the eraser | the third month

I don't think that these are the sort of things that you're supposed to find out about yourself in this career, that you lack character in almost every facet, that you're petty in the most petty of ways, that you betray essential principles for the simplest of conveniences--to say nothing of actual tests of integrity.  The pride that you began to think diminished is nothing short of entrenched, revealing a heart impossibly resilient to grace and forgiveness. These aren't the sort of things that you're supposed to find out about yourself, but they're exactly the sort of things that I have.

//

...and it still wouldn’t come off, that’s the thing. I lifted my shirt to the light, but light wasn’t needed; what once was a white shirt was consorting with a few other colors that were decidedly not white—which sucked.  Because I liked that shirt.  But hate spots. But there is nothing unique about that, no one likes spots.  Whites should be white, perhaps whiter.  Colored clothes should be the colors originally designated.  That’s the whole selling point for Tide.  I had borrowed a bleach pen from a friend; she had warned me that "the last time I used this I burned holes in clothes; so...be careful." Having tried a somewhat ridiculous number of washing techniques a fully ridiculous number of times, I applied liberally.  But, after what felt like its dozenth run, the bleach washed away, but the horrid spots remained.

The thing about the stains that was really bothering me was their origin.  The seemed to almost spontaneously emerge, polluting my previously fine, perfectly white shirt.  It honestly appeared to me as if it was the washing process itself that engendered spots on my good shirt, because it was almost certainly not because of any stains that I had washed it in the first place: the ordinary accumulation of everyday had made it necessary...or else I'd be deemed slovenly.  But what started to bother me even more was the irrepressible urge I now had to discard the soiled garment.  This had never really occurred to me as a dilemma before, but for some reason it became compelling: for what reason, precisely, is a stained shirt no longer worth wearing--or even having?

//

By the end of Romans 7, you can see Paul is clearly struggling.  The letter, up to this point, is too complex to represent in a boiled down thesis statement, but it can be thought of as a more developed theological extension of J3sus' pharisaical denunciations.  Paul is trying to break down a Jewish understanding of s@lvation which equates cultural practice with personal redemption; he's trying to tell them that their heritage as the people of God does not grandfather them into the Kingdom that J3sus ushered in, and that it is through faith, not lineage or ritual, that the transaction of s@lvation works.  But by the 7th chapter you can tell Paul is starting to freak:

For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin. For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I. If then I do that which I would not, I consent unto the law that it is good. Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not. For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do. Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me. For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: but I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.

Paul is dealing with something here that I couldn't understand until now.  As a person who does what I do, you begin to think yourself something elevated--to, at least, some degree.  That you have transcended problems that were the problems of you before now, but, as now is now, those were then, you have moved on.  But as I saw myself here and weaker, in certain ways, than I have ever before, I found the thesis untenable.  The pride that was the pride of Alex in America still in-dwelled, making its malicious and blundering way into this conversation and that situation, making arguments out of discussions, tension out of teasing.  And I found myself feeling the irrepressible urge to sink into depression, because I had ruined it all—because people had seen what and who I was and what and who I was wasn't all that great after all...even after all this.

This brings me to my shirt and how much I wanted to throw it away. I really wanted to throw it away. But why, exactly? I think I wanted it gone for the same reason that we feel uncomfortable when some homeless, disheveled, or an overall "lower-class" fellow shuffles his way into the average club on an ordinary Sunday.  For years I would look on such people with something I can only describe as revulsion.  Not that I wouldn't try to "reach out"...oh, I would.  But almost invariably my attempts felt as disingenuous to me as they had all along to the other person, and I walked away wanting to pat myself on the back but feeling I should be slapped in the face.  We want to throw away shirts with stains because as much as we'd like to tell ourselves that we aren't all about such things--about looks, about appearances, about (the semblance of perfection)--we're all about such things; as much as we tell ourselves that Chr1st is for the broken, we'd rather go to club with the fixed, the functional, the moderately attractive--and down the aisle with the very.

As much as Romans is a letter to the Romans, we have to remember that, in part, Paul was writing it to himself.  Before Paul was Paul, he was Saul, and Saul was a man very much about keeping up appearances, because Saul was the quintessential Jew.  Consumed with liturgy, performance, culture, and custom, Paul's faith was an inherited trait meticulously maintained. But J3sus destroyed that kind of thinking—and along with it Saul's life:

When J3sus had finished speaking, a Pharisee invited him to eat with him; so he went in and reclined at the table.  But the Pharisee, noticing that Jesus did not first wash before the meal, was surprised.  Then the Lord said to him, "Now then, you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness.  You foolish people!  Did not the one who made the outside make the inside also?"

The outside was all Saul knew, but Paul knew better; but, even though he did know better, it didn't mean that he didn't chafe under the contradiction of his existence, an awareness of redemption that fought minute by minute with the flesh that sought damnation.

//

Charging full towards the basket, the student's drive was on a course that intersected the bulk of my mass, which, considering the size of a Chinese college student relative to me, was considerable.  But, in an indefatigable gesture, he pressed on--and strong.  Almost bemused, I stood my ground.  As the collision unfolded, however, it seemed the valiant effort was just that, an effort, and the student ricocheted off me with resounding effect, hurtling to the ground with all the impact 110 lbs can muster. I gently laughed and offered the student a hand.  Eyes lowered, he took my hand, a wry grin that reeked of shame spread slowly across his face as he accepted, his embarrassment almost palpable.

I had been playing well that day.  I made good power moves in the post and got great rebounds, steals, and the occasional block.

Already ahead by a solid 6 baskets, I drove to the basket (to the right, of course) into what was now obligatory triple team coverage, a teammate signaled he was open for the pass... but I had other ideas.  Backing into them with what should be a post move (decidedly well out of the post), I spun and launched a fade-away shot.  With the smoothest of motions, the ball passed through the basket, and I bent down low a let out a celebratory yell, christening the shot a "great shot" as the other team let out a sigh, almost in unison.

I won a lot that day.

//

I think we often misunderstand the consequence of forgiveness.  When we accept J3sus into our hearts, we accept that he has now purged us of our sins--that we are bleached white, where once we were assorted shades of black.  And we walk around accordingly, presenting ourselves as new, repaired, and whole, in spite of whatever is actually the case and spiteful of those who do not make the same efforts.  But the fact of the matter is that even after forgiveness, our spots remain; they are visible and may remain so for years.  The consequences of what we were reverberates in who we are, who people see us as, and in the reality we live; the consequences of our sinful past and present aren't erased the moment J3sus enters our hearts.  They're there for everyone to see.  When the B1ble says He has washed us clean, it's fully significant to us only if we understand what's truly being cleaned, because if we don't, we'll suffer under burdensome facade.  But I think the real problem is that as burdensome as that facade is, to many of us it is preferable to actual change.  I mean, the thing about stained shirts is that if you wear one you've got to define yourself by other means; assumptions come with the truth outright, with spots and stains seen, and we'd rather save the effort of actual repentance (as the source of character) and present (and fastidiously maintain) its presumable visible manifestation, e.i. a clean shirt.

The thing that puzzles me about a stained garment is the near-dread of wearing one; I can't quite pin down the origin of the fear.  I almost feel like we're terrified that if we wear something with a stain then other people will become certain that we actually live in the real world.  This is clearly unacceptable. Ideally, I suppose, accidents should never happen, the unintended is always avoided and mistakes are made by other for us to discuss in a straight white room with measured white shirts and buffed white teeth with clean white people.

Paul was writing to himself because his life before Chr1st was all those things, but his life after seemed anything but.  It wasn't as if he was all good before it J3sus showed up, but for him measuring up to a standard only skin deep was within his understanding.  At least he could look the part, when part was the whole.  But when J3sus opened his eyes to the reality of his sin, utter panic commenced.

So I haven't been reading the Word consistently recently, and I got into weird quasi fights with some of my team members; I got lazy in ways that matter, and I've been depressed.  I can link the depression to the lack of Word study.  I can link it to the spaces that are missing in my life because of the people that are. I wanted to end this thing with some punchy little ending, with a great conclusion that's super meaningful and all that, but I can't: partly because I feel like crap and mostly because it would be a total lie.  I refuse to compose some knowing, self-satisfied Chr1stian-y end to what I always want to be honestly expressed: my opinion written down.   I want to get forgiveness.  I want to get repentance.  Paul was struggling with it so hard; I read it, and it hit me so full and true.  I don't get how I can be saved from something I seem to be determined to return to at every feasible opportunity.  Then it's so weird, because at times I feel a grace overwhelming at high pitch pushing,

and I'm all in.

"What a wretched man I am!  Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God--through J3sus Chr1st our Lord!"

(the part in Romans 7 right after that other part)