An old question

     Most of you don't claim the titles of Calvinism or Arminianism, but we all want to draw a line. Where is the line that shows the end of faith and the beginning of works, or the end of works and the beginning of faith? This question, this line-drawing experiment, is why there are somber, dry Christians alongside irreverent, rebellious Christians. The invisible line may be placed by your subconscious, or  your parents or friends. Before you realized you have such a line, you are walking down it, often too far into faith or too far into works.
     How do we find the balance? Dad preached on this today. He told a story of a man who would row people across the river. On one oar he had printed FAITH and on the other, WORKS. Someone asked him what this means. He said nothing, but dropped FAITH and rowed with WORKS. He went in circles, obviously. He repeated this with FAITH. Only when he used both oars could he move forward through the water. This is an easy example, but it doesn't draw our line permanently.
     I thought of this line in a new way. What if it isn't a line at all? At least, not with ink, or chalk, or tape. This division between the two could be a living thing. At a youth Bible study a few weeks ago, we discussed faith as  living thing, but we rarely discuss works as living. In Romans 4:4, Paul says, "Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt." He who does works, not having faith,  is only attempting to fulfil a debt that we owe to God. This debt can never be paid, and the works are dead, dead, dead. In the next verse, Paul says, "But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness." Is the line drawn yet? Certainly not, if we turn to James. Chapter 2:17, "Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone."
     The Bible never contradicts itself. James and Paul were dealing with two different situations. Paul was trying to convince the church that circumcision was not the way to God. It is merely a work that God had asked them to do as Jews. James was explaining that dead faith is useless. Both of these inspired writers understood that God has combined faith and good deeds in such a way that you cannot have one without the other. The line between them is ever mixing them together. When you believe in God, and that He sent His Son to die for us, you have faith. You can't stop there, any more than you can buy a plant and keep it inside and never water it or let it see sunshine. You can't shove your faith into a dark room and expect it to stay alive. You must keep it out, feed it with following God's word. Works good deeds don't save us, but faith without any desire to do good is weak faith, that will whither until it dies. I think of it as a favor that God has given us. He gave us salvation for free, but He will accept the humble offerings of our serving others. I don't redeem myself that way. I just enjoy life on earth more, doing something with myself. Who wants a faith that changes nothing about you? There is no human who is completely content with who they are. I want something that grows inside me, changes parts of me I didn't know I had.

     I finished Ted Dekker's The Sanctuary a few days ago. I've always wondered if his real name is Theodore. It was a deep book, heart deep.
     The story of Danny Hansen and Renee Gilmore begins in The Priest's Graveyard, but Sanctuary takes the theme to a richer place, full of overwhelming love and sacrifice. Danny killed a lot of men, priest or not. His mother and two sisters were raped and killed in the Bosnian War, while he huddled in the corner of his room. In fury at discovering their bodies, he tricked the the soldiers who did and shot them dead. He was fifteen. He joined the Bosnian army, rose high in their ranks, making permanent the marks of war. He carried his justice into America, searching out the 'vipers', as he called them, and calling them to higher lives. Not all of them were amenable to his way of showing them how to be holy. They were vipers, pedophiles, liars, rapists, abusers. What Danny discovered at the end of Graveyard was that we all are. One step away from God, and we all, every single one, are bloodstained from head to toe. Snakes. To refuse this knowledge is to refuse the truth of a holy and just God. Danny showed Renee his way of cleansing the world, not realizing that he was taking the place of the monsters in her life. It was in her right to kill him, as he had her former lover(a snake himself, apparently), but his overwhelming love for her was enough. Love replaced self righteous judgement in Danny's mind. Perhaps he actually read his Bible. Only God can judge. It's not our place.
     Danny took a vow of nonviolence, confessed to his crimes(at least two of them, I will never understand why he didn't confess them all) and was then sent to prison for fifty years. He refused to allow Renee to suffer for her two murders, as he had taught her how and influenced her to commit them. Not long after his incarceration in Ironwood, CA, Danny is transferred to Basal, a revolutionary version of prison ruled by the despotic Warden Pape. Both Renee and Danny are pushed to the end of themselves, as Dekker novels are wont to do. I really mean the end of themselves. I was almost there myself, hearing Danny's screams from Pape's torturous attempts to reform him. To Pape, convicts are back in jail shortly after their release because the system only hardens them. In his prison, Pape's Sanctuary, the warden is God, and any transgression against him results in a breaking of the will of the deviant.
     Renee is in her own hell, unable to contact Danny, receiving horrific threats on Danny's life. The bloody finger of a boy, eerie phone calls. She turns to a lawyer for help. Keith had put Randell, a murderous hater of priests, into prison, and now Basal. Renee entangles herself in a complicated game, desperate with love for Danny. She cannot live without him, and he can't bear to part with her.
     The end game is in the Sanctuary. The one who started the game lures everyone to the same place, and Danny is put to the test. Here, in a cell in Basal, Renee is threatened, and Pape is determined to force Danny to kill again, to admit his brokenness. I don't know what Theodore was thinking here. Danny sees Renee, in Keith's arms, and recognizes him as an earlier victim of his judging of vipers. Keith had beaten his wife, a parish member of Danny's. Danny tied him to a chair and made him vow never to do so again. Keith lied, and then flaunted the vow to his wife. His wife fled after telling the men he worked with. He lost his job, his wife, his life, as he tells Danny bitterly. Renee has played into his hands.
     Danny sees her, shoves away his rage, and notices that Keith and Pape and Randell are just men, unloved men, and in need of love themselves. No Christian writer so widely read has ever approached this issue of love so squarely. It was lovely, while it lasted. Moments later, Renee is on the torture table Danny was a day ago, ready to undergo the same thing. Danny's mind is collapsing, he kneels, trying to clear his head. In a moment, finally, what Dekker calls surrender, Danny decides that he will not punish, he will save. In order to save, as he feels called to do, he will need to punish, however. He kills Keith, shoves his nose into his head. All of the loveliness is shattered, as I see idolatry staring at me.
     It is strange to come up with idolatry after the sin of murder has been committed, but I could see no hand of God in this. Danny worshipped Renee, would kill, take God's scepter in his hands, to keep her from dying. My dear sister's first comment was, convert her, and then he wouldn't have to worry about it. Heaven would be awaiting them both.
     We've been discussing nonresistance for a while at church, and it is repetitive, to be sure. However, while none of us knows what we would do in the heat of the moment, I know Danny was wrong. We cannot love by killing, even to protect those we love. Beyond the fact that we are hating those we send to hell, we are taking authority from God. I'm sure most of us know this, if you've grown up Mennonite, anyway, but it was good for me to ponder it. What would I do?
     I didn't understand Danny. Near the beginning of his imprisonment, he said something profound. "It only makes sense to turn the other cheek if you do it every time." Every time. There is no exception clause. After Danny is released from prison-through various manuverings and because Dekker wanted him to be- Renee asks him if he recants his vow of nonviolence.
     "No, of course not."
     "What if someone comes after me again?"
     "Then I'll stop him, by whatever means necessary."
Renee is in awe of the fact that he's given up his reason on the altar of his overwhelming love for her. Given up his belief in the sovereignty of God as well, though he may not realize it. Reliance on God means to lay down your life, and your right to protect those around you. God allows us to protect, but He will decide by what means. It opened my eyes to His power to read this book. I recommend it, misguided as Dekker may be. He was so close. So very, very close.

     J. R. R. Tolkien was a man who believed in story. I came to this conclusion after this last time through Lord of the Rings. Like my keycard finally turned on the green light. Middle Earth seems so real, because it is. It's real in his head, and now it's real in all of ours, because his realness was so potent. Any fiction book that haunts you, with its characters that talk to you and landscapes that look like somewhere you've seen, it's real to the author first. I can hardly believe the amount of information he realized before he wrote the book. Footnotes, appendixes, the Silmarillion...it's more realistic than out world is sometimes. For every question, he has an answer, and I can hardly argue with him. It's lovely. I'll be spending some of my Heaven time begging him to tell me more. If I can put a little of that into these stories in my head...that's all I wish for. That and the whimsicality of Ray Bradbury, God rest his soul.

       The light comes and the darkness flees. Every day this happens, but shouldn’t it be explosive, uproarious, shocking? The darkness before Eloi’s light is so webbed and confusing, a heavy entity that tightens with struggle. Ravenna, the protagonist in this story, feels an unexlainable burden. Despair, ignorance, chains. Writing this story is changing me, whether I asked it to or not, viewing Ravenna’s transformation from inside her like this. When people ask me how I like writing, I tell them to be jealous and grateful it’s not them at the same time. Creating artistically pulls energy from places I didn’t know I had. I feel with her the darkness, the pitch black of night before God. Where can she turn? Wrapped in her hopelessness, until, in glorious day, she explodes into the morning. I want to scream about it, really. The light of Eloi is so warm, untangling, smoothing. You can see and know. You can be seen and be known. If you’ve let Jesus into your heart, God’s Spirit into yours, then you know this light. Don’t hide it away. Share it with others who still lurk in solitary confinement, unsure of the point of life. No matter how bright your first light is, it will fade if you put it in a closet and stuff rags under the doors.

     

     Good and evil, like light and dark, are sometimes more tangible than you would think. Glory is showing me that, one jarring page at a time. Not that it’s such a shocking story, but it has to be mine, and I find correlations between this story and the earthly one. I can see now that God has given us His glory and light to share. He is slowly cleansing our veins of the heavy darkness. Check yourself, as I do when I think of glory. Is His light shining through your heart, making it transparent, so that God can see every part?

     Take the light of God’s glory as your refuge, your rock, the thing you refuse to release. Persecution and pain cannot shake the fact that God is full of light, and we, as His followers, are like glowing embers, trying to start our own fire. There are fortresses of darkness in this world, and you need something to shield you while you walk there. Sometimes we’re not so far from fantasy.