God Help Me

God help me but sometimes I think Christ a fool.

But, maybe it is not sometimes. Perhaps it is a more subtle attitude carried, betraying itself in thoughts and words that are at best only sometimes made more clearly discernible as to their etiology. Like a faint odor of rotting flesh where one may be at some loss as to how things ‘ought to smell’, but nevertheless has some conviction regardless, that that smell of corruption ‘aint it’…”That’s bad, that’s not right”.

Something stinks. Something is dead, here. I (or we) may not know every fragrance of true life, but something (or is it someone?) that allows that stink to be sensed brings some persuasion “You don’t want that to continue or grow greater”.

That foul miasma, more than just being noxious to the nose, is infectious. And for as much may want to trace its source, find its origin by seeking out its place of occupying for removal…any drawing nearer to it for discovery and action against it (as for its removal) only incurs a more dangerous estate by proximity. To ‘try to deal with it’ is the very danger.

It has been said, ‘a good friend will help you move.’ But a great friend will help you move a body. And there is a great friend.

And therein lies the rub. Both of the great friend and the dead body He is willing to help move. And anyone reading is far more than free to say ‘you do greatly err, that dead thing has already been removed, it is a finished work, a job complete, a fait accompli in Christ…” and to confess otherwise or hold any persuasion otherwise, or even broadcast some experience as otherwise (as could be inferred from this public writing) is not only heretical, but quite antichrist. Yes, I must bear that as possible accusation.

Somehow I am made not ashamed to air my dirty laundry nor even afraid to make that dreadful confession of sometimes being aware I think Christ a fool. For now at least, I do not think I can find a more base confession than that. But it would also be a pride (it too has an odor) to think I have plumbed to any significant depths of what a man may think of God’s Christ. As though I have touched to bottom of all things that may be found in man. But it might be enough for now (at least) that one who has rather ardently held to that name for succor and relief might confess to even greater weakness, debility, useless and mostly senseless babbling about experiences discovered.

And though pride is not excluded from present confessions, one more the fool would be inclined to say ‘I found out’ as though some diligent seeker, some trained explorer, some intrepidity accounted for that ‘looking into’…no, it just ‘happens’. “I spent many years following the Lord” or, “I was diligent in this or that” or “I prayed and studied much and have been rewarded…” No. God forbid, no.

My trail has always been to my most sincerest confession available of me (now), been one of self seeking. Interrupted at notable times? Surely. Contradicted at more notable times? Without doubt (to me). A someone unbidden showing up while attempting to ‘do’ the things foolishly thought to ‘make Him appear’? Absolutely (to me).

He simply keeps…interrupting. Unsettling things. And in that, time and again, shows Himself completely ‘unsubject’ to me or any of my pursuits. And more than completely immovable and untroubled by how He may appear as to such a one claiming His name…even knowing I would see Him as harshest enemy at certain times. He obviously is unmoved by what I think of Him. He is, who He is. No flatterer He. No ‘trying to gain’ nor fear of losing anything or anyone. No changing to fit my (or any) template to keep me from being offended at Him. He is who He is. Even the reality of what is-ing…is.

I can’t shake Him.

I could say, might say, might even be inclined to say “And I don’t want to”. But there is also a stink of pride in thinking I know much of my own wants. And God knows all the trails I have taken even better than I recall myself of trying to shake Him, or lose that tail (are the headlights still following?), stop something of a relentlessness that is often too troubling to acknowledge. I thought I was driving. But it was the headlights in pursuit that initiated every turn, every swerve, every careening around corners. I am the one ‘driving blind’ thinking I know where to go to ‘really’ find Him. He laughs. And there is too much of pleasantness and purity in that laugh that could deter from even the most ‘base of confessions’.

It’s a hot pursuit. By Him.

Wait, wait, wait! I believe I can hear. Aren’t christians, or isn’t a Christian (if in particular) supposed to be a someone so at peace in Christ and with Christ as to be completely untroubled with Him or by Him? And God forbid I speak otherwise. How to be at peace with someone in your home, your house, who does not subject Himself even to (as one might even, in their own house) subject themselves…is different. “Oh, Lord, that room is an utter disaster we never go in there; it’s such a mess we even prefer not to know what’s behind that door anymore” as He goes where He will. Flinging open doors, crashing through walls built for seeming safety, not afraid to touch and upset what was once framed to keep an identity intact, a self ‘humming along’ like a dynamo to its own order.

“Oh, but we love that picture of you on the wall!”

“Really? Do I look at all like that?” as He turns with eyes as flaming fire. And the picture ignites to ashes.

And that cross hung there Lord…please…it’s there for my gathering around to prayerfully consider in worship.

“Really? Do you think I worshipped the cross or around it? How about ‘from it’? As it, too, bursts into flames.

“Ahhh, I see you have a work room, let’s take a look!”

Ahh, maybe not Lord, it’s really really messy.

And the door gets blown off with “Hey, I thought you said it was messy? It’s the neatest room I’ve entered so far. Everything carefully filed and recorded, everything alphabetical and chronologically even ‘spritually’ cross referenced so as to never be lost…amazing work! It’s like you couldn’t forget each entry…even if you wanted to.

Every little insult you recorded as suffered for my name, every effort or labor you think consecrated to me, every seeming sacrifice, every delayed pleasure, any and every word spoken as in defense of me, every minutest detail of all you believe you have ever ‘done for me’ with a chair far too well worn to deny this room is visited often. Why, Imma guess you just pore over this stuff relentlessly and get a great deal of pleasure from it as shown by the meticulous care by which you have it arranged. Great job! Do you mind…?” As he touches but one page causing all of them to immolate with the most foul smelling smoke. “Oops” He says.

But that laugh! That laugh! Talk about infectious!

I have lost nothing, but the absence of that laughter! Can there even be more?

And there I am…left in what looks like it must be the last room, to me so far (anyway). I am by myself, I have retreated. Not so much accompanying Him around this house, but hearing a relentless beating upon a door, a battering of it too thunderous to ignore, to a shaking of all too unsettling to deny. The foundations, the foundations!

I ‘feel’ not as much with Him, but cannot deny His presence…it is at once the most troubling and unsettling of all sensations…yet simultaneous with a greatest comfort in the thunderously loud pounding betraying He is still at work.

It is where I have the body buried. Where I undertook to bury it myself.

Driven to this room as all others were filled with intolerable light, I have retreated. It is dark, it stinks and is dank. I dare not be found here. It is the place of all my dynamism, too keep that body buried, to hide it, to so totally obscure from view (both my own and others) with constant shovelings over it, endless, relentless, unyielding labors to hide a too shameful thing. It is to me my mainspring of all matters. Initiator of all doings. The stench affects me, the rot infects me.

A hiding of what I know I have done, and who I am.

I betrayed and killed a friend.

And so I say the only thing I dare not deny as reply to the thunder, my last play (it seems) to keep at bay an exposure I do not believe survivable, an exposure that even slightest light could not but destroy. And open to only an endless void of abysmal loss.

It is not that I will go, or be gone, it will be, even is: “I am not”.

And so I cannot help but think it, cannot even keep myself from saying it…”You do not want to come in here unless you are a fool, you cannot want to be near or with such a one…unless you are foolish…for there is nothing but death here, nothing but stink and malice and all spite, jealousy, and anger in here with me…and any will at all in any to ‘come in’ shows you can’t be of sound mind.

No one else can ‘really’ live here.

The laughter. O! the laughter that takes place of thunder.

The “yet not I”…lives.