Written Spring of 2004

To you insane world
But one reply-I refuse.
-Marina Tsvetaeva

Yes. And again I will say it, Yes! Refuse. Keeping kicking and fighting. One of my English professors, Dr. Ahmed said he believed it is the essence of the human spirit to struggle. Do not go gentle into that good night, Rage, Rage against the dying of the light. But there’s the rub Dylan Thomas, we all owe a death. There is no escaping it.
Walker Percy, when asked how he came to have faith responded, “The only answer I can find is that I asked for it; in fact, I demanded it. I took it as an intolerable state of affairs to have found myself in this life and in this age, which is a disaster by calculation, without demanding a gift commensurate with the offese. So I demanded it.” I understand rejection of Christendom as Walker Percy calls it. I understand rejection of the church institution, and rejection of Christians. Rejection of rules, conventions, and conformities. I do not understand rejection of Jesus Christ. I vaguely understand pain and suffering, to the small extent I have experienced them, which pales in comparison to the innumerable atrocities committed daily against humanity by humans, and specifically against the weak, the helpless, the young, the old, the poor, the marginalized. I have small conception of what it means to be alive and a smaller conception of the God of the Universe. After all, I use something like 3% of my brain, and sometimes, I suspect, little more of my heart. I drive a 2002 Passat with leather seats that my father bought for me. I have no pedestal to stand on, no diatribe to speak, but I do have words. Words that I hope are not mine, because as enumerated above I have no authority to speak them, save a beating heart and further evidence of the second by second universal gift of life- I breathe. I have a mind, it is futile. I think therefore I am, says Descartes, but what kind of life is that?



I watched an Albert Brooks film last weekend entitled, Defending Your Life which depicts people going to Judgment City after death where they defend their life in order to pass on to be a part of the Universe or return to Earth in another life in order to have another go at it. The criteria for passing on is to overcome fear. Some take six lives, some over a hundred to overcome fears. That’s the score card: fear.

What score cards might we keep? Do we advocate discovery? Art? Pursuit of knowledge? Wealth? How many people we step over on our way to the top? Or how many people we pick up from the heaps of ashes? Please tell me, who is keeping score, and who determines the grading rubric?

We cannot escape rules and conventions, we are humans and we make them, and then we live with them- in spite of them, in accordance with them. One psychologist stated, “There is no thought apart from culture.” Thousands of cultures over thousands of years and not one has gotten it right. Not even the democratic United States. Eddie Izzard, a sharp transvestite comedian, warns America that we are the new Roman Empire.

My friend Wes once told me something to the effect of “We have to remind ourselves, you and I, that Jesus wasn’t rebellious, he was radical.” Is God a Republican? American conservatives might have you think so, but last time I checked Heaven seems to have a completely open immigration policy, “I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to all who believe.” Furthermore Christ’s foreign policy involved talking with Samaritans with whom Jews would not associate, healing lepers who were untouchable, and dining with prostitutes and tax collectors, the despised of the time. His economic policy advises, if someone takes your coat, give him your shirt as well. His idea of homeland security, “I have not come to bring peace, but a sword [as the Jews expected a King to take over the government]” but to the individual, “the world will show you hatred, but I bring you my peace that where I am there you may also be.”
What I believe and I believe it with all of my heart that I can muster, with all the futility of my mind occupying a mere 3% of my brain, and with every fiber of my metaphysical being is that I am redeemed from this insane world, by the death of Christ on the cross, and made a new creation by his resurrection from the dead. Furthermore, that I am freed from rules and conventions, freed from self-condemnation, freed from the futility of my mind, freed from the deceit of my very own heart, freed from living as a slave to the ways of the world that do not fulfill me, and freed for freedom, to live life abundantly. “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.” (Galatians 5:1)