead as it were. Just call me Lazarus of Bethany. Today I feel confident that I was created from dust and to dust this flesh will return. But I am moved today by that fact.

“You see, I’ve done nothing to bring about this disease, nothing but exist—and what better thing to do? It’s a painful existence, yes, but what alternative is there? There are things I know now. I’m not guaranteed health and happiness, and, certainly not life. I don’t deserve any of these things, though I deserve fully a decrepit body, death of body and even soul. Though I deserve death, I taste only life—even at the end of this terrestrial stage, or, perhaps, especially at the end of this mortal breath. Would that we never forget the fact that we deserve absolutely nothing.”

Some would later swear they saw tears in his eyes as his posture strengthened and he said with passionate conviction, “Yet my God loves me! He gave me a free will, to express his love to others, back to him, and now, to share with you my turmoil—my blessing.

“There stands before me nothing to obstruct the choices that are capable within me besides my physical limitations and moral inclinations. This morning I opened a door for a young lady and that simple gesture got me to thinking. This door was an obstruction to that girl’s intentions, whatever her destination and purpose. The door had closed behind me, but I returned to open it. I intervened in the natural world, working against the laws which closed it and which would work against that young lady’s efforts as she went on her way. My courtesy was a simple blessing to her, and a miraculous testament to my free will. I’ve learned, that if I’m traveling smoothly downhill, there must be someone toiling upward on that very hill. Nature demands this be so and if you tried to fashion another system, you’d take away the very life we have.
“It has been said that nature maintains autonomy so man can maintain free choice. If nature were perfectly fitted to suit everyone’s each need and desire, where would free will stand? If nature were precisely tuned to your good alone, where would I stand when your will or good ran contrary to my own? I would then have no free choice, as nature bent its knee to you alone. So nature has its own fixed trajectory, not preferring one person over another. Yet that nature can be manipulated—just as it was when I opened that door, or even, when someone made that door—but if compassion and good can be worked by using the fixed state of matter and employing my free choice, so can malevolence and evil. C.S. Lewis said, ‘The permanent nature of wood which enables us to use it as a beam also enables us to use it for hitting our neighbor on the head.’ So the laws of nature provide for good and the free will of individuals can make nature conform, even in the smallest ways, to fit their desires. Lewis also said that ‘if souls are free, they cannot be prevented from dealing with the problem [natural problems] by competition instead of courtesy.’

“I suppose you’ve noticed, but this is practiced every day, both good and evil. But this is the goodness of God: that even our Fall, our conscious choice against his loving intentions for our race, will not deter him from making something good from it. He will not let us muddle things up. No! He’ll take the very consequence of our sin—our failing bodies, our sweat and toil, hate and pain, even our death—and turn it into a blessing. But in Christ, he shared our suffering, took our pain and lived this ragamuffin human life—yet in triumph. And our Redeemer will remain in that super-fleshly body forever as an affirmation that the work he started in us is indeed good, as he said. So now we suffer not in vain, but agree with Christ in his sufferings, partaking in his salvific grace, becoming more like him; therefore, in all suffering we are made to know more deeply the love of God, that he, of all, should suffer for us.

“The truth is that you would not be without your pain. Think for a moment on the suffering of the lepers and that their predicament is nothing less than a deadening of the nerve receptors that warn the brain of physical harm. And think on the sweetness of the sweet, how it would be diminished or impossible without the bitter, even the bitterest. Can you imagine this world without it? What then could we appreciate? What then could we resist? Reject? Abhor? . . . Love? Where would be our sin? And where our forgiveness and grace? Would we be better as angels, those who give ceaseless love to God, yet are not adored by their Master in return as we are—we who least deserve it?

“For the Love of our God, let us understand our problem of pain and sin, for it is what we have! It is our necessary path to salvation through Christ. Without this we’d know neither love nor life! I will die soon, and so shall you, but let us, in these free moments, glorify the Son of God with our suffering and our health alike, for both make our condition salvageable and wonderfully worthwhile. We must have them until we reach the other side where the troubles of this life will not compare to the Glory that shall be revealed. We must have them so Christ may be glorified and his—our—Father will find those trespasses wiped from his memory as our salvation is complete. Let us suffer and celebrate, together, so that our merciful God may be glorified! We diminish pain where we can, but when we cannot, we embrace him. Fear not, for he is with you always!”

At this crescendo the old man fell silent and walked off stage.

"The wrath of God is the judgment under which we stand in so far
as we do not love the Judge . . . . For the wrath of God cannot be His last
word, the true revelation of Him! . . . . The whole world is the footprint
of God: yes, but, in so far as we choose scandal rather than faith, the
footprint in the vast riddle of the world is the footprint of His
wrath.” --Karl Barth