ecnassianer

---------------------------Why this blog exists---------------------------

I've realized lately that the fact that I don't share my inner turmoils has impeded my progress through life. This log has been designed to share difficulties with other people. It will most likely not contain "We did this happy thing today" posts. My goal is to use it to develop my ability to express my difficulties to other people. Hence the title, Psychological Darkness.

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 Matthew 9:16-17 has always puzzled me:


That's weird. Right before that, this happened:


So that bit about the cloth and wine must be some part of his answer to the question about fasting. But how does the bit about the wine and cloth make Jesus' answer more clear? Why does he say it? I've heard some people say this is about old practices and new practices, and once you have Christianity, you don't need Judaism. But that doesn't seem to connect to the context very well. Jesus even says his Christian disciples will fast, just not right now.

So I started thinking about how the cloth and wine corresponded to the wedding and the groom. I was thinking, a wedding is basically a party, or a feast. And nobody would fast at a feast. The bit about the wine and cloth seem to be a sort of common sense idea that Jesus is appealing to. When I connected that common sense to the idea of a party, it dawned on me.

Nobody fasts at a wedding while the groom is there. They'll fast after the groom is gone. In the same way, nobody puts a fast on a party, for the fast will pull away from the party, making the reason you were celebrating less good. Neither do people fast when during parties. If they do it will go against the party, the fast will not be that useful because you'll be distracted by the party, and the party will be ruined. Instead, people fast during fasting times, and party during party times.

Looking at it that way, we can see how the cloth and wine common sense speaks to common sense about fasting. I think Jesus is saying "There are times for fasting, and there are times for partying, and right now is time for partying, because God is in town."

I have a philosophy of apologies that many people initially find very hard to accept, but seem to ultimately agree with.

Apologies are a part of reconciliation.

Reconciliation is:
Making peace (aka ending conflict)
Forgiving past crimes
Preventing future crimes
Healing injuries
Rebuilding damage to the relationship
Moving forward in peace

An apology works towards both making peace and forgiving past crimes. Often a well received apology heals an injury, and the work of apologizing is a step toward moving forward in peace.

An apology is made of 3 parts:
An "I'm sorry"
A confession
Repentance

An "I'm sorry" is sympathizing with someone's pain, and regretting that they've felt it.

A confession is admitting some fault. Either you did wrong by disobeying some universal imperative ("I lied to you") or your crossed someone's personal preference and hurt them ("I know you don't like it when [...] but I did it anyway")

Repentance is turning from that wrong and trying to live differently in the future. It's about trying to do something to prevent the problem from happening in the future.

Sometimes just an "I'm sorry" is appropriate. When a surgeon causes you pain, they can offer you an "I'm sorry that hurt", but they have no fault to confess and should not repent or regret what they've done. If you're not at fault sometimes it's not appropriate to do more than an "I'm sorry" (i.e, "I'm sorry your dog died of old age", confessing that old age was your fault is incorrect and changing your actions to reverse the flow of time is not productive).

Sometimes people try to pass an "I'm sorry" off as a whole apology, leaving out the confession and repentance. This disgusts me because it is inauthentic and at it's core a lie. If you come to the table of reconciliation with a lie on your tongue, you're defiling the very purpose of the meeting. This is the point that most people get upset on.

If you're not confessing some fault, you have nothing to apologize for. It's better to insist that you're right and say so than to insist that you're right and lie about it, setting other people up to be hurt again. Sell it as an "I'm sorry" but not as an apology. Sometimes however, a confession without an "I'm sorry" is appropriate. If you didn't hurt anyone but yourself, you don't need to apologize to another person. You can confess your overeating habit, but I don't think fretting about saying you're sorry to someone else leads you to resolving your lack of self-control.

I know it's not true for everyone, but a confession without repentance is baffling to me. How people can sit in their own awareness of their short comings without wanting to make some effort at fixing it, no matter how small the cost of that effort, I do not understand. Weakness makes sense to me, you don't want to do something again, but you do. That happens to me all the time. It's the... I dunno.. apathy? Lack of conviction? That I don't get. Sense aside, a confession without repentance does nothing to resolve the situation, it takes away the pain dulling properties of denial, and makes no more forward progress than an "I'm sorry." I don't think repentance can happen without some sort of confession. You don't walk away from something if you don't think it's bad (although you might stop doing something just out of a lack of interest or opportunity, but this isn't really repentance), so in a way your walking away includes the unconscious confession that you were wrong. I think consciously admitting something is bad makes repenting easier, and makes the effects of repentance deeper and more widely reaching.

An apology is only an apology when all 3 components are present.

Other people usually end up agreeing on this point, and it turns out that they've agreed all along. For instance, people use the vocabulary of "I'm sorry you're hurt, but..." and "I'm sorry that I..." to differentiate an "I'm sorry" from an "I'm sorry" paired with a confession. And no one appreciates when someone says they're sorry, confesses they did something wrong, but then goes and does it behind your back. We usually call that being two-faced.

Having this understanding of what constitutes an apology has helped me to be more authentic and loving to my friends. I appreciate when they use the same model in their communication to me.

Have I forgotten something in my understanding of an apology? Am I a jerk for expecting too much of some one trying to make peace whatever way they can? Any other thoughts?

I have heard that what you believe determines what you do.

What I have learned recently is that by watching what I do, it reveals what I actually believe.

It's surprising sometimes to watch my actions and realize that I do not really believe what I say that I believe. I've found myself confronting myself, "You wouldn't actually be doing that if you believed what you say you believe." Which at times, has caught myself in hypocrisy, and at others has been a comfort. For instance:

Hypocrisy: If you really trusted God with your material possessions, like you say you do, you wouldn't be so anxious about your finances right now.

Comfort: If you really believed those guys on the corner were going to mug you, you wouldn't still be walking towards, stop aimlessly worrying about it.

I have identified a new need that I have.

I need to stay in contact with a community that reminds me that Christianity is an intellectually satisfying position.

I often look back at the more difficult parts of my life, and wonder how I should explain them to people. On more than one occasion I've thought "Gee, I should have been writing this on my livejournal from the beginning". Here is another one of those times. I should have been chronicling this from the beginning.

It kinda began seven years ago. I kinda began 2.5 years ago. It kinda began last fall. But I suppose it started on August 7th.

In 2002 I decided to become intentionally single. It's been one of the best choices I've ever made. For 4 years it was nothing but great. I wanted the freedom, and joy, and wholeness that I found in monastic celibacy to last my entire life.

And then I moved to LA and away from the loving and supporting network of friends that I had in college. Before I realized it, I found a loneliness inside me that I hadn't ever felt. This and many other struggles over the next 2 years made a life of romantic solitude much harder. But it was still good, just hard in a way it hadn't been before. It was still what I wanted, and it was still a freedom and a joy, and I still loved it.

At the beginning of 2008 my struggles with my new life continued; already some of my prayers for internal peace were beginning to be answered, but I wouldn't see the fruit of that tranquility until early summer. Throughout the spring I felt burned out and frustrated. I had lost confidence in where I was going in life. Was living in LA worthwhile? Was I making any difference? Or just suffering for no reason? Was my prayer life worthwhile? Did my hours of study really make a difference in my life? Or was it just a time sink? Was intentional singleness paying off? Or was it a waste of my energy, that just prevented me from enjoying the good things of life?.

It was in the midst of this struggle that I looked up and realized that something had changed. Intentional singleness had become a burden and a discipline, not the joy and freedom that it once was. It was something I was doing because it was what I was doing, not something that I was gladly offering to God. This was not how it was supposed to be.

My life kinda hit bottom for that point in June just before I left for India. Various struggles sapped my emotional energy and I was ready to give up on a lot of things. Give up on LA, give up on radically following Jesus, give up on intentional singleness, ... just give up...

I sat at my dinning room table and thought "I'm done. We're not doing this anymore. Intentional singleness is over", and somewhere in the back of my mind I had this feeling that I wasn't letting God help me with this decision. But I knew I had to wait until I had been to India. I wanted to see what God had for me in India.

Arriving in Asia gave me a shift of perspective. The issue became a conversation between God and I. I read a lot of scriptures about sacrifices and about women. The two that stood out particularly were Deuteronomy 15:12-18:

"If your brother, a Hebrew man or a Hebrew woman, is sold to you, he shall serve you six years, and in the seventh year you shall let him go free from you. And when you let him go free from you, you shall not let him go empty-handed. You shall furnish him liberally out of your flock, out of your threshing floor, and out of your winepress. As the LORD your God has blessed you, you shall give to him. You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God redeemed you; therefore I command you this today. But if he says to you, 'I will not go out from you,' because he loves you and your household, since he is well-off with you, then you shall take an awl, and put it through his ear into the door, and he shall be your slave forever. And to your female slave you shall do the same. It shall not seem hard to you when you let him go free from you, for at half the cost of a hired servant he has served you six years. So the LORD your God will bless you in all that you do."

And Malachi 1:10:
"Oh that there were one among you who would shut the doors of my temple, that you might not kindle fire on my altar in vain! I have no pleasure in you [and your impure offerings], says the LORD of Armys, and I will not accept [a defiled] offering from your hand."

There I was in my seventh year of intentional singleness, wondering whether what I was doing had remained something good. I was wondering if continuing to be intentionally single was something that I was doing as a pure offering, or if my lack of heart and joy in it was making it not worth while. Was it in vain?

These, and other parts of the conversation made me realize that I needed to take a year reflecting on my life and where it was going. Was intentional singleness still for me? Or had my place in life changed, making my original intention no longer fit? I would decide whether I should continue, or end in my 7th year, the year of release. If God felt that hebrew slaves should be released in the seventh year, I realized, then he must feel the same way about his servants today. And that it wouldn't be hard for him to let me go, because the 6 years of service I gave him was worth twice the work of a hired hand. But if I continued, I needed to know in a much deeper and more secure way why I was doing it. I needed the joy and freedom that made it worthwhile to stay the course.

And so I returned to the US on August 7th, and began a year of reflection. It's been good, and I've learned a lot about myself and why I've been intentionally single. I've remembered the best parts, and thought deeply on the worst parts.

I've learned a lot about God as well, and he's confirmed many of the things I'm doing in life over the last year. I'm happy in LA, and happy with what I'm doing. But intentional singleness has remained uncertain.

And now the summer is rolling around, and my 7th year of monastic celibacy is coming to an end. I decided to take a 40-day Motorcycle Pilgrimage To Kentucky to help conclude this year of reflection. I intend to return with a decision about my future. It's been an amazing trip so far, you might say I'm halfway, since I'm at the Atlantic now. So now I'm turning back and coming to my home in LA, and my mind is begining to settle itself about what my life will be like when I return.

I had an amazing realization the other day. Thousands of years ago God killed some dinosaurs and buried them, then spent thousands of years turning them into fossil fuels, just so I could burn them in my motorcycle! My motorcycle runs on dinosaurs! Is this not the most amazing expression of divine love ever?! "This is how we know what love is: Dinosaurs laid down their lives for our motorcycles." 1st John 3:16
That's in the "American Patriot Translation"

Making people cry is one of my favorite things to do.

It's pretty easy to have a table prepared for you in front of your enemies while you still hate them. But once you learn to love your enemies, the gift of God's love becomes that much more challenging.

Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all.
If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.
Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord."
To the contrary, "if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head."
Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. (Rom 12:17-21)

Martin Luther King Jr said some stuff about how your abuser looks the worst when you sit back and take it peacefully. Nobody cares about someone beating a black "rioter", but it looks really bad when a young black college student is cowering under the angry fists of a racist.

I've taken that thought to heart for a while now. I've often loved my enemies because it shows that I'm better than they are. That I've found the mental discipline to perform on a level that someone who hates hasn't. I can sit back and watch the coals that I've heaped on their head burn.

Sounds holy doesn't it?

But really... is that virtue? Or is that just a nicer, perhaps more sophisticated, form of vengeance?

So the Love Assault -- a way of conquering and tearing someone down, by caring and building them and cherishing them and benefiting them (ye olde theologians might seem so parallel-- destroying the old creation by loving the new creation) seems like a good place for me to have passed through, but I'm beginning to think it's not something to be perfected.

I think perhaps Paul would rather that I find love and compassion for the people who hate me, for the sake of love and compassion, not for the sake of sophisticated vengeance. Because after all, vengeance belongs to the lord, he will repay.