Ask the Monk

I know I’ve been delinquent on posting this week (or two, I haven’t been counting). This month has presented me with some trials that I haven’t done too well in. It’s hard to feel right in advising when my own walk is stumbling. However, I’ve got a new post coming this week and, until then, here’s a devotional poem I wrote. 

HYMN TO CHORUS

Watching her hands to keep us in time

We wait for her rhythm to awaken our love

Hoping our souls will be saved by her rhymes

Entering, filed in our sleep-walking lines,

Coffee cups and NIVs, we feel pious enough

Watching her hands to keep us in time

Standing, in pockets of unison, at her sign

We lift our eyes to the noteless words above

Hoping our souls will be saved by her rhymes

Singing someone else’s love song to the divine

Our effortless eloquence remains something rough

Watching her hands to keep us in time

Alone in our silence, we pass the false wine

Listening for what our body and blood are barren of

Hoping our souls will be saved by her rhymes

We are an audience rehearsed and refined

With choreographed gratitude and well-scripted love

Watching her hands to keep us in time

Hoping our souls will be saved by her rhymes

Sin is a really tricky subject. Many people shy away from Christianity, specifically, because of this supposed list of “don’ts” that churches wave about. I mean, there’s some really fun stuff on those lists. When one is dedicated to the avoidance of sin, it is very easy to make for yourself a religion of guilt, lacking the mercy and glory that true religion bestows. When one becomes dedicated to the abolition of sin, you are bound to fall into “legalism” (a Christianese word refering to the practice of putting words into God’s mouth). The thing that is most appaling about legalism is that it always ends up chasing gateway activities; things like dancing, drinking and rock n’ roll, which supposedly lead to actual sins, making them just as bad. 

Imagine a castle town. You have the big royal castle in the middle, with peasanty buildings surrounding it, and it’s all bordered by a wall. Now, it’s being invaded… by SIN (buh buh buh bum!). As anyone who saw ‘The Two Towers’ knows, you put archers on top of the wall and hold off the hand-to-hand combat until the Orcs break through the wall with an Olympic torch. What I’ve seen in the lives of far too many Bible-toting pew leeches is this legalist approach where, when the walls are under siege, they send the soldiers out in front of the wall. They actually protect the wall instead of letting the wall protect them. Then something goes really wrong and the next thing you know, the castle is demolished and all of the thatched roof cottages are on fire; the walls, however, look emaculate.

So, here is the real heresy of legalism: one spends so much time keeping sin out of their actions (being my metaphorical wall) that what goes on in secret, in the mind and heart and behind the closed door, goes undefended. This is where all of that hypocrisy comes from. Now, in my metaphor, the walls ought to protect the city and if the walls are actions, how do our actions prevent sin?

I noted two approaches to sin already: avoidance and abolition. Both of these approaches are bad for the same reason: they focus on the sin. True religion is not a prison sweeping its searchlights about for crime and uncleanness. True religion is a rock face; you are at the bottom and righteousness is at the top. Every day you go out and try to climb it. Each failure teaches you that you need this thing and need to lose that thing. In time, you get ropes and harnesses and carabiners, you’re eating healthy and working-out before you climb. The point is getting to the top and everything that gets in the way gets left behind (also, you’ll never make it to the top without the aide of all that fancy equipment, not with all those injuries you sustained climbing too high without a rope).

True religion is all about keeping your eyes on righteousness and regarding sin as an obstacle to be overcome and forgotten.

On a number of occasions, people have asked for me to give my thoughts on Leviticus 15. It is a problematic chapter for them, specifically the latter half. Basically, what it says is that if a man ejaculates, everything the semen touches is “unclean”. If a couple have sex, they are “unclean”. And a woman is “unclean” during and seven days following her menstruation. I think I am right in saying that it is the term “unclean” that creates the problem. Just to clarify, this is ceremonial uncleanliness. Whilst unclean, you can’t offer a sacrifice or participate in a couple other religious ceremonies. That’s it. While basic pre-soap sanitation is at work, if you read the whole book; most people would spend most of their time being unclean. Unclean, by Levitical law, is almost the norm. The point of this is not to make you dirty and wicked, it’s to make the ceremonies special. The point is that cleanliness requires special effort, going out of your way, in a word: preparation. Levitical law is not meant to point us towards our flaws, but to God’s perfection. Sacred ceremonies required personal preparation which was meant to be a time of meditation upon the act you are preparing for. Think of religious ceremonies as a date. You put on your nice clothes, use special perfume/cologne, you’re on specific behaviors. You prepare for a date by making yourself presentable. This does not mean your jeans and t-shirt are shameful or anything, it means that the date is a special time that deserves special attention. The same is true of religious ceremonies; Levitical law is just the prescription for getting gussied-up for God.