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.

Holy, holy, is our Lord God Almighty

     God is holy{specially recognized as or declared sacred by religious use or authority; consecrated: holy ground. 2.saintly; godly; pious; devout: a holy life.3.having a spiritually pure quality: a holy love.5.entitled to worship or veneration as or as if sacred: a holy relic}
   
     I could be done with this before I began, if human beings didn't live for the steady flow of explanation. The Separation and Nonconformity Colloquy at Faith Builders revolved around the holiness of God and its shaping of history and present time. Anabaptism, that disciplined system to which many of us adhere, attempts to make the holiness of God practically manifest in us.
   
     The clothes, the cars, the houses. "People say that they believe, but do not show it in their dress," Menno Simon wrote. Is this where it ends? Wendell Heatwole, Nathan Yoder, and Val Yoder, often addressed the wondrous state of transformation that every true new believer experiences. Dress is not the end of this issue. The change in our hearts, the unscientific and miraculous change wrought by the Holy Spirit when we call on Him, is the foundation for our separation from the world. Once this transformation is begun, the dress and conduct will follow.
   
     Several brilliant points were made that Saturday, and one of them was the positiveness of separation. When we play word association with separation, we find division and isolation. It is vital, however, not to forget that Deuteronomy 7:6 speaks of separation unto God. We are holy people unto Him, not only away from the world. Romans 12:2 says, "...be ye not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind..." Transformation is the positive side of nonconformity. We really should call it Separation and Transformation. When transformation is taking place, separation from the world is inevitable.

     Here's a hard idea, and I'm not saying it without crushing my own toes: If that transformation is taking place in our lives, we are recognizing our place as temples of the Living God(II Cor. 6:16-18), and attempting to demonstrate to the world human examples of God's holiness, then how do we struggle so fiercely against standards and disciplines that have been placed over our lives? We can expect our children to follow in our footsteps as we leave disciplines behind. Why is it so hard to give up earthly things and cover ourselves with things, when we are attempting to embody God's holiness? We can never do enough. When our own glory is the focus of our lifestyle, God's holiness is profaned. His temple is scandalously vandalized, and the world will scoff at His Name.

     God didn't create us to torment us with our own inadequacy. He sent Jesus to set us free. Brother Val spoke on the beauty of holiness. Along with our salvation, God gives us the loveliness of holiness, and the freedom of a higher standard. No longer are we forced to search for fame, beauty, and short-lived pleasure. We are free from the world's mind-set. Our future dreams, our habits, the way we live our lives: these are all lifted to the level of the holy. We have the blessing of God, and when hardship comes, we have His everlasting arms on which to lean. This is what attracts nonbelievers to us, and precisely why I love to be an Anabaptist Mennonite. It's hard to live in this freedom and try to reach those still in bondage, but God makes it possible.They don't know why, but they see what they have. Mennonites are known for their families that last, modest women, respectful men, and obedient children.
And of course, nice houses. Something to work on, American Mennonites. :)
My point is, do you think these things are hereditary, without the passing on of disciplines? It's illogical to think that we can try to maintain the beauty of holiness without do anything that separates us from the world. We must not profane the temple of the living God, the only living God.

     I challenge all of you. Reach for holiness. Ask God to show you how. Don't be ashamed to give up things that others think are fine, if you feel Him speaking to you. I don't know how it will happen individually, but we must clutch holiness if we want to retain our freedom. Look at teenagers in public highschools if you need motivation to protect your future children. Make decisions now that will keep your grandchildren searching for holiness. What you decide now, even before you're married, will change everything. Don't mess around with it, please. We don't have long on this earth to be like God. Make Him proud.

   

I found a free writing contest in my Writer's Magazine that I got at the library, so I had to try it. A personal essay on a work that affected me, 600-800, for 11-12th graders. It was perfect for me. I was already dredging up my old Cancer Ward book review, when I happened to see the deadline...and it was tonight. I still did it, just for fun. The review was the right length. I just made it more personable and trucked it off. Now I'm seeing the point of writing book reviews for school. I might put it up.
So, here I am, writing a blog. I've decided to go ahead a do it, because Tosca Lee does. Don't expect anything as funny as that. I'm just going to whine about my writing problems and how my characters won't behave and occasionally give you Enya lyrics that have taken me higher.

Last Time by Moonlight 

The winter sky above us
was shining in moonlight,
And everywhere around us
the silence of midnight.
And we had gathered snowflakes;
Remember the soft light
of starlight on snow.

Oooh, remember this,
for no-one knows
the way love goes.
Oooh, remember this,
for no-one knows
the way life goes.

We walked the road together
one last time by moonlight,
as underneath the heavens
the slow chimes at midnight,
but nothing is forever
not even the starlight
at midnight not even
the moonlight...

Oooh, remember this,
for no-one knows
the way love goes.
Oooh, remember this,
for no-one knows
the way life goes.

Roma and Enya

There's the first one. I suggest you look that up and listen to it.

     Sheila turned sixteen today. We've showered her with presents, and now we're going to Bombay Sitar, a warm little Indian place in Belden Village.

Oh, and the other point of this. I am officially protesting a loveless world. So I'll bring little nuggets that I've learned about love.

Here's the essay. I know, I said it was personable, but it's really not. I hate it when I do that. It's as harsh as Solzhenitsyn.

                                                                 Cancer Ward

     If you were dying, what would you do? Alexander Solzhenitsyn asks this question many times in his tragic novel, Cancer Ward. Would you be noble, read books, and determine to help the world before you were gone? Or would you argue and fall in love and despise those around you? Solzhenitsyn has rendered the livings and deaths of big hearted men in broad, yet subtle strokes. He composes their stories with typical Russian frostiness, freezing the tears on my eyelids, but leaving me moved all the same.

     Kostoglotov, a victim of neglected medical care in the past, is a lanky and wild exile, angry with his lot and ready to prove his worth to the world, or at least to the women in it. He was taken from his home, and even if they did let him return, his mind is seared with prison camps and hard, hungry labor. His cynicism chills me even now, forcing a tender mind to decide whether life can be good or not. Is there hope for a happy ending, when he is afflicted with such pain and loneliness? He knows that he will die, someday. What will he do before then, in the short time left?

     The important nurses, the feminine ones, are Voya and Vera. Voya is a round little blonde, nothing you could commit your life to, but Vera is slender and faithful. Oleg Kostoglotov is confused between the two of them, and chooses neither in the end, but still they rouse him from his dead, self pitying sleep. They were so lively and hardworking they made me sit up and blink.    

     Rusanov is too important to have cancer. Since the disease didn’t ask his opinion, he occupies himself with reassuring everyone that it is certainly not fatal. He has a family: a cold, brilliant daughter, respectable wife, and a son that is too kind for his father’s tastes. Rusanov is a man that sits before his crackling fire, but is unaffected by the heat. He lives to please the People, but he has forgotten who the People are. He teaches me to remember that life is built on love, not respect.

      It’s a long and complicated exposure of human nature, and hope is given to some, but taken away from many. Ludmila Afanasyevna, a talented diagnostician at the Medical Center, discovers a tumor in her belly. Her flailing human emotions are agonizing to observe, and I wonder how much I can really know about this ravaging disease until I get it myself. Dyomka is a young boy who painfully submits to amputating his leg and the cancer inside it. The cancer is gone, and he feels cured, but he only has one leg. What would I give up to live?

     The doctors in this book are horrendous sometimes. They let the hopeful go, uninformed of the nearness of death. “I’m free to go?” the patients will say. “Of course,” comes the answer from a bustling heavy figure in a too-tight white overcoat.  I never ceased to ask why they wouldn’t tell them, allow them to prepare for death, which comes like a freight train with no brakes. Why keep them hoping when they’re only to be snuffed out? Perhaps the doctors know too well that we will all die, one day or soon.  

     I know the answer to my question. Hope cannot be killed with the body, or the soul will die as well. The story is only concerning hope and its results. So many of the patients were in great pain, yet they kept a smile on their faces and a kind word on their lips. How is it that those who suffered least were the least resilient? Because the greater the trouble, the more necessary the hope.

     Dormidont Tikhonovich, Ludmila’s favorite doctor, at least approached the hallowed ground of the reason for life as he pondered the illness of Ludmila:

     “At such moments an image of the whole meaning of existence---his own during the long past and the short future ahead, that of his late [meaning does seem to falter at the word late] wife, of his young granddaughter and of everyone in the world­---came to his mind. The image he saw did not seem to be embodied in the work or activity which occupied them [here lies the crux of it for the patronizing Rusanov], which they believed was central to their lives, and by which they were known to others. The meaning of existence was to preserve unspoiled, undisturbed, and undistorted the image of eternity with which each person is born.

Like a silver moon in a calm still pond.”

There is the answer to Alexander’s work. What is life if it ends here? Eternity awaits us.

Ms. Byler (just to be official)