Posting has been on my mind every day for nearly a week. I don’t like missing Sundays in the pulpit, and I don’t like leaving a writing commitment ignored. Writing for you here has become a beacon of cogent direction for me in the sea of this wild and “collapsing” epoch. But at the end of the day, there are colds, and then there are fevers.
And I have had a four-day FEVER.
I remember a few things Bryan W shared with me after a particularly illuminating fever he once endured. The confusion brought clarity, and in turn the clarity offered many new, good questions. The power of God to compel a man to sit, to wait, to burn, and so to pray, is something that leaves a mark on the attuned.
Shall we accept prosperity from Jesus and not adversity?
Behind the scenes in Fiskland there is a rennovation project full steam underway now. It isn’t about projects or goals. It is about shutting out the lie that I can’t become a better person in the name of Jesus Christ. For me, this lie had become so shaming and debilitating that the morasse of futility and despair had all but become my identity.
Every project, every task, carried the weight of the world. Every moment, every problem, was a new crisis. It all was just too much, and it all was just too little. Everything mattered. Nothing mattered. On the winds of pain and chaos I sailed uncertain.
Why? Because I was not allowed to heal. This was all but a doctrine to me. I was not allowed to improve. I was not allowed to grow.
Why?
Original sin. I don’t lay blame, but I repent of spritually internalizing the doctrine of original sin so as to make me something of a sardonic enemy of virtue, in that I believed that, no matter what, things could not get better. They are “not allowed” to.
This was not some external rule I could flaunt. This was an unspoken, internal assumption so central to my spiritual living that I could not see it to question it, though it has kept anemic and failing thrive. “That’s just the way life is,” and with shame, “you ought be grateful.”
The problem with sin is that it is not a simple word. Cynicism is probably a better description of the spritual malaise that keeps my head under water. Repenting over dreary, pessimistic worst-casing is easier said than done. Lot’s of people say, “I want to be a friendly person,” but very few people put in the work to learn what it takes to make other people feel wanted and welcomed. Most of the time, instead, human nature boast about what we wish we were. Through bold statements we make about ourselves to those who will listen and approve of us, we use conversation to prop up the selfie-meme we’ve drawn of ourselves in our heads. But, when the sun goes down and we are alone, the real us comes out.
I know that am quite capable of speaking in ways I have no intention of doing, while at the same time reading from others of intentions they have no intention of sending. I am capable of doubling down on such confusion, even as I can see my conversant is also hackling up.
I do not think my experience is unique. This, too, I have learned: the solution begins by learning to listen to yourself.
That’s where fever dreams are great. They’re the time you need for listening. Or maybe reading a book, or seven. “The earth does not need now continents. It needs new men!”
What does that mean now? To you?
I don’t know. Remember, this is a fever dream and I will deny any recollection of it.
You’re never going to design a starship if you keep trying to reinvent the wheel.
If all that you do is build, then who shall live there after you?
Repenting of idolatry is much easier than fighting depression.
Supporting the Hebron Collegium is easy: pray Psalm 16 and then outfit the library, exploratorium, and listening room with your generosity.