When I "chose" to be straight...

One of my facebook friends recently put up a picture with a caption that said something like this:

"So being gay is a choice?  Well, then, tell me about when you chose to be straight..."

It wasn't hard for me to come up with my answer, although I know the poser was completely rhetorical.  Anyone whose mind is closed on the subject is likely to dismiss my answer out of hand anyway, but if anyone really cares to see a potentially unpopular view of the issue, read on.

First off, I never deliberately chose to be a sinner.  I was born that way.  From conception on, my entire natural bent has always been "me first."  I have never been naturally inclined to consider others except as their actions influenced my own life, my comforts, my own self-image, my pleasures and control.  As much as I thought of God at all, he was just one of those objects of influence, and the question of what he could give me, or what I had to do to get it, was my major concern.

While I had no real say over that sinful orientation, it is also undeniably true that I continually chose to sin. 

I sinned by doing things I knew were wrong, things I knew I would never want anyone to do to me, or condone people doing to others that I cared about (as much as I was able to care.)  I sinned by thinking less of people than they deserved from me, and out of the overflow of my callous heart my mouth often spoke. 

I sinned by not doing things that I knew were only basic human decency.  I did not recognize as I should have all the kindnesses done to me.  I did not take so many of the opportunities presented to listen to and learn from those who loved me about things that would have been good for me to know.  I did the least I could get away with to forge the kind of relationships and circumstances that I wanted and still feel halfway good about myself.  Worst of all, I managed to convince myself that this was the best that I could do, and better than most people were doing, anyway.

As a child, I started to make imaginary pictures of a God who thought that I was great just the way I was, whose love primarily meant that he would give me whatever I wanted regardless of how I acted.  God was a figment of my imagination designed to make my life good.  I had no real concept of how my heart looked to him, as selfish and self-absorbed as I tended to be.  Every good gift he gave was accepted as my due, and often carelessly wasted.  Every struggle was used to excuse my flaws, rather than to purge them and improve my character.

And when the idea of a God that might have some right to dictate what was "Good" and what was "Evil" became inconvenient, I tucked him away in the corner of my mind and covered that choice over with a blanket of rationalizations.

This was the very core of my being.  My heart was desperately wicked, and I barely had a hint of how corrupt I was.  I hadn't consciously chosen to be that way.  Nor was there any way, humanly speaking, that I could change it.

But something happened to me that woke me up to what I was.  God got my attention in a way that I could not ignore or brush aside, and made it plain beyond all doubt that I myself was responsible for the choices I made, even if I didn't choose to acknowledge responsibility.  When God was through with me, I could no longer choose anything but to turn my back on the crooked path that I had been stumbling on so long, towards the One who made me for something much better than I could have imagined.  And ultimately, what really counted then was his choice, not mine.

To be continued...

The image

Pictures of Jesus abound on facebook.  Most of them resemble the devotional pictures my mother's parents hung on their wall.  Devotional portraits of a pale young man in longish hair looking serene and solemn against a pastel backdrop.  Line drawings of a sickly looking fellow, his head crowned with thorns.  A lanky berobed figure standing outside a door, knocking with a tentative, one-knuckled tap.

Many people find such images inspirational.  To the extent such pictures can be helpful in moving hearts to love and honor towards the Jesus of scripture, I am glad that they exist.  Somehow, most such pictures do not have that kind of impact on me. 

I don't know what Jesus looked like, so I can't feel quite comfortable with most pictoral representations.  No human being alive on this planet has seen him.  No human being who has ever wielded paint to depict him has seen him.  I am convinced that the most masterful images created by human hands could only fall far short of the reality of who Jesus is.  At best, they attempt to represent something that even the best artist could not have captured, not even if he had both the best tools ever conceived by man.  Not even if he had endless time to observe Christ himself at his work. 

But perhaps its just as well that pictures designed for devotional purposes are not staggering works of art.  It would be so easy for human beings to confuse the image with the reality, and direct their worship towards an object made by men rather than the Creator who made mankind.  To have real value, a picture of Jesus would have to draw you beyond its visual impact to contemplation of the spiritual significance of Jesus' life.

For such a purpse, the best images of Christ that I ever encountered were also the simplest.  They were found in a translation of the New Testament called "Good News For Modern Man."  My maternal grandparents kept a copy in their home, and when I visited them as a very young girl, I would sit on their patchwork quilt sofa reading the gospel accounts and examining the pictures.  It fascinated me how much the artists could convey in such simple line drawings.  Usually, facial features were absent or merely suggested.  Even the human shapes were composed of mere lines that subtly indicated gender, height, posture, gesture... but no identifying detail.

For a bookish child with a big imagination, such abstract representations were ideal.  I couldn't have explained it at the time, but these visual symbols were really just one step away from the verbal representations.  They reinforced the words of the stories I read.  The Lord Jesus was shown with strong vertical lines indicating his supreme authority.  Gentle curves pictured his arm reaching out to heal or to comfort.  Without gore, the reality of the crucifixion was still painful and weighty enough for a child to grasp in the sagging bulk of a human form stretched and straining against his human weight and the unyielding crossbar.  They helped make the words of the story more real to a child of 5 or 6 without rooting me to unnecessary visual details.  They made me hungry to understand what Jesus was really like.

Of course no humanly designed image ever satisfies that hunger.  But the Word of God does. 

The simple images and ideas that caught my attention as a child in my grandparents' home did not fully penetrate for a long time.  They gave way first to my own crude notions, as I remade Christ in my own image, turning him into someone I could relate to and appreciate.  It was only when I truly understood my own sin that the full glory of Jesus Christ could be realized for me.  Once again, that child-like hunger to know Jesus was awakened.  But this time, I had the best portrait possible for defining the infinite:  God's own self-revelation in scripture.

Now when I want to know better what Jesus is like, what pleases him, how he approaches weakness, sin, trials, love, and joy, I go first to the source.  Only an infinite wisdom can adequately reveal its own complexities to finite minds.  This is, I suppose, why YHWH first forbade images to his chosen people.  No human conception could ever reveal his image as perfectly as God's own word.

How I got here

You could say that I followed my heart, and it would be true.

Straight and narrow ways are confining.  I figured that I could chart my own course, and would naturally become a brilliant success.  Instead, I found myself bumbling down well-trodden paths, unable to even see what kept tripping me up.  I messed up my thinking, my relationships, my work, making mistake after mistake in spite of every warning sign and every advantage that should have helped me choose better.

Then something awful happened--a worse tragedy than I could have imagined.  I was told the baby I was carrying would not live to be born.  Nothing could have prepared me for this.  I knew that I wasn't able to deal with this on my own resources.  My husband to be, my parents, and my friends said and did what they could to offer comfort, but were, like me, helpless to fix the problem .  My physicians offered no good options.  I was left with no answers, no hope, except one.

You could never have told me back then that facing the possible loss of my first-born would become the best thing that ever happened to me.  But when all earthly hopes fled, I was driven to my knees. 

I did not dare pray for miracles.  Others did on my behalf, and I am forever grateful for that, but I knew I didn't deserve any special treatment from God.  I had stopped my ears, closed my eyes, and walked away from him.  I was continually ignoring his blessings and his counsel.  All I could ask of God was the strength to get through this pain and loss. 

Jesus gave me what I asked for, and so much more. 

 

"All her stories are about..."

"... how badly people treat her."  I blinked, uncertain how to respond.  It seemed a rather harsh thing to say, but having listened to the lady in question on more than one occasion, it was hard to disagree with the assessment. 

I  did not intend my silence to signify agreement.  A perceptive woman of many years experience observing people should not be lightly contradicted.  The clear pattern of behavior was aptly described.  No conclusion was made about character.  The observation was not meant as judgment on personal worth.  Yet I could not comfortably agree.  Not with the memories of my own "poor me" stories nagging at the edges of my conscience.  So I let the matter pass without comment.

Weeks or months later, a similar turn of phrase compelled my attention.  This time, the subject was a woman less well known to me.  The speaker said of her, "All her stories are about how she set some slob straight."

How many stories like that have I heard?  "Boy, I told him!"  "I really put her in her place."  Sometimes such a story, told by someone I like and admire, almost makes me want to cheer.  Sometimes it even makes me envious.  If only I could come up with such clever replies.  If only I were bold enough to tell it like it is, right to his face.  If only I could come off so well in a battle of wits.

But of course, such a victory really gains nothing.  I know from experience that the person on the losing side doesn't usually come away with admiration for the verbal bully.  Rarely do I learn anything from a verbal smack-down.  Lasting, positive change from such encounters is rarer still.  So any story that centers on a display of my superior intellect mostly demonstrates my own pride and arrogance.  I am ashamed to say, I have told more than my share of this kind of story, too.

If someone were to analyze my speech by the point of my stories, what would they find?  Would their conclusions match my flattering self-image?  What are all *my* stories about?  What do I *want* them to be about?  What would be the best, most useful thing for me to tell people? 

I wish that I could say, right now, that the title of this blog is already true.  Because I know beyond doubt that the very best I have to offer anyone has nothing to do with my own talent, or suffering, or intelligence, or character, or compassion, or anything that springs naturally from my own heart.  Trust me, in 40 years of life, I have never produced anything of value apart from God's grace shown by Jesus Christ's sacrificial love on my behalf.   Anything good in my heart and life is a result of the Holy Spirit working in me to make me more like my lord and savior, Jesus.

But since so far my stories tend to be self-centered, self-indulgent, and self-promoting far more often than not, may God grant that this blog will help me practice telling stories with the right focus.  Jesus has worked so many wonders in my life already, and this one is well within the boundaries of his will as expressed in scripture. 

Lord, I turn my story over to you.  May it be to your Glory.