Devotions from the Underground

Who Really Needs to Repent?

Revelation 2:1-7

When my legacy confronts me, I turn and hide.  While now I may be a bitter man with little hope, faith or love, it wasn’t always this way.  It was my legacy that pushed me here.

Years ago I began teaching people about the deeper truths of God.  My heart opened its doors wide to my students.  I let them into my life, I let them into my mind, and I endeavoured with all my strength to raise them up into a new generation of spirited, wise and faithful ministers of the Gospel!

I failed.

When I told them Jesus wasn’t a Republican, they turned Him into a Communist.  When I told them that Jesus had no permanent home and no wealth of worldly possessions during His time of ministry, they quit their jobs, ran away from their parents, started begging for a living, and stranded themselves in abandoned buildings.  I said the church focused too much on tithing, sexual sin, and protesting abortion; so they stopped tithing, started fornicating, and protested everything except abortion.  I told them that we needed to experience more of the Holy Spirit, so they silenced themselves and turned what were supposed to be joyous celebrations of God’s power among us into miserable, strained, times of forced-meditation, during which no one really got closer to God, but many got a few more hours of sleep.  Finally, I told them to repent, these who were my best hopes!  And it was at that message that they finally stopped listening to me altogether.  When I told them over and over in those final months that they needed to turn away from the path they had set themselves on, and return to the simple and beautiful love of their youth, they ceased listening to me at all.

Yet, while they so callously ignored me, they nonetheless claimed a certain kinship to me.  They spoke as though everything they now did, I had explicitly taught them.  In my name they evaded making an honest living.  In my name they mocked and ridiculed great men of God.  In my name they honed their arrogance and self-righteousness, while they condemned those who did not see eye-toe-eye with them for those self-same values.  They became leeches on society, preachers of extremist political dogma, and advocates for all kinds of abominable, selfish and godless practises – all in my name, and for the sake of being “real” Christians.

How many hours did I cry for them?  How often did I pray?  I cannot count the tears nor spell the heartaches that I wrestled with as they slid further and further from God into the delusions of their zeitgeist and youth.  Every treasure I tried to give them, they turned into shit.  Every word I spoke was morphed into false teaching and sin.  My legacy became one of ashes.  My disciples turned my purest desire into my greatest disaster.  In the wake of all these things, I have become the man you see here displayed.

…

A piece of my legacy faced me the other day.  I saw him on the street-corner.  He was raising funds for the community centre he and the others were trying to build.  At first, I tried to walk past him.  I hoped he wouldn't see me.  I look very different now from what I looked like then.  My eyes have grown darker, my face incessantly morose.  Unfortunately, my disphoria had not twisted my appearance completely, and he did recoginise me.

He called out my name - I walked faster.  He called it out again, and I knew I could no longer escape it.  I stopped and turned.

"How have you been?" he asked me.  "It's been forever since I've seen you!"

I couldn't look him in the eye.  "Terrible.  I've been bloody terrible." I answered.  He was taken aback by this response.  You see, he knew me back when I smiled.  He knew me back when I enjoyed existence.

"Well, we've missed you," he told me.  "Everyone else really wishes you'd kept teaching."

"Ha!" I scoffed.  "Do they then?  That's amazing.  Didn't know anyone was really getting anything out of what I said."

Again, he responded with silence.

"What are you guys up to these days?" I asked, turning the tables.  "I see you're still mooching for a living."

"Actually, this is just one part of it," he explained.  "The community centre's coming along really well.  We've actually received some grants and pledges of support to keep everything up.  We only go out begging to cover those last costs."

"Oh, great.  I'm glad to see people are kicking down thousands to you as well as their spare change." I don't think he caught the sarcasm in my voice.

"We're housing over twenty homeless people every night though!" he continued.  "We've connected with substance abuse centres and welfare agencies to help these guys get what they need.  We've even begun working with hospitals to get them treatment that they haven't gotten in years!  We're obeying Matthew 10, man!  We're healing the sick, cleansing the lepers, raising the spiritually dead!  And we're doing it without drawing any attention to ourselves!  We're living out your dream!"

My countenance slumped even further.

"Aren't you happy?  Aren't you glad for us?"

I raised my fingers to my forehead, and tried to smooth away the regret.  "Yeah, that sounds great." I muttered.  "Keep it up.  Keep preaching your gospel."  I shook hands with him and left quickly.  I didn't bother saying good-bye. 

I limped home with that chance meeting replaying in my head.  It haunted me, and rang back and forth in my mind.  I hear them chanting, all of them, my disciples, and they say "Aren't you glad for us?  You always taught us to love the poor!  You always told us you wanted to take care of the downtrodden!"

"But no!" I argue in my head.  "I never taught you to abandon making an honest living!  I never taught you to leave behind your purity or your morals!"

"Why are you so bent up over that?" they argue back.  "Why can't you just accept us for who we are?  Why isn't what we're doing good enough for you?"

I ball up my fists, and cry into the darkness "Because this is not what I raised you to be!  Don't you know that every ill of our lives begins with this indulgence?  Don't you know that ethics are hollow without morals?  Didn't you ever hear that lesson?  Didn't you ever get that story?"

"Aw, cheer up!" they taunt me.  "Things aren't like that any more!

"That's not our conviction..."

...

Jesus, what has happened?  Why can't I smile for their accomplishments, and why can't I believe that they are living for you?  Why do I struggle to see how any sinner will be saved by this, or that their lives will get any better?

Why can't I stop judging them?  Why can't I let my legacy's ghosts lie in the grave?

I look through the Word, and see commands of love and forgiveness.  I look in the Word, and see mandates for holiness and obediance.  Then I look in the word, and I see Jesus talking to the Ephesians - "I know your works, your labor, your patience, and that you cannot bear those who are evil. And you have tested those who say they are apostles and are not, and have found them liars...  Nevertheless I have this against you:

"You have left your first love.

"Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent and do the first works, or else I will come to you quickly and remove your lampstand from its place - unless you repent."

Unless I repent.

"Yes, unless you repent."

My first love seems like a long forgotten memory.  I can't fathom the urges in my heart that initially made me want to teach.  The pain in my mind and body hold me back while wounds of betrayal scour my heart.  I want to go back Jesus, I do!  But what will I find there?  Another group of freeloading hypocrites?  Another school of politicos and backstabbers?

"You - repent."

But how do I come back?  How do I heal from all this?  I can't teach...  I can't learn...  I can't forgive them!  I can't forgive myself!

"Remember, and return."

I cry out at the darkness that surrounds me.  I bury face in my fists.  "I can't do that Lord!" I scream.  "I can't repent - not like that!"

"Then why," He asks, "do you expect them to do any better?"

I have no answer for Him.  I fall down on the floor, crying hysterically.  I sob myself to sleep.  "I want to repent!" I cry over and over.  "I want to go back to my first love!"

Why is it so hard to remember my first love?

When I wake up, nothing has gotten better, nothing has changed.  Maybe, while I was sleeping, He came and took my lampstand away.  Maybe, their community centre burned down in the middle of the night, and my students will come back and place themselves at my feet.  Maybe I've been given another day, another chance to turn things around.  I don't know.  But for the first time in my life, I find myself unable to do the one simple thing He always asked me to do - repent.

I have failed once again.  With that consideration, I remain uncomfortably numb.

White Collar Slave

Ecclesiastes 2:1-11, 17-26

Spend your life pissing away your hopes and dreams in order to make some rich guy richer, and so you can buy more crap and thereby make other rich guys richer.

And all the time you get poorer and poorer on every level.

Oh!  Sure, it looks good!  You look wealthy!  It seems like you have so much!  But in truth, it's not your wealth, it's a bank or a credit-card company's wealth, and you have to eventually pay them back for everything you own with more money that you don't have - plus interest!  Again, you put away those shiny pennies you collected so someone else can turn them into doubloons.

"But why can't I be the one at the top?" you cry.  "Why can't I have the doubloons?"  A just question, certainly, and there are several reasons why.  For starters, you probably weren't born to a wealthy family, and that immediately disqualifies you from most benefits of the highest class.  Next, you probably didn't go to a prestigious Ivy League school, and even at the mediocre institution you did attend, you probably just wanted to get the diploma, get out, and try to have as good a time as possible between orientation and graduation.  You didn't treasure the education you received, but who can blame you?  There were parties to go to, right?  You weren't a terrible student - you just weren't an exceptionally astute one either.

But all of that isn't necessarily enough to keep the glass ceiling of class-division upheld.  What else is there?  You aren't especially creative or well-connected.  You don't have a viable trade, you aren't exceptionally motivated, and thanks to the amenities afforded to you by heavy debt and bourgeois complacency, you have found comfort in your world of pain.

But it doesn't stop the pain, does it?

Does it ever seem like the more we strive, the more we lose?  More hours at the office mean less time reading a good book, being with loved ones, or taking in the beauty of God's creation.  You love this place and this job because you say it makes you free, but is it freedom that lies in your heart, or is it a three-walled world that you hope to escape - "maybe some day, when I retire."

You spineless, idiotic fool!  You waylaid every good thing you could have had to settle for this store-bought mediocrity!  It's all going to burn you know.  One of these days, the creditor is going to knock at your door, and you will plead with tears that he not take away what he rightfully owns.  One of these days, you're going to wake up and realise what a waste of space you've been, and the bitterness will rain like hellfire and brimstone! 

Termites are munching away at your ugly McMansion, and all the hideous clothes you just bought are already out of style.  Every sweet memory you'll look back to will be nothing more than a television-induced hallucination.  Nothing you have will be left to you.  Those who own the things that you've bought to make up for your sorry existence will tear those things away like marauding wolves.  Your destiny is a poorhouse or a nursing home.  You'll have Dr. Kevorkian's office number on speed-dial. You'll reap all the benefits that this nightmare has afforded you, and in the end you'll hardly have a soul left to sell!

So don't blame me that I don't break myself at this desk for twelve hours a day like you do!  And don't blame me that I have drunk deep from the draughts of life - both bitter and sweet!  I had to fight and claw my way to earning an honest living, and I refuse to take my livelihood for granted, or the life I live outside these crystal walls. 

Sometimes the difference between a white collar and a manacle is the way we live outside the cubicle.  I let the office burn when I leave, and as long as my room and board are covered, my wealth or lack thereof does not unduly burden me.  I will have my joy, though it be covered with spite.  I will live my life, though it means I won't understand or enjoy your conversations about American Idol and Survivor.  And ultimately, I will have my laughter, and I will laugh last, because I have ceased striving for the wind, and though wounded I be, I am still trying to see that glimpse into the face of eternity.  I truly live because I would rather seek than hide from the face of God.

Love Thy Enemy

Luke 6:27-45

I hate almost everybody.

I wish I were exaggerating.  I wish I were trying to grab attention, but I'm not.  Human beings have become a cancer in my heart.  When I watch the bumbling masses moving through the Gap, the mindless drones flipping through People magazine, the vapid personalities jockeying for a place at the window on the Today Show, the fashionable hypocrites decrying imperialism while they throw themselves face-forward into thousands upon thousands of dollars of debt, one thing runs through my mind: "I hate you."

People who won't give up their seat on the subway to the elderly, the pregnant and the disabled; people who waste their minds reading and caring about Paris Hilton, Jessica Simpson, Tom Cruise and Lindsay Lohan; people who think humanity has a bright future - as if the age of Aquarius is anything but some delusional myth peddled by the drug-addled, clueless minds of burnt-out sociologists, culturally inept scientists, and brainless, overfed celebrities.  To all of these, I have one emotion: hate.

Rich people who never receive justice for their crimes; poor people who to save their lives can't stop committing crimes; middle-class onlookers who are so afraid of reality that they created the wasteland we know as "suburbia"; people who think suburbia is in any way idyllic; suburban trash who think that ghettos are "real cool"; people who change their personality, language and tastes based on what's written in magazines; people who have such a tiny grasp on their individuality that they can't understand themselves outside of a tremendous herd; people who are so arrogant as to think that their individuality is something special, as if they're better than other people, and because of this they refuse to admit that just like everyone else they are a part of a human herd, a group - a culture.  I hate people who think of themselves as gods, who think that they can avoid the fate, limitations and struggles that every person has to deal with.  I hate people who are so absorbed into their own problems and struggles that they can't pull their heads out of their own hyper-emotional behinds long enough to see that virtually every other person on Earth has gone through something similar to what they have.  If these little princes and princesses looked hard enough, they might even understand that the vast majority of people on the planet have in fact gone through much, much worse than they have.  They might even take comfort in this fact, and find solace even in the midst of their pain!  But they don't.  None of them do.  Nothing gets better.  I hate all these people too.

I hate tourist agencies who pimp out the greatest lands and cities in the world, and I hate the slack-jawed Midwest-and-Southerners who turn cities like New York, London, Shanghai and Berlin into their own personal Disneyland at the expense of the people, customs and history that made those cities great.

I hate hippies.  Period.  I hate their reprobate social habits, their non-existent hygiene, and their mind-grating music, I hate their sexual revolution that made teenage pregnancy and STDs parts of common, everyday life.  I hate their free love and drugs that devastated the sense of common decency that at one time existed in Western society.  I hate how these whining, flag-burning, wannabe-Guevaras turned into the most selfish, despicable generation of our history - the "me" generation that spawned yuppies, "greed is good", and some of the most astonishing cases of human rights abuses in the name of commerce since colonial times.

I hate advertising executives who've polluted my eyesight with their avaricious icons, and replaced mythology with marketing campaigns; intelligence with compulsion; wisdom with consumerism.

I hate the people who put their faith into politics, like one single thing might actually change for the better.  I hate people who think that destroying cultural boundaries and uniting the entire world under one government is going to do anything but put all humanity under the thumb of one giant, all-powerful hegemony instead of a hundred smaller, more negotiable ones.  I hate people who think that if we vote enough, or if we put our trust in the right people, we can make a difference.  Bollocks!  Every politician would be a dictator.  It's why the bastards get involved in politics in the first place.  Every democracy eventually becomes an oligarchy.  Every ideal turns into just another way to oppress and destroy.  That's humanity.  And I'm really, really getting tired of it.

I hate all the kids who think they're being rebellious by buying into a fashion, a musical style, or a scene.  I hate everyone who thinks they're being cool and different by wasting their brains and bodies on drugs, sex, booze and cigarettes.  I hate all the self-righteous old people who disdain these kids, even though they weren't one ounce better when they were the same age.  I hate the parents who won't give their kids enough freedom or wisdom to realise their individuality outside of the aforementioned corporate-sponsored institutions.  I hate the parents who care so little about their kids that they let them run wild over everything, giving companies new fodder for their hell-spawned marketing techniques.

I hate people who claim to be something when they're obviously not, like all the democrats out there who voted to invade Iraq; all the punks, goths and hardcore kids who bought their wardrobes at Hot Topic; all the suburbanites who try to act like they grew up in the inner-city; all the Christians out there who deny the incarnation, the resurrection, judgment, and redemption - and on the flip side of that, all the Christians who though affirming every truth ever accepted by the whole of Christianity, cannot love, teach, affirm, or do anything positive in the name of Christ.  Filled with hatred, filled with bitterness, they lash out against a world that God died for.  They bar the gates to the Kingdom of Heaven, and they themselves do not enter.

I hate it all.  I hate them all.  I hate this place.  But it goes deeper than that, yes?  It goes deeper than personal grudges against the fools and foolishness; it's deeper than acrimony against these petty things that inconvenience me.  I hate the ridges on the inside of my fingers.  I hate the breaths I have to take.  I hate him who stares back at me from the mirror.

There was a call on me.  There was a purpose.  Where has it fled?  It bottles itself up in memories of failure, feelings of frustration, a hardened heart that has been struck too many times to remember.  My compassion has left me.  Why?  Because while I remembered to push myself forward, I never let myself fall back.  I judged others the same way I judged myself, but I forgot to judge with righteousness, charity, and loving-kindness.  I forgot to show grace to myself.  Now I have forgotten how to love.

The rabbis said that evil is evidence of God's love and mercy, because if indeed God were not merciful and kind, giving us second, third and thousandth chances, then all of us would be dead the day we first transgressed.  I'm sorry Lord...  I have transgressed.  I have fallen.  I stand with my hatred and bitterness because You are gracious enough to let me live with it, that I may be healed of it before I carry this evil into eternity.  I do not know how to heal myself Lord.  You must do it for me.

I hate almost everybody, but I hate myself most of all.  And if I am made in Your image, what does that say about what I think about You?

I want to love.  My heart is sick.  Physician - heal me!