Vessel Of Wrath

11:54

"How long will you go limping between two different opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him."

- Elijah, I Kings 18:21

I'm getting tired of the arc. Is all this Jesus stuff just wish fulfillment? A way to feel more important than I am? If not, why doesn't a good woman (yes, I know, ALL have sinned and fallen short blah blah ad nauseum) like my wife believe? I'm a terrible witness. That much I am certain of.

A lot happened since my last post. I got in contact with the local OPC pastor. He advised me to go to a nearby PCA church. I should have listened, but instead went for the dramatic and begged my wife to come with me to said OPC church, to hear what I hoped would be a clear presentation of the gospel. She refused and took my urgency wrong. I actually held her down at one point, trying to get her to hear me. Can't believe I did this, but I did. My oldest daughter walked in on the scene. I wanted to kill myself, and actually came near doing it the next day.

The subsequent weeks were a replay of the last time I tried to do the OPC thing back in '06. Mrs. VoW started out trying to keep her distance and not get in my way. Then she started to argue and hector and accuse me of betraying her. I gave in, I gave up. I convinced myself that I had been wrong, that no merciful God would demand that I trouble my family this way. I denied God and Jesus. Again.

Not immediately, though. I went through the arc. Back to Episcopal church. Then back to skepticism. Then back to something akin to Ayn Rand's objectivism. This was helped along by a visit to a Buddhist temple in China, where I saw people worshipping or praying (or whatever) in ways that were so obviously (to me) pure superstition that all religion started to look bogus. Incense and drama and helpless people trying to control something by petitioning God: could be Christianity too, I thought.

But I don't really believe that. In my "religion" as in other aspects of my life, I can't believe I'm a product of brute forces; or if I am, they have produced something that has a deeply-ingrained illusion of its own purposefulness. But I'm no child of God, either. Jesus has left me behind. My wife has made it clear that an expression of belief in Biblical Christianity on my part will also be taken as an expression that I want to be alienated from her-- that I have rejected the core of what makes her who she is. She wasn't threatening divorce, not even threatening to withhold sex. She was, however, threatening to withhold the intimacy, the sympathy that we have generally shared in our marriage.

Several weeks ago we had a conversation where I told her that I had become skeptical of Christianity; that my China experience, combined with the fact that the supposedly-living Christ is never available for interviews, combined with my poor experience and track record in my efforts to be a Christian, had left me pretty much bereft of my previous faith.

Then I got sick. Something put me down for a week and a half, maybe two weeks, with nausea and headaches. (My doctor's current theory is gallbladder problems, but that's not material to the story.) I was reminded of my helplessness. I prayed a little, because nothing else helped.

And then I felt a little better. I'm not stupid. It's probably coincidence. But I realized that either way, I didn't totally disbelieve. I told my wife I thought I might like to go back to church, after all. Episcopal church. The church that's not a threat to her. She's all about that.

But the arc is always the same. If Christ is real, then he's real. He's not relative, he's not therapy, he's the Lord, and he commands us to do a number of things, some of which (to be honest) mainline Protestantism blithely ignores. I can't stand on its slippery slopes. I'll either slide down to the hell of materialistic nihilism or else to what is frankly, to me, the slightly different hell called the Lordship of Christ. I don't mean to be heretical just for effect here: it is painful beyond anything I've ever experienced to suffer my wife's distrust, disapproval, disrespect; and I have seen time and again that this is the sure consequence of professing Biblical belief.

And here I sit. Halted, helpless, and crying out to Jesus when I can bring myself to believe he is what I've always been told he is.

14:15

It's a new year.

Not much has changed since my last post in September, except that I've pretty much stopped going to any church. Oh, and I tried to convince myself I was Catholic for a while. (Chesterton was fairly persuasive, but so far not finally so. If I'm any species of Christian at all, I'm probably more or less Reformed.) Thank God, I didn't really mention this to my wife, so at least she didn't see me waffling, again, some more, on the content of my faith.

I think the attractive feature that Catholicism and the Reformed faith have in common (besides the obvious gigantic overlap in true doctrine) is their certitude. Heaven and hell are real to the faithful in both camps in a way that they're just not to me. I could wish for a proper fear of hell, one that would motivate me to repent of my idolization of my family, my timidity in declaring the gospel before them. So far I can't bring myself to take any kind of pro-Jesus, anti-world stand that would cast a shadow across their temporal happiness.

Don't get me wrong-- I don't pretend to be super-husband, super-daddy. I tick my wife off with one or another form of laziness and irresponsibility every day. It makes it even harder to contemplate making demands on her time with respect to church. It would just be another way in which I'd failed in her eyes, just another cross she'd have to bear.

That's putting it a bit melodramatically, I guess; and I should make clear that she'd tolerate it if I went to church for an hour every other week at a nice mainline Protestant house of worship. But she'd tolerate it the same as she'd tolerate any other questionable hobby: only to a point. I'd liken it to the way some women tolerate their husband's monthly low-stakes poker game, or the occasional cigar on the back porch. It's okay if it gets me through the night, but don't let it get in the way of real life.

If, on the other hand, she knew that what I really want to do is join and support the local Orthodox Presbyterian congregation, our marriage would cease to function. I would become an enemy with whom she must be civil while the children are present. I would be held a traitor to the truths she holds sacred. She would be miserable; I would be miserable; sooner or later the girls would be miserable, too.

I have to think God has other plans. Oh, if anyone's reading this and is of a praying bent of mind, then pray for me, pray for my family. Pray that my wife will be opened to the gospel this year. Or if that's too much to ask, you could even pray that I'll find a way to go back and take the "blue pill" and perish in my cowardice and temporal satisfaction. I don't really want to go back to the fleshpots of Egypt, but it's been years that I've prayed for the courage to go forward and I can't find it. Please, please pray for my salvation and that of my family.

13:21

iMonk's citation of Beth Moore in the discussion of complementarianism has got me thinking about ways to try to convince my wife to at least think through the possibility of Jesus' divinity and the existence of the biblical God. Part of the problem is that for her to even start down that avenue, she would already have had to (a) let go, at least a little, of her lifelong worldview, and (b) in some sense lose an argument with me.

I can't do much about (a). If Van Til and company taught me nothing else, it's that the Christian worldview is just not the same as that of the humanist, and the two can't be reconciled without violence to one or the other.

I can't really do much about (b), either, except to hope and pray that someone or something besides me prods her to open her mind on the subject.

God only knows what I/she need/s here. A Beth Moore book probably isn't it. But something else-- an autobiography of a politically liberal, intelligent, accomplished woman who came to Jesus later in life?-- might attract her attention. Anne Lamott, only moreso. Or an impassioned sermon from a lady preacher who has come from that background of distrusting the religious establishment.

Even if I knew what it was, I guess it wouldn't do much good. If the blurb on the jacket says anything at all about Christianity, the shields will go up.

I keep praying for God to put something like that in her way. Something that does to her what Mere Christianity and then, later, Christian Apologetics did for me. Or that He will bring someone into her life who makes following Jesus look so compellingly beautiful and kind and right that she can't help but want to try it for herself.

09:58

So I just took a look back at the last entry, and what's wrong with it is of course the same thing that's wrong with the rest of me: Jesus is not central. I yammer about the meaning I find in Jesus, in how painful things are for me. But as I believe I've mentioned before, I am a walk-on in this drama we call the created order.

Even so, introspection seems unavoidable to me. One at least has to ask what one should do to put Christ at the center of one's life. Or maybe a better way of asking the question is, "How should I respond to what Jesus is, and what he has done for me?"

This is where the Heidelberg Catechism introduces the ten commandments. Well and good, but then comes the introspection: Am I keeping them? Could I do more? What about apparent conflicts of interest (e.g., between my biological family and my (would-be) church family)?

And that's not even much of a conundrum, is it? Jesus is pretty clear about where first loyalty should lie. In fact, I'm told that someone who drags his feet the way I do can't be His disciple.

If I could accept that happily, if I could say "Fine, Jesus, you go your way, I'll go mine," perhaps I could be a better, happier man-- husband and father-- than I've been lately. But I can't, quite, or maybe I don't want to. Maybe what I'm experiencing is the beginning of the hell to which I am condemned for my apostasy: I hear the call, but I don't answer, and I have to live with that. I think my motives are to do with love and devotion toward my wife and, by extension, our daughters. But I am fallen, and I am self-deceiving, and I am never sure of my ground.

It's not that I believe so strongly in the terrors of hell. If I did, fear might move me to different behavior. But there is something in me that tells me "this is true, this is how the world really is" when I read Paul, or even the Westminster Confession. Maybe that thing is the Holy Spirit. Maybe it's a perverse and pathological component of my personality that thrives on conflict and self-pity. I don't know.

But either way it makes me hate myself, and wish myself obliterated.

09:27

I'm a daddy, again. I now have two unbaptized daughters.

Don't get me wrong: I'm not worried about their "salvation" (whatever that means) on this basis. My sacramentology is pretty low. But I do feel the absence of what infant baptism represents: communion with the covenant family, and the parent's promise to raise the child in the faith. The reason I don't make that promise is that I've already promised exactly the opposite to the girls' mother. Her concern is that I should indoctrinate her children into a religion to which she does not subscribe, and she has my promise that I won't. While this was a mostly unspoken agreement at the time of our marriage, it has been spelled out explicitly in the last few years in our conversations around child-rearing.

It is, to say the least, a Faustian bargain. I have beautiful little girls I love, but I can't give them the reassurance and meaning and truth I find in Jesus.

Maybe the best step would be to stop dwelling on the point, embrace materialism and enjoy what I can, while I can. There's a lot of real blessing in my family life, whatever label anyone may put on it. Maybe I can hold the door open for them by keeping the right books around, by sneaking off to church every once in a while, by doing my best (and praying for God's help) to conform myself to Christ.

Father, please watch over my little girls. Please draw them to you.

13:16

My uncle passed away this weekend. He was in his late fifties.

I will miss him, but I hurt more for his wife and daughters. They were (are) a close family, with lots of supportive friends, so I hope and believe that all will be well for them.

08:15

My one-legged diabetic uncle is in the hospital. He's in quite bad shape-- bleeding ulcers in his stomach. They won't know how bad it is until sometime later today. I spoke with one of his daughters, my cousin, to ask the obligatory (though no less heartfelt) "Can I do anything?" Of course I can't. So I told her I'd pray for them.

Me. Pray for them. "The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much," but what about my prayers? They are a joke. I think of the bit from West Wing when the President's secretary (Lily Tomlin) tells the First Lady (Stockard Channing) that she had been praying for the safe return of the First Lady's younger daughter from the hands of terrorists. "Of course," she adds, "I'm not very religious. So there's some chance my prayers might be taken as an affront. So if God is a vengeful God, I might have actually done more harm than good."

I know exactly how she feels.

"Which of course," says my Inner Presbyterian, "is why we pray in the name of Jesus. His is the righteousness that lets us approach God. His is the intercession that makes our prayers effectual." But what if your life makes it clear that you have your doubts about Jesus? May I still hope that He will intercede for me with the Father? Am I one of those who says "Lord, Lord" to no avail?

So let me just ask: would somebody out there who's on better terms with Jesus than me please pray for my uncle? His name is Chuck. He has a wife (my father's sister) and three grown daughters. He's a bright, lively man, and when I talked to him the day before yesterday he was looking forward to his youngest daughter's wedding in March. Please pray that he will live to see it, and recover to enjoy it. Thanks.

10:58

It sucks to not quite believe enough.

I listen to some Reformed sermon or other (downloaded off the internet) more days than not. They all say fairly similar things: I am saved (if I am) by grace; my salvation should show itself in movement toward holiness, by which is meant adherence to the Bible in my behavior. No, I don't think I'm supposed to be perfect. But I'm supposed to be, well, obviously different.

One of the differences that I'm supposed to evince is commitment to a church; or, more precisely, a church that lives and preaches sola scriptura and all that it implies. The kind of church whose commitment to Jesus and the Scriptures is absolute. From the secular standpoint, that is, the kind of church whose members, when asked, will voice the kind of opinions that the media categorizes as "socially conservative".

This will not fly at my house. It's not that I haven't tried. "Look," I've said to my wife, "at this church's commitment to Jesus, to giving, to living in a way that anticipates the kingdom of God."

"Look," she responds, "at these articles I've googled that report how ministers in the same denomination are firing gay church employees and trying their damnedest to deny basic civil rights to homosexuals."

What do I say to her? Plead that their motivation is love? She's not buying that, even when I can.

Of course it's deeper than the one issue. She doesn't believe in the resurrection, doesn't really see what it is she would need to be "saved" from by Jesus' death, certainly doesn't trouble herself about "what the Bible says". And I have a hard time getting too worked up about that. Am I really supposed to warn the person I love and respect more than anyone else on the planet that I fear she's bound for hell? I can't bring myself to believe that, let alone say it with a straight face. Yes, I feel (at least most of the time) that she's mistaken about these things, but it seems to me an honest mistake. Me in hell? Sure. Could happen easily. I am a worm. Her in hell? God wouldn't let that happen. She is honest and upright and kind. If she's "rejecting the gospel", that surely has a lot to do with growing up in a place where she regularly got picked on for not going to church. (Think about that the next time you're lamenting how "hard" it is to be a Christian in America.)

And while we're on the subject, what about her parents? Also honest and upright and kind. And atheists. They come from the rural midwest, and are doubtless reacting to a lot of what passed for Christianity there. Whatever the reason, they disbelieve in God but believe wholeheartedly, so far as I can tell, in the good. They welcomed me into their family with open arms. I watch them pour out time and love on my wife and I, on our daughter, on their visually-impaired son (who, incidentally, professes Christianity). I turn to them for advice about all manner of issues. Am I really supposed to warn these sweet, wise people that they are under God's curse?

The fact is, I know an awful lot of people whom the Bible (or at least, my theology) would deem to be lost sinners, whom I can't quite see as "lost". I love my friends and family, love them, love the rebel streak in them, love the middle finger that flies up when someone tries to tell them how to think. That's not all rebellion against their Creator. A lot of it is rebellion against the pharisees and scribes (deep in your hearts you know who you are), and I hope God rewards it.

07:17

Why doesn't this blog have more posts?

Because blogging is a sin. No, seriously. In my case it is. I have no time to do it at home. I can only find time at work because I have an (obviously undeserved) measure of privacy here. So I take unfair advantage of my employer and, from time to time, write a blog entry. I'd like to say I use my lunch hour, but (here's a surprise) I like eating more than blogging. So.

Now that I'm in the fire, I might as well tell you that I've begun attending a PCUSA church. They're "between pastors" now, but I'm okay with that. I read the last guy's sermons. He was probably a very good social activist, might have been a good speaker and pastoral counselor, but his theology as expressed in his sermon transcripts left something to be desired.

What's wrong with this church? Nothing, probably. I have yet to see any "Sophia worship". They read the Bible and pray. I'm guessing the next pastor they hire will not be a gay woman-- not that I would have any problem with that per se. Honestly, I could happily sit under the preaching of a lesbian who volunteered at Planned Parenthood in her off hours-- I'd feel she had something real and valuable to say about suffering and patience!-- if only she would preach Christ and Him crucified when she stood in the pulpit.

In fact, that is my problem: I have (at least intellectually) a primitive, bloody, high Christology, and a frighteningly firm conviction of my own sinfulness and need of a Redeemer. I am less convinced about the culture war junk. So where might one find a church that preaches a robustly Reformed conception of the person and work of Christ, but takes a more liberal stance on the culture war?

Nowhere. It doesn't exist.

There's a message for me here, I realize. Can I plead that I'm not ready to receive it? I have already tried going to an Orthodox Presbyterian Church, tried (at least partially) submitting myself to the Reformed notion of Christ's Lordship. It nearly led to divorce, or something worse.

So can I tell Jesus "No, not without my family"? I am a sinner, with a sinner's heart, but I think I can say with some honesty that by His grace I'm prepared to take up a cross and follow the Lord. I am not prepared to hand out crosses to the people I love-- to have to explain to my kids that their parents' marriage is in shreds because Mommy and Daddy couldn't come to terms about religious issues-- to give my wife cause to regret marrying me, because she thought she was getting sensitive new-age guy, not a Bible-beating neanderthal.

Sensitive new-age guys seem to be a significant population in the PCUSA. Our sprinkling of lightweight theology and liberal biblical interpretation will no doubt coat us in a crispy, flaky crust when we're all fried up together in hell (HHOS).

13:29

I don't think one should ever be allowed back into the house, let alone the room, where one was a teenager. To make a person clean out that room, leafing through old notebooks, old letters, old photos... [shudder] The horror!

Time heals, but not if you keep souvenirs.