Extreme Decisions, Part 2

Robert E. Lee images entered my thoughts the other day as I pondered people making “extreme” decisions. 

When reading diary entries and letters from the Civil War, habitants of the ante-bellum era in the US, both northern and southern, write with repeated contextual references to “honor” and “noble causes”. Coupled with historic recounting of Lee, it is repeated of him that his love of Virginia and duty to serve there was the basis for his resignation from the US army to take command of Confederate forces. As Postmodern Redneck pointed out in his comments to the previous post, Lee undoubtedly altered the course of the war from short to protracted—five spring seasons in four years saw brother killing brother and friend killing friend—and he did so based on this strong sense of devotion to his home state.

We tend to think of ourselves today as members of one great nation, and we happen to live in one of its states. From what I gather in reading, during the first nine decades of US history, most folks saw themselves as citizens of their state first, then a US citizen. The first US constitution, the Articles of Confederation, outlined the way these sovereign states would work together without giving the federal government any real power over the states. Regional loyalties defined by state boundaries were common and strong. The developing divide of the early Nineteenth Century between North and South regions is rooted in these state loyalties.

So a noble and duty-bound man makes a momentous decision for himself that impacts the young nation profoundly. It is arguable his decision had the potential to rend the nation in two, throwing his military skills as happened to the Confederate Army. That was, afterall, the goal of the southern military and political establishment. Lee most likely didn’t calculate that his decision equated with the greatest loss of life in war the US would ever experience.

Never quite see the full consequences of our decisions, eh?

Extreme Decisions

Growing up in Southern culture, the last gasp of the Confederacy as it turns out, my familial elders and the status quo bureaucrats running the state educational system, sought in varied ways to shape my thinking about the world.   Both groups made sure I revered one guy from one hundred years prior, General Robert E. Lee. By the mid-sixties when the Civil War roots of our community, state and region were uprooted politically by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 for the social weeds they were, Robert E. Lee remained somehow immune from any racist dispersion which tainted his contemporaries or the renegade status of many Southern leaders from both nineteenth and twentieth century’s. Anybody remember George Wallace?

In reading of Lee in varied accounts both primary and after the fact, he is renowned for two things; military brilliance and personal integrity. Many people attain prominence for either abilities or their character. Fewer are those respected for both.  It is curious to me how Lee could throw away a future with the moral high ground side, the most likely to be and was the winning side, arguably the “right” side in order to join a rebellion dedicated to an ill-fated--and generally now accepted as immoral--cause but is recalled by history without judgments of profound denial or stupidity.  Why this Teflon coating?

Here’s a man who makes a clearly radical decision in support of a discredited and even hated by many regime, yet he remains a well remembered and honored character in the history being told by the winning side.

What is the mitigating dynamic here? Is it that he chose honor (in the form of love for his home state) and dedicated himself to duty?  Really?  Honor and duty mattered that much…these matter now?

Ah, the twist and turns in the Wild Wood!

There but for the Grace of God, Part III

The last commenter to this blog, Postmodern Redneck, stated simply what I intended for this post. Postmodern said, "... religious activity can help a person mask their sinful nature and keep from facing it."

True!

...and we Christians tend to call it "grace" from God. There is no getting around it, Jesus did say, "Forgive seventy times seven." So, yes, when we have sinned but seek forgiveness, receiving forgiveness is grace. To receive forgiveness multiple times is also a function of the deep and wondrous grace of our Lord Jesus.

Which brings us back to Jerry Sandusky and his example: a person who appears dedicated to good works, attends church regularly and maintains an abhorrent secret life of molesting children. Some people harbor a particular sin. That's it. They make friends with it, living "for Christ" outwardly while practicing the sin in hiding. This duality weighs on some, but for others, it is just the way life must be lived. The conscience becomes silenced purposely or "hardens" through the individual's lack of response. Such a condition is both evidence and process of a growing spiritual darkness. The jargon employed explaining this behavior to one's self may include phrases such as, "life-dominating sin", "the area of my struggle", or the inane euphemism "my cross to bear". Ultimately, however practicing the sin is accepted, the perpetrator accepts a rationalized truth that humans are a mixture of good and bad. Thus, the "bad" has to be accepted as inescapable reality, but the good one works is of value. Hey, one must take the good with the bad, eh?!

Seems to work okay when the "bad" is a bit of laziness, over-indulgence in food or alcohol, or maybe a bit of lying--the little white ones, of course. But we must be honest with ourselves and with the Lord. Does degree or type of sin actually dictate who receives "grace" and who does not? Is the person who tells lies occasionally, who admits these are wrong to the self, but who nonetheless accepts that behavior as both inevitable and as forgiven under the covering of God's grace any better than a man who sets up a charity that helps hundreds of kids but molests only 10-15 boys? If we allow that "grace" accepts our continuing in the sin of lying, since after all, we do much more good than that little bit of lying we won't let go of; then "grace" must have accepted Sandusky in his continuing acts of child molestation in view of the real good he accomplished otherwise.

Either God justifies individuals on the basis of the good done, or He does not. Either God must allow us to be ruled by sin under the flag of grace or our logic about grace is faulty.  Why do we Christians not notice a non sequitur. I suggest many of us simply do not accept grace for its true power. If we are claiming Christ but living with a secret sin, the evidence of this lack of understanding is clear.

Grace as undeserved forgiveness certainly is part of the gospel message. That grace does function in the face of seventy times seven. However, once we accept our sin nature as the inevitable way we must live, we have denied the spiritual reality of a grace which also equips us for walking a victorious life over our sinful natures.

Grace, the full measure of the grace in the gospel truth, leads in righteous choices. Such choice is exercised over our inclination to sin and into the light of submission before the in-dwelling Presence of Jesus by the Holy Spirit.

Does my natural man rule me? Yes, unless by the grace of God, I choose a different way. Except for this grace, I travel the same road of self-delusion as Sandusky and... well...every other human. 

There but for the Grace of God, Part II

The topic is child molestation not Jerry Sandusky, but as the latest public version of the problem,  he allows us a human face.

Simply put, as abhorrent as his behavior was, there is no room to cast stones at him. It is a human story of failure to recognize sin or to recognize it but fail a walk in the available grace of God. Perhaps knowing the meaning of grace is part of the problem. I contend Jerry Sandusky --no matter what he believed about God, professed about God, nor practiced in his religion -- did not understand the grace of God.

That is the end of the matter, however. Rewind to the beginning.

How did he manage to become ensnared by such vile desire? I'm guessing, but I am confident in the guess, to assert his sexual exploration began as a child with other boys, perhaps even pre-pubescent. In his teens while he acted oriented toward girls of appropriate age, he maintained some level of secret behavior involving boys. Some part of his soul driven by his fallen, flesh nature never matured beyond this. He developed heterosexually or pretended to do so, but a secret willingness to participate in homosexual behavior remained. The desire remained along with the knowledge some boys could be so coerced. With his advancing age, developing position and disposable income, he learned techniques of manipulation. This likely behavior pre-dated the start of the charity, and it is plausible he started the charity without plotting a way to groom a never-ending list of boys of the age he targeted. He may have even prayed, "God help me not use the charity this way." Such is the folly of self-denial.

I think something in him believed in doing acts of charity. This idea on my part is tied to my life experience of knowing we humans, Christian and not, are a mixed bag of good and evil decisions. How many church going folks will lie on their tax forms? How many folks would never steal anything but have very immoral sexual fantasies? How many pastors, policemen, judges, doctors, firemen, teachers, etc., went into their chosen vocation to answer some inner-drive to help fellow humans, and yet harbor feelings, desires, thoughts or out-right actions of wrong behaviors? Jerry Sandusky is not alone. He got caught because he abandoned himself to a lifestyle of self-indulgence in his prurient interest, which produced enough witnesses to incontrovertibly testify he did the acts.

Is the one who acts out a prurient desire worse than the dreamer of such? Perhaps so in most US citizen's eyes, but not when judged by the holiness of God our Father. Our actions may or may not be judged by the law. The heart is judged by God.

Next path in the Wild Wood will examine the nature of the grace of God, and Sandusky et al professing grace while living outside the same.

There but for the Grace of God...

The news is vile on most any occasion...or at least too many facets of it. Gruesome murders, scandals amid politicians and others of lesser note, child abuse, drug conglomerates leaving their piles of human debris. Sandusky couldn't be missed, eh?

The child predator appears one of the worst, no doubt. However, the unease of a man establishing a charity reaching for and lifting up under-privileged youth, who then picked his victims from the clients of the charity is peculiarly nauseating. That mask of overt goodness as a cover-up of pedophile predatory behavior ravages one's sense of trust in any goodness at all.

Raises some questions; no doubt about that at all.

How could others turn a blind eye?
How could this man's theology not scream at him he was in the wrong? (I read in the news he was a church goer of some regularity.)
How did he get himself involved in sex with minors to begin with, and why did he determine to start the charity?

I could go on.

It's all about sight, or lack thereof. I have some windows to wash so,

more later from the Wild Wood.

Reporting on an Unusual Week

I wrote a teaser on June 6. Thought by the weekend, surely, I'd have a new post up. Little did I know what kind of week I was about to enter.

The following piece of news from our little community actually went world wide:

On Friday, June 8, as children showed up for the last night of vacation Bible school (VBS), they began to play in the church cemetery. Like many small, country churches, the cemetery is located near to the church building with no fences or boundary markers of any kind. Anyone at any time can simply stroll through the monuments. A freak accident occurred and a twelve hundred pound, stone cross broke off the top of its monument and fell upon one four-year-old little girl. She didn't survive the trauma.

This child was the second child of one of my former students. The former student is from a family my wife and I have been friends with for over thirty years. In fact, the precious child who died so suddenly came to Christmas dinner at our house as a swaddled infant when our two families gathered to share a holiday meal--a tradition we had kept for one and half decades.

This event wrenched our hearts and commanded our thoughts and prayers for many days.

The day after the funeral, we received a call that my wife's mom had been admitted to a local hospital for emergency angioplasty. This was her second such operation in a little over a year. We packed and left for Clayton on Wednesday. I am happy to report my mother-in-law is doing well and getting better. The operation turned out to be needed to fix the first stent.

Friday, as we worked around Mom's and Dad's house for a few days, we heard the news from our hometown that a sixteen-year-old boy had been killed in an auto accident Thursday night. Once he had been identified, I learned he and the boy driving the truck were both former students of mine. Their faces were easy to connect to their names in my mind's eye.

I have been thinking much about death this week. Not morbidly or even sadly, though two of the events mentioned here are horribly sad for the families involved. I just find myself thinking it over.

I have been debating what to do after a couple of months of silence. I either start fresh or pick up in the middle of the last series.

Either way, just thought I'd rumble a bit and let the world know, I am thinking again.