There are certain words that get overused (actually, there are a *lot* of words that get overused -- like "lite" and "free" and “forever”) and used incorrectly and so they begin to lose their meaning, lose their power, and this worries me.
No. Wait. It doesn't worry me. It infuriates me.
Let's talk about these words. Let's actually talk about them as they were conceived, not as they have been conveniently co-opted by lazy thinkers who have nothing better than to approach life as gluttons for momentary pleasure, living so much in the hererightnow that their lack of reflection on what might come after (if anything) doesn’t bother them in the least because, not unlike trans fat, if heaven and hell exist, if reward and consequence are real, than we’ll only know for sure when it’s too late.
What? You'd like to know what these words are, specifically, before investing in the time to scroll down, read (skim), engage (or not) on this topic with a grrl you've likely never met or will meet but who seems to think that actions don't always speak louder than blogs? (Because why else would I? Blog, that is.) Of course, that is another conversation and not the one for today, so I’ll give in and give it up... but just this once, and just because you’re special.
Addiction. Empowerment. Sin.
Still with me? Most of you, I think no. Right about “addiction” is when the zoning out began and right about “empower” is when tiny minds who think I mean men when I say man are rolling their eyes skyward in chagrin in the face of the touchy-feely wonder of it all. Then we hit “sin” and I peak a little interest in the apparent paradox offer, the contrast/compare of gamer and grrl, but quash a bunch more interest because, heck, hererightnow who needs to worry about sin and since when did I start believing in sin anyhow? Like everyone in the whole wide English speaking world knowing the name Stephen Hawking or Albert Einstein but only half those knowing who they are and only a tenth of those having ever actually read anything written or composed by either of them.
Now that there are only four or six of us left reading, let’s jump in. Because if I can’t live an examined life, than I’m just wallowing in slop and the last time I looked in the mirrored wall of my favorite dance club I was a taut and sexy thang, not no swine, baby. So let’s go play with pearls.
Addiction is a buzz word. It is hollow cheeks and dark circles and blood shot eyes. It is ultra skinny nothing but bones, covered in bruises, dirty and raw. It is destructive. It is illogical. It is not what anyone wants. It is a call, a pull, an inanimate thing that gets what *it* wants, without thought to host, to effect, to consequence.
I’m sure you can imagine the posters now. The faces. The taglines. The stark colors. You know the substances. The behaviors. The guilt, pain, sorrow, disappointment.
But what if I want to look deeper. What if I want to say: Addiction is an ache that cannot be filled until fed its desire. A constant yearning. A distraction. Elation beyond reason when satisfied. Defying logic to rejoice in consummation.
What if I defined addiction as: That which drives us beyond reason, to the edge sanity and logic, to the utter destruction of everything we were before and everything we could be with it. To yearn, to weep, to ache, to reach. To desire more than breath. To be willing to pay any price, any time, over and over again.
The pearl of great price. The wisdom of His stand: Do not as you have done. Change everything. Change everyone. Change yourself.
His words were more radical than email to carrier pigeon. His actions were more radical than covered wagon to space shuttle. I can code prayers in binary into the backgrounds of the newsletter I publish and that’s still tame compared to turn the other cheek, judge not your fellow man, and ask me for forgiveness... for anything, for everything... and it is yours.
Speak to me, from your lips to my ears, and I will hear even the unspoken that hides in the shadows and folds of your heart.
I will hear you. And what is more... I will understand.
“I fall to my knees
when I hear my angel’s voice.
Oh night divine, this night
when this love was born.”
It is addiction if it hurts someone else. Whether it’s drug-use, hatred, anger, compulsion, sex. It is impassioned if it drives us closer to God... when as it drives us mad.
Empowerment is a raised fist, a rousing speech, a grant, a trust, a parade, a law. Empowerment is pride in the lift of a chin, the direct line of a gaze. It is hoping and dreaming and building pillars beneath every castle in the air.
Empowerment is so close to enabling that the line is draw in dry sand. The winds of popular opinion shift and suddenly the division is gone and so are our good intentions.
I sit in a basement room with checkerboard lino and a cool comfort that encourages talk and chipped, second-hand mugs of hot cocoa and cheap tea, drip coffee that somehow emerges from the keg-shaped tank at the end of a green folding table. The bargain table cookies are gone and the crumbled napkins and crumbs are abandoned and forgotten. It will be my job to clean up the mess.
For a generation, this new generation, after Gen X, sometimes called Gen Y, the words have been shouted: Be proud! Stand up! Stand Out! FTW! (Forget the World.) Embrace the moment. And the statistics that had fallen are rising again. The rousing cry of, “Don’t let them beat you down!” became a growl of, “Nothing can take me down!” and there is no truth in that that isn’t misguided and twisted.
And every time you take him back in, you enable him to keep drinking and smoking pot.
And every time she weeps sorry and you murmur itsallright, you enable her to keep killing you.
And every time you let him fight alone, you enable him to be a rock, an island, an untouchable thing.
Every time you offer best wishes instead of time, every time you let confessions of hurt hang in the air, every time you flood her inbox and her ears with hypocrisy, you are enabling the very behaviors you pray would cease.
We empower because there is a darkness that must be risen above. But all that black still exists, swirling in eddies, maelstroms. We need to educate, not empower. We need to illuminate and examine, not empower.
We need to face the midnight storms, stand within the event horizons, and shatter them, disperse them, destroy them. It is easy to lift up. It is harder to dig down. But solid foundations are always stronger than pillars.
It really seems a sin to ignore the problem and throw bouquets of empowerment. Whether or not the soldiers are empowered, the darkness will still eventually kill them.
Sin is everything you have been taught it to be. Some of us have been taught the same actions, thoughts, behaviors. Others have never even heard of them. It floored me to hear that one doctrine claims masturbation will keep you out of heaven but resisting could eventually make you deity, when just down the street and around the corner, another congregation was teaching humility and out-right martyrdom to its youth, with masturbation as a way to rid yourself of sexual urges and desires and keep your body pure toward others.
Perhaps “sin” cannot be so easily defined? Unless “sin” is a convention of man (by which I mean humans, mankind, not everyone with a penis) and so is concocted by the ruling class, the rule-making, the money-holders, the power players. Is it a sin to step on an ant on accident? How about on purpose? Is it a sin to let a child cry unattended? How about to slap your wife? How about to cheat on your husband? What if you just *think* about slapping your wife when she accidentally looks at another man’s butt? Oh, how tangled a definition of sin we weave when we practice to deceive.
Who is drafting the definition of sin? Certainly not God. Deception is not in the genetic makeup of our Lord or when they told Him, “Dude, just *say* you’re not the son of God, and we’ll get you out of here, ‘kay?” and yet there He stayed. Bleeding. Dying.
But man and deception goes all the way back to Eden:
“Did you eat the fruit?”
“Oh no, no, no!”
“Than why are you buck naked?”
“Cuz we got shy!”
“Who told you to be shy?”
“The armadillos!”
The art of war and survival (not to mention those holy scripts) tells us we need to be fruitful. Just makes sense that anything that doesn’t make babies should be a sin. Common sense! (Oops! Guess none of the prophets foresaw gross overpopulation! Dang it!) The very same arts -- war and survival -- say safety in numbers, safety in homogeny. So suddenly conversion makes sense... holy wars... terror and bombs and ourgodistheoneandonly mantras that are justified even as we vilify each other.
Who decides what is sin?
God decides.
But the masses cry, “What about *until* God intervenes?! What about *before* we slip our mortal coils? What about others who sin and them needing to be punished? What about a prophet or helper or preacher or someone to facilitate the recognition and ramifications of sin and sinners *now*?”
You know what I say to all that? I say, “What a bunch of impatient, self-important, greedy, voyeuristic frakkers.” That’s what I say.
Sin is when Christ whispers into your heart and you pretend not to hear Him.
Sin is when He lights your path but you find it too rocky to walk.
Sin is when you damage or destroy that which is precious to Him.
Sin is hubris, jealousy, hatred, possession. Destruction, disregard, disrespect.
Sin is not dictated from the pulpit. It is a knowledge in ourselves, placed there by His hand, and it is as unique as our finger prints, sewn to fit our soul alone. Where cowardice may be the sin of one man, fury might be the sin of another. Only Christ and our hearts know the truth.
And that is why no man can judge another.
There is power in words. Great hurts can be healed or hidden by simple phrases. So when I see t-shirts with slogans (therein lies a delight) that shout for action instead of words, I pause and muse on longevity and remembrance, on meaning and definition. I think about all the actions -- of addiction, of empowerment, of sin -- that make us all who we are, that make our world what it is, ad I can’t help but wish that a few of us (a few hundred thousand of us) would sit down and stop taking action for a moment.
Just sit down, reflect, shut up... and blog.
EJ
