Unexamined Life

No one who is born of God practices sin, because His seed abides in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.

(1 John 3:9)

1 John 3 is a bit of a roller coaster, from statements such as: no one who abides in Him sins; no one who sins has seen Him or knows Him.

and statements like: Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth. We will know by this that we are of the truth, and will assure our heart before him in whatever our heart condemns us; for God is greater than our heart and knows all things.

But the first, as I read it, frightens me a bit. How easy is it to fall  into a pattern? It's like the Veggie Tales episode with the Rumorweed that grows with every consecutive lie. What began as a "white lie" must be fed until it's larger than life, and this is sometimes true of our other spiritual failings. 

Somehow, it's easy to hear what Paul says and choose which passages I like better based on how they make me feel:

What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it?

and then:

For what I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate.

It's pretty obvious: now that we are under grace, our lives should not practice that of sinfulness, but that of righteousness and faith. And how shall we live that? In love, grace, generosity, understanding, and opening our eyes to the needs of the world and those around us. Yet, often enough I find myself using Paul's words as a hidden subliminal justification for wrongdoing. If Paul struggles with sin similar to how I do, and Paul was such a fantastic apostle, then how bad am I doing, really?

But that kind of thinking is backwards. I'm not trying to follow Paul's example, but Christ's, and even listening to Paul's words, I shouldn't be trying to match his level of sinfulness, but his dedication to service and love. And I don't believe I'm the only one justifying my actions with obscure logic.

I had a roommate in college who told me a story once about what he named "morning illogic". He said that after a long night of homework - and this roommate was certainly not a morning person - he'd hear his alarm in the morning for going to class and, reaching over to shut it off, would think to himself, "I didn't eat lunch yesterday so I can't go to class" or, "I forgot to shave yesterday, so I won't make it to class" and without actually following through on these ephemeral musings, he'd roll over and fall back asleep.

This is what we do, I think. Having chosen a peculiar path, we make justifications for our actions which make a semblance of sense, or carry a grain of truth. It's like a rotten apple with a healthy skin, and as long as we only look at the skin and don't examine the fruit closely, we don't have to swallow our logic when it's thrown back at us. 

The terrible portion about this is, once this rickety scaffolding is constructed, we go on living our lives wallowing in sinfulness like pigs, far too anxious about reexamining our faults. Often, we alter our religious axioms to fit God into our beliefs rather than fixating our faith on God. 

If God doesn't love me for who I am, he wouldn't be God, because God is love. So, God must support what I am doing, if he loves me.

Errr... no. That's not how it works, and that's not how any parent would think. But too often we are molding God into imago a'dam, rather than molding ourselves into imago dei. Every time we begin our internal arguments with "God must" or "If God doesn't", we are refashioning God in our likeness, and that's no longer God at all.  

And then it's easy to continue living lies; living in sexual immorality; pushing others down to elevate oneself; stealing; boasting; committing idolatry with ourselves and materials. After all, the image of God I manufactured supports this, so it must be right. Too often, we never even get close to examining our actions, rather preferring to continue in the status quo.

But as Socrates said, the unexamined life is not worth living. I'd go one step further and say that the unexamined life is wrong living, and falling far, far short.

she painted pieta's every night

finding hope in the love 

between mother and child

and every eve before falling to sleep

she left just one piece incomplete -

tonight it was Mary's eyes

unseeing as Jesus reached his tiny

hands up beneath her empty face -

tomorrow, it will be Yeshua's lips

agape in a shocking vacuum of space

despite Mary's loving embrace,

what does he see?

and each careful illustration found

some lurker in the backdrop, lost

hamlet with a ghost behind;

nietzsche closing his eyes, seeing nothing;

or archimedes, wondering

if he'd found all the answers