Eatting Our Own Filth

No one drives in construction.

I remember a few years ago, Melissa and I were driving down some back country roads in the Jamestown area. After going to visit a friend's newborn baby boy we said our goodbyes, got in my decrepit yet cozy 1986 duct-tape gray Taurus, and started heading out as the sun set behind the horizon, covering the grassy hills in total darkness. So, I was behind the wheel, talking together, paying little attention where we were actually going, after all, eventually we would find our way out. Suddenly, a road sign, an orange flash, a construction sign. She smiled and reassured me, hey, it's Michigan, they're always filling in a couple potholes, no big deal. As we drove my headlights shook as my tires hit a massive bump, THUD! The pavement road without warning became a vast, indiscernible stretch of mud, stones, and gravel, not an inch of concrete or asphalt in sight.

Not cool.

I leaned over the steering wheel, hunching over it and squinting in a desperate attempt to grasp any apparent obstacles in the road. She stared back at me, stating how bad an idea this was and how she really didn't trust my driving abilities. Confidence builder right there, folks. As she mentioned this as I attempted to shrug off the last remark we watched as a massive concrete pillar passed inches away from the hood of my car. Luckily, in the next mile we eventually got back on solid pavement with very few other close calls.

Next time, it would be wise to pay attention to bright orange signs on a dark, desolate country road. Lesson learned.

But we don't. It's kills me to see people driving into the dark places, all the while ignoring the hunter's orange warning we have in our very midst. Can our hearts and souls truly fly under the banner of His kingdom when our desires and misconceived conceptions of joys have blinded our better judgements to the graces of God.

We have satisfied our lives with the merest and most humble of trinkets and knick-nacks, plastic coins and counterfeits dollars, imitations and illusions. We have offered sacrifices to Bacchus and Aphrodite and have somehow asked their graces to justify the lust and devious lifestyles we choose to live. And we have made it alright, in fact, natural, based upon such a fickle allegiance. And each day we prove it. This world was not created by a loving God, no. We have affirmed time and time again by our midnight festivals of greed and excess and glorious antics that our world belongs to Eros and Dionysus, our actions are mere rituals to our pagan idols, our hearts are corrupted and pump their luxury to feed our longings, and our God is nothing more than a joke or, at best, a brand name of ideology which we have complete choice to remove, to hide, or to completely disown when necessary for our own selfish gain of status, of sex, of solution. We have profaned what is holy, we have taken God gifts and converted them and twisted them into weapons of scorn and disgrace. We live, we die, we hang desperately on every inch of sex, of pleasure, of anything we can certainly get our hands on, or at least envision and dream of such, in that process we have lost our God and when we cry out to him, we have realized the most horrible thing;

We forgot His very name.

I miss heaven. I have never been there, but I dearly miss it right now. I miss the lack of hedonism, I miss the open spaces, I miss the warm hearts and the loving eyes, I miss seeing Christ glow unheeded in every person by their every word and movement. I miss that feeling of waking up after a good night's sleep, feeling the covers wrapped around your legs as they stretch between lays of linen as the sun gently pushes itself through the thin blinds. Poison is flowing as freely as we breath and eat and sleep. We are ingesting our own filth and vermin, swimming in our feces and vomit, with the dreadful lack of realization that we can no longer live in the shadow of probity or morality; we enjoy the dark places better. We enjoy the muck and the grime, it has become our home and soon it comes...yes...that the simple pleasures of the underbelly push aside the grandest heavens and the most joyful promises of salvation, for the wallowing and the eating of trash is suddenly our feast. We have been offered a cash for clunkers deal and have turned it down, foolishly finding sentiment and enjoyment in our old, rusted rigs.

I'm sorry if I step on toes, or if I'm too straight-forward, or too old-fashioned and, dare I say, sectarian here, but here's what is killing me; we have so much need for sex and a drunken night and for lust and supposed love and our greed that we forget to ask the two main questions anyone should ask about any action...how and why is this fulfilling my personhood? Are we truly being fulfilled by such simple, clay vessels? Is this truly the glory of God, the emulation and actualization of such pagan idols we've grown so far of. Can the banner of God fly over such a dump as this?

Grace is prevalent, grace is perfect, grace will never forsake us, never let us down, never let us go. God will ALWAYS be there fore His children, who suffer through hardships, who miss their heavenly homes. Who struggle with numerous sufferings, who fear the possible affects of sickness and affliction, who have lost their income and are desperate to find a way to feed their families. God is there. Grace is there.

Sadly, I have seen the unthinkable. Christians don't want grace. Not the one's I've seen. They want Eros, they want Bacchus, they want wine and folly, sex and sensuality, hedonism and all the pleasure of the world. In the deplorable vulgar terms not uncommon, they want to be touched in everywhich place in the most sacred of ways, they want to be wasted beyond recognition and to wake with fuzzy memories which in some strange metaphysical way means that "joy was in this place". Christianity may be fading in many parts of the modern world, but on the contrary, the Bacchae, the wild priestesses and priests of Dionysus who roamed his realm in drunken rage, devouring raw animal flesh and tearing apart innocent bystanders, it is this cult who is growing and multiplying quite nicely in the bars and clubs across America. The classics departments may be dwindling at universities across the board, yet the pagan gods are living quite well and are as popular as ever if we would only take a second to look. Christians want these gods, non-Christains the same want these gods. These gods are ruling our realm with a satisfying fist, and we suddenly find grace stuffy and prudish, boring and predictable, a concept or fine memory of childish religious lore with no place in our weekends (though church may offer an hour and a half of happy memory).

We don't want grace. Sadly, warning signs are posted, hell is a pillar on a torn road away. If we miss such warning we will awake some morning to find that years of aliengence to the underworld and our pagan gods has suddenly left us in a vapid state, that our hedonism has, rather than fill us, indebted us to our own unquenchable desires, desires which we only meant to be quenched by a heavenly ambrosia straight from Christ Himself. And then, at that moment, our lives will hold no meaning nor point, our faith will be at the last stage of antrophy and we will wish for "the good ol' days" where the cross held meaning, when life seemed purposeful, when community was centered on more than the local drink and love was something found mostly outsides of one's bedroom door. And then, at that moment, we will try to sip from grace and find its taste pungent to our wine-coated lips, and at that moment a hard road awaits, and sadly most will divert, toss their vile of grace, and find their vodka and gin a much more suitable cocktail.

Pity those who miss grace.
If you thirst for something, if you desire for more than evenings of pleasure which ends in empty dreams, then you miss heaven too.

Miss it with me.

I hope to see you on this earth. I hope even more to see you soon in the higher realm.

Love you all