Vessel Of Wrath

2011-01-17T16:46:00.002-06:00

Big day yesterday. Came clean to Mrs. VoW before going to church at the aforementioned PCA church. She had to pry it out of me; apparently my poker face is not everything I thought it was.

She was justifiably upset, but handled it well. Coolly. She's doing the give-me-rope thing. "I gave up on raising our children with shared liberal values a long time ago, so it's not like I'm so disappointed about that. I'm just upset that you lied to me."

Now we get to my favorite part of the cycle: I will attempt to be a real live full-blooded Christian for as long as it lasts, all the while fighting a sense of... wait for it... GUILT. GUILT? GUILT?! Of all the stuff that's supposed to come with the "repent and come to Jesus" package, I thought guilt was the ONE thing we got to see the back of?! "There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus," right?

Am I doing this wrong? Well of course I would be, but it's God supposed to be doing it. So is He not really doing it?

Am I (once again) ruining everything for a mirage?

Lord Jesus strengthen my faith. Don't let me be a jerk, and don't let me backslide, and don't let all this be for nothing. Bring us home, really home.

2011-01-13T16:09:00.001-06:00

Bad work day today. I've been taken away from what I'm supposed to be doing by worrying, by coffee shops, by blogging. Note to self: follow the above link as many times as as necessary tomorrow, but don't blog. Just work. Get the project done. OK? OK.

2011-01-13T15:46:00.002-06:00

She calls from Target to ask if I need anything. She is bright and cheery. Friendly. She is confident we are on the same side. No clue she has been lied to.

The revelation of the lie will be bad enough. What the lie was hiding will be poison to her. She will still call from Target. But the tone behind her words will be resentment. I am raising your daughters, it will say, to be good people, in spite of you. You cannot be trusted. You are on the wrong side.

2011-01-13T14:48:00.003-06:00

Question: why on earth would somebody blog about this stuff? It's so private. I would be absolutely mortified (as would my wife, I'm sure) if anyone I knew ever found this blog and put two and two together. So why risk it?

Answer: I'm lonely. Really, really lonely. There is NO ONE I trust to discuss this with, NO ONE I can ask for counsel. I am in the quantum space between two absolutely opposed worldviews. I know and love people on either side of the divide, but nobody who's floating in the dark chasm between.

I don't need advice. I need the blood of Christ. Or else psychiatric help. See? There it is again: total quantum separation.

Well I know which one makes for better songs, better stories.

2011-01-13T13:45:00.005-06:00

I should just own up. I need to. It's the right thing to do.

But my faith is weak. It's a silly child's faith. She'll cry her hurt, then speak in her reasonable voice, and I will search my heart, and I will realize that I am hurting her for a mirage, a Freudian grasp at immortality or some such thing, and the whole beautiful Narnian dream will evaporate, and I'll be left with nothing but the self-loathing.

That's right: I'm not firmly-enough convicted to risk hurting my wife's feelings even in obedience to the commandment of God. But I am firmly-enough convicted to complain about it in a blog. I hold on to the pretense because it's the pretense or simple nihilism, I guess. I once heard John Piper say, "Until you realize that life is a war, and the stakes are your soul, you will probably play at Christianity." Indeed. Or until you can somehow stop doubting that you have a soul.

2011-01-12T14:08:00.004-06:00

It was an interesting weekend. I went to a PCA church a few miles from my house. Big church, maybe not quite "mega". I went to the early service, but it was still pretty full.

The circumstances that got me there were a bit odd. I'd been thinking of going for a while, but I didn't (and still don't) want to have the fight with my wife. I thought about going clandestinely; since the early service at the PCA church is only a half hour later than the service I usually attend at the nearby Episcopal church, I could "get away" with that, but didn't like the hypocrisy and dishonesty involved. So by Sunday morning, showered, dressed and running late for early service at my usual spot, I had talked myself out of adventuring elsewhere.

But for some reason no one was at my usual spot. No one. Not a car.

So I kept driving. Why not, right? Weighed my options. Turn around, go home. Surpise hon, no church today, let's just hang out; OK. Or I could pick up the cell phone; looks like they cancelled, gonna try the PCA church, we'll fight when I get home, OK? OK. Well, why do that? Just go check it out. Maybe it's not for me. Maybe no more will need to be said about it. Because it's only the deepest longing of my heart to go there, right? (Well, the deepest longing besides avoiding ANY ACTUAL IN-DEPTH CONVERSATION WITH THE PERSON I'M MARRIED TO. But let's move on.)

Predictably, the service was moving and hit home. Predictably, it would be the Sunday they served communion so it would run long and I'd have to sit there and think about whether I was "supposed" to take communion here. Unpredictably, I sat there in my khakis and sweater amongst the suburban Republicans while they passed the bread and wine around and I had to work hard not to actually sob and I wished the girl up front would just stop playing that damn violin so I could just catch my breath for a second. I let the body and blood pass me by because I couldn't face them. I felt that if I took that step I couldn't hold on to maybes and what-ifs anymore. Couldn't lie to Mrs. VoW and to myself about what I really want to be. (Or am I lying to myself about that now? Oh, it's slippery, it is...) Most of all I'd be forced to tell her where I'd been and what I'd been doing.

I had this crazy idea of going up to the deacons after the service and asking them to hide me there in the church. "Call my wife and tell her where I am and that I love Jesus and I won't come home unless she's nice about it!" A theoretically grown man with children, having thoughts like this about his family. This is a nice woman. She's not an ogre. But her tears, her disappointment, are a miserable scourge to me. I see her pain and I just hate myself.

So of course I didn't hang around to talk to deacons or anyone else. I didn't quite run over anyone getting to my car and drove home as quick as I could, trying unsuccessfully to prepare myself to discuss my visit to the church with Mrs. VoW. She called my cell as I was driving up our street to inquire what was taking so long and that broke any nerve I might have worked up during the drive home, so I made up some story about a long-running service and socializing afterwards and looked her in the eye and told myself I was being a nice guy.

Well, in a word, oops. And then Tim Challies goes and publishes something like this. And I realize the nature of the problem, vividly, unmistakably: sinful disbelief. I think it's fair to say I don't trust God to take care of Mrs. VoW and the little Vessels.

I know! I'll just start trusting God more! Here goes! NNNNGGGGGHHHH.......

2010-12-22T14:30:00.003-06:00

Okay, taking a few deep breaths.

Here are the facts as I understand them.

The doctrines of grace, as given in the Bible and summarized by the confessional Reformed faith-- Westminster will do-- are the most consistent, believable way of understanding reality that I've yet found. To wit, God made man to love and serve him; man fell; God became man to redeem us by his perfect life, death and resurrection; and those who are able by the grace of God to believe this will thereby escape hell and see God. I'm squidgy around the edges on Biblical inerrancy, or maybe my "hermeneutic" is somehow "postmodern". Maybe I'm spiritually immature and scared of denouncing sin. I'll be working that out here. Even in my pride or sin or stupidity or whatever, I know enough (or am desperate and ignorant enough) to give the Bible "accurate to a first approximation" in terms of political history, and "accurate to a high degree" for biography of Jesus, and "rings true" to the content of the epistles.
I've got to stop whining and agonizing. It's doing nobody any good. If the agony is God's little message, great. I'm reading it. You're getting through, Lord! I need you! I have not acknowledged you as Lord in all the areas I need to. Please help! Meanwhile, I lack the faith or cojones or whatever it takes to have another confrontation in my family on this point. I'm a bad "leader" and for now I have to live with that.
There is stuff I can do. There is truth I can tell without appearing openly hostile. There are ways I can love my family, friends and coworkers sacrificially even as I go to my mamsy-pamsy mainline Protestant church, study the scriptures, and go about my daily routine looking for strength to improve, to walk in greater holiness and knowledge of Christ.

And I'm gonna. How's that for positive? I hear that He won't quench a smoldering wick or crush a bruised reed. So Merry Christmas, all you other folks out there who wonder if you can quite believe, or if you've quite believed enough. Let's pray and hope and maybe 2011 will begin to tell.

2010-10-12T09:44:00.002-05:00

It's a year later.

I'm a year older.

Otherwise... No change. Unless you count the oscillations, which have pretty much proceeded as described in previous posts. And which, strangely, always feel sincere at the time. A month ago I was sincerely an atheist. Today I am sincerely open to the reality of God and Christ and the inerrancy of scripture. As a friend of mine likes to say, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?! And when will it end?

2009-09-09T11:54:00.008-05:00

"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.

2009-01-08T14:15:00.002-06:00

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.

2008-09-22T13:21:00.004-05:00

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.

2008-09-19T09:58:00.002-05:00

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.

2008-09-02T09:27:00.002-05:00

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.

2008-07-28T13:16:00.002-05:00

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.

2008-07-25T08:15:00.004-05:00

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.

2008-07-23T10:58:00.003-05:00

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.

2008-07-11T07:17:00.003-05:00

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).

2008-06-25T13:29:00.002-05:00

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.

2008-06-24T13:40:00.002-05:00

Hello again.

Yes, Imitrex helped the headaches. I have now joined the ranks of "migraine sufferers". To be honest I've always thought "migraines" were more for PMSing women, not for grown, otherwise healthy men.

Little misjudgment there.

About that Rosary thing: I've stopped. Not sure if this is good or bad. I keep bouncing back and forth between traditions like the proverbial dog returning to its own vomit. At any given moment, of course, I think I'm headed in the right direction. Or at least I used to; I'm now thinking there might not be a right direction.

These days my heading is about fifteen degrees left of Reformed. I've tried this way before. It ends in despair. Ye Reformed will of course think this is because it's exactly fifteen degrees off of the straight and narrow. Maybe. Y'all definitely have something I want-- a certainty, a rest, a satisfaction in the sovereignty of God. I could sing the old hymn-- "I Want to be a Christian"-- and I could make it more specific still-- "I Want to be a Presbyterian".

What I don't want to be is the religious fanatic who wrecked his marriage over sola scriptura, indeed over *&^$ing culture war issues, when (as dear old Dad would say) I don't even have a dog in that fight.

What I need is a good, solid philosophical defense of the authority of Scripture. Something that isn't "Well, nothing else works, so why not this?" Something that explains how the illuminating work of the Holy Spirit is any more objective than, say, the "burning in the breast" that a Latter-Day Saint experiences when reading the Book of Mormon.

Something, in other words, that will allow me to take the so-called Biblical stance on particular atonement, gay marriage, church membership/participation, or any other point of religious contention that might trouble my marriage, without feeling like I was sacrificing my wife's love and the peace of my home to a merely human concept of what scripture is supposed to be.

The fact is, if the Bible says all the things it's supposed (by the theologically "conservative") to say-- and I have to admit that I think it does, for the most part-- it's incredibly destructive and painful to bring me under conviction without bringing my wife as well. Yeah, I know-- not peace but a sword. Well, consider this my little psalm of lament. Why, God? Just why would you put me in this position? I've tried to persuade her. I've tried to gently strew books and sermon recordings in her way. I've tried to defy her wishes and argue with her as necessary. It was months of sheer misery for both of us.

I see the truth, God, and I don't even speak it, I don't stand up for it. I guess I don't really believe you'd finally condemn someone like my wife-- I just can't think of her as this cosmic rebel shaking her fist at her Creator. Good Reformed theology aside, she looks pretty Christlike to me. If she disagrees with the Bible, it's because she loves justice and peace and fears prejudice and pharisaism.

I know my Calvin, and my Van Til, and some of my Bible, and I know the Biblical estimate of her (and all of fallen humanity's) character and judgment. But I also know the sick feeling I get when I argue with her over church, or abortion, or whatever. And Lord, I would really rather be dead than make her cry like that. So why don't you in your infinite power get somebody else to be her "antithesis", somebody else who can subject her worldview to the same car-crusher you've been putting mine through? I didn't sign up to break hearts, least of all hers.

2008-05-29T15:13:00.002-05:00

I've been getting these headaches. Sometimes they're accompanied with nausea; lately they've been more and more frequent.

I don't know what to blame them on. Job stress? Home stress? Bad food? Caffeine addiction? All of the above? And eliminating any one of those factors is, to say the least, challenging. I haven't been to a doctor in years, but it's gotten bad enough that I did break down and go see our family doctor about these headaches a few weeks ago.

He thinks they're a sort of low-level migraine, and handed me a couple of samples of Imitrex. I just took the last of these; we'll see, I guess. Last time it seemed to help (after a while), but I washed it down with Coke, so maybe it was just the caffeine and sugar rush...

2008-05-28T15:36:00.002-05:00

I wonder what it would be like to have an "integrated personality", to be a "single-minded" person.

I was reading over my last entry and realized that nobody knows I visited a religious bookstore, let alone an Eastern Orthodox bookstore, on this past trip. The exception is my wife, and I probably wouldn't have told her except that I didn't want her to find out about my expenditures by looking at a credit card statement rather than hearing it from me. People have asked me about the trip; I give them a report on the restaurants I ate at. The most interesting thing I did, I keep to myself, because I don't want to be "scary".

I hide a lot of stuff from just about everybody. My light, if I have one, is decidedly under a bushel.

So why am I underground, psychologically and spiritually? Give Mrs. VoW credit: she's trying to get me to let her in. I'm not able to begin to do so without becoming snarky and harsh. I wonder if I've become one of those people who just can't stand that somebody else's beliefs might differ from theirs. Plus I don't know how to let her in:

VoW: "Hey honey, would you like to read the Bible with me?"
Mrs. VoW: "Mmmm, no, not really."
VoW: "Please? It might be interesting from a cultural or literary standpoint."
Mrs. VoW: "Are you reading it as literature?"
VoW: "No, more as the Word of God, really."
Mrs. VoW: "So you're hoping I'll see it as the Word of God, too?"
VoW: "Well... yeah!"
Mrs. VoW: "So you want to convert me?"
VoW: "Ummm... yes?"
Mrs. VoW: "So you don't respect my beliefs?"
VoW: "Sure I do! I just think that you're wrong on a few little points."
Mrs. VoW: "Like what?"
VoW: "Well... the divinity of Jesus. The definition of morality. The purpose of human life. Little stuff."

It invariably gets worse from here.

2008-05-27T13:58:00.003-05:00

Getting back to the Austin trip: while I was out there, I found an Eastern Orthodox bookstore. This struck me as a truly rare thing to find in Texas (or anywhere else in the south, for that matter). I walked around in there for an hour or more, picking at this and that, until the Reader who ran the bookstore realized I was something of a curiosity seeker and offered me a tour of the adjoining church. I accepted gratefully.

It was very odd to see all the shameless visual depiction of Jesus and company. To my unschooled western eye, traditional icons will probably always look gaudy and cartoonish, but I tried to see with the same eyes as the people who worship there. More difficult for me to stomach than the icons (and relics-- they actually had some bits of bone from two saints discreetly stored in the sanctuary) was the setup of the altar. I was raised in a tradition that feared "priestcraft" profoundly and nominally eschewed all authority that didn't live between the covers of the sixty-six-book Bible. So knowing that the elements of the Eucharist were being kept behind a veil in a sort of holy-of-holies that only an ordained priest could enter gave me serious heebie-jeebies. But I was grateful for the tour, and the Reader was very kind in answering all my ignorant Protestant questions without rancor or judgment, so my overall impression was fairly positive.

I walked out with a book on the Orthodox doctrine of the Church, another book about the composer John Tavener, a small pamphlet giving a fire-breathing born-again Orthodox take on sola scriptura, and a crucifix for the rosary I was making. (Yes, I pray the rosary. Send complaints about idolatry to /dev/null-- I've been over this territory, and I've decided that I'm prepared to pray to anyone or anything that might help me act decent and/or Figure Things Out. Also, in case the name of the blog doesn't make it clear, I figure I'm probably Eternally Screwed anyway. What's a little extra pious idolatry to someone like me?) Anyway, I doubt Eastern Orthodoxy will ever be my cup of tea, but it was quite a highlight to an otherwise pretty mundane business trip. Moreover, reading some of this material has given me some food for thought on the subject of "authority". I'll probably to try to work some of that out here over the next day or two.

2008-05-27T08:27:00.002-05:00

It's been a long, but reasonably good, week.

I went out to Austin, Texas this week for my job. I told people it was a worthwhile trip, job-wise, but I'm not entirely sure.

My job is weird, or seems so to me. The priorities aren't clear. I'm probably overpaid for my capabilities, inasmuch as I'm supposed to be figuring out what the priorities are. Daily I have to figure out who I'm going to risk ticking off. I'm about the least confrontational person I know, so it's not a happy situation for me in this respect. It's really kind of funny: I've always thought of myself as a bit of a loner, but when it gets right down to it I'm desperate for approval.

2008-05-16T12:10:00.003-05:00

I've been working through G. I. Williamson's study guide for the Heidelberg Catechism, trying to read the suggested scriptures and think honestly about the study questions he puts at the end of each section. My little substitute for Sunday school, I guess.

Anyway, reading one of the scripture references today (in Colossians 1), something hit me so hard it nearly knocked me off of my seat: "All things were created through him and for him." For him. Jesus.

If Paul is to be believed, everything that's ever happened and ever will happen has ultimately been about Jesus. He was The Point of the whole show. Dinosaurs, the Roman Empire, the American Revolution, rings around Saturn, the Horsehead Nebula: all exist as they do in order that a particular Galilean peasant could be born, live, die on a cross, and be resurrected in just exactly the way he did.

I've heard this sort of thing said before; I must have read this very passage in Colossians twenty times if I've read it once. But I've never grokked the underlying idea like I did this morning.

Everything, all things, all particular events in this universe: they find their center, their "reason for being", in Jesus of Nazareth. The implications are staggering. If Paul is right, denying the "Lordship" (pale word!) of Christ is something like denying gravity or electromagnetism.

I'm not sure that I really believe this deep down. Even assuming it's true, I'm not sure what to do about it. But the idea does have quite an impact, doesn't it?

2008-05-15T07:40:00.004-05:00

So, to continue yesterday's rant...

I've tried on a lot of different versions of Christianity since my initial "conversion" at the age of nine in a Southern Baptist Church. I'm now in my mid-thirties, and I've tried to make myself a Presbyterian (of, alternately, the liberal or orthodox stripe), a Lutheran, a "non-denominational Christian" (whatever that means), a unitarian, a universalist, a Catholic, and an Episcopalian. Those are in no particular order and are the ones I can remember off the top of my head. The unity across all of these flirtations is that, in every one of them, with respect to my most important human relationship, I've been alone.

This sucks, not to put too fine a point on it, and I'm so tired of it.

As I said yesterday, I need some buy-in from my spousal unit here. Some serious Holy Spirit action on the home front. I can't find a tradition (or "doctrine" if "tradition" gives you the willies) that I really trust-- trust, that is, to the point that I would seek spiritual and marital advice from their representative clergy. Or maybe it's less a problem for me to trust someone than for me to keep my wife's trust. If I turn to a solidly Reformed pastor, or a Roman Catholic priest, I know roughly what I will get: instruction to come to church and obey the church (or Scripture) and contend for the teachings of the church (or Scripture) at home and let the chips fall where they may; and if I follow that advice, indeed if I seek it from those quarters, I'm a traitor to my marriage, or at least perceived as such.

Of course, it's not new to me to wonder whether Scripture actually teaches what orthodox Reformed pastors would tell me it teaches. Yes, I've read the Bible myself. And I find that it is interpreted by somebody, living or historical, in even the most Protestant of Protestant traditions. Moreover, there is a school of interpretation out there that doesn't, well, side against my wife in the "culture war".

The trouble with that current of thought is that it drifts toward a naturalized vision of Jesus and God. People in the denominations I'm thinking of start to allow a separation between "the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith". And maybe it's small-minded of me, but if these aren't the same Person, I'm not sure what all the fuss has been about this whole time. Anyone can make up stories or metaphors. Only one Person in all of history, so far as I know, has actually been a metaphor, straight from the pen of God, if you will. I'm probably not expressing this well, or in an acceptably orthodox way, but there it is: Jesus is the hero of fantasy, living in history; too good to be allowed to live, too righteous to remain dead. Anything less than this is not worth wasting a bright Sunday morning on.

I moan and groan about my wife, but it's not just her doubts that trip me up. The "inerrancy" of Scripture seems to me to be poorly defended, even by Scripture itself. "Useful", "God-breathed", "cannot be broken", etc.-- I don't see that any of these imply "inerrancy" in the sense that strict Protestants mean it. Can't God breathe a piece of edifying historical fiction? A myth that expresses something important about human nature?

2008-05-14T10:18:00.000-05:00

And then I remember that there are 25,000 people buried alive in China and I'm shocked at how I find the time to feel so sorry for myself.

2008-05-14T07:39:00.000-05:00

I keep coming back to this blog because I want to talk to somebody, I guess.

I'm working through some spiritual issues, and find myself unsure of which set of clergy to trust; or which set I could talk to without betraying my wife, the liberal humanist.

Let me talk about her a bit, actually. She's great. I mean it. I am so in love with her. Have been for these seventeen years. She loves Justice, and Mercy, and Goodness; but she refuses to spell them with capital letters. She lives and speaks in a way that makes it clear she's aware of a real right and wrong out there, but she stops short of placing their source in a personal God.

This worked for me, sort of, when we started up. I was a sorta kinda liberal Protestant without much use for the organized church. I made efforts now and again over the years to seek out a church we could attend; it didn't really take, until four or five years ago when we tried a Unitarian Universalist fellowship.

The trouble is, I'm a Trinitarian. No, really. And while my soteriology might be a little more mamsy-pamsy than most evangelicals or Catholics could tolerate, I'm hardly a universalist. Yet every Sunday we were driving past the Presbyterian Church of the Savior and the Luthern Church of the Redeemer to get to the UU Chuch of the Dubious Historicity. My choice of church had become a witness against my beliefs. And that didn't work for me. It really stopped working when our first child was born.

I decided, to my wife's horror, that I was an Orthodox Presbyterian. I tried to take Sola Scriptura seriously. In my experience, most people who do this-- the people whose spiritual lead I was looking to follow-- walk around with some ideas and values that clash pretty seriously with humanism (as humanism is understood in the western world). My wife saw this as an about-face and a turning against what had hitherto been our shared values, our shared definitions of justice, mercy, goodness. I changed sides in the culture war, if you like.

This did not last. We couldn't sleep in the same bed. We couldn't relax in each others' company. I had joined the ranks of the Enemy. She wondered desperately what kind of small-minded judgmental superstition I would impress upon our little daughter.

And part of me agreed with her, the whole time. It's mean to exclude gay couples from the same protections heterosexual couples enjoy. It's mean to stand out in front of an abortion clinic and call a vulnerable, struggling young woman a murderer. I realize now, better than I ever did before, what people who do these things are trying to achieve-- the higher mercy that they're struggling to serve-- but I lacked whatever quality I needed to stand with them, even rhetorically in conversation. Fortitude? Faith? Whatever it is, I didn't have it. After a few months, I reconverted (or apostatized, depending on your point of view) and declared myself a "liberal", for lack (fear?) of a more descriptive term. I'd like to say it was about mercy. But I'm afraid it had at least as much to do with sleepless nights and loneliness and sexual frustration and watching my wife-- my wonderful, big-hearted, loving wife, for God's sake!-- crying, again and again, night after night, because the friend and companion of her life had chosen to trash what we used to hold sacred.

What can I say? She's the Saint Monica of secular humanism. It was impossible that the husband of so many tears should "perish".

I tried going to a mainline Protestant church, settling for a while on an Episcopal church. She won't go with me. She won't let me baptize my daughters (did I mention we're expecting a second one?) and raise them in the faith. (Why should she? If I'm her example, a love for Jesus doesn't do much to improve a person.) It's gotten harder and harder for me to go. Not my wife's fault, this: she's happy to watch our daughter while I go to church. She sees it as the moral and spiritual equivalent of a round of golf; Daddy has to take care of himself, too, you see; so I'm to feel free to go to whatever church I like on Sunday morning. But then I'd go and hear a sermon about how the church was not just about what happened on Sunday morning, the importance of being in a community of believers, blah blah blah. So now I'm looking at fellowship dinners or choir practice, and it's as if I'm trying to get to the golf course two or three times a week. Responsible fathers/husbands don't do that.

And even the Sunday morning service itself, with its Youth Sundays and anniversary commemorations and greetings between old friends, usually rings hollow to me.

Frankly, I've reached a place in my life where I need my wife's buy-in on this whole Christianity thing. Yes, I've read Luke 14; honestly, if those are the conditions, I've already failed. My wife, and our mutual love, is the most holy thing God has ever placed in my hands. I can't, and won't, let go of it. If necessary, and God forgive me for saying so, I fully intend to clutch it all the way down into the pit of hell if it comes to that.

But I don't believe that's what God wants. I think He wants us both, husband and wife, to love Him, and serve Him. So why doesn't that seem to be happening? Why can't I be loving enough, tolerant enough, holy enough to show her Christ convincingly? Or if it's as the Calvinists say, that God and nothing but God opens people's eyes, why won't He open hers (and mine, if they're closed)? I ask Him to, all the time. I ask as sincerely as I know how. I ask him now, here: God, purify my prayers, show me how to ask. Are You trying to teach me patience? Humility? Go ahead. Teach me. But open my wife's eyes, please, sweet Jesus. I don't understand what you want from me and I have no one I can ask. I need my wife here with me, God, I need her, please help!