A.W.O.L.?

I haven’t blogged in a very long time. I will leave it to you, reader, to determine how long it’s actually been. Frankly, I’m a little nervous to check.

I have a few reasons– though “excuses” may be more accurate.

1) Most of my observations on life have been shared with friends, family, journals, that are immediately present.

2) I started a serial story in the hopes of it intriguing me into writing more frequently. Unfortunately, though the characters, setting and plot are all different, it is very similar in tone and eventual theme to another story I am writing. It has been difficult to carry them both on, and this one is newer, so it fell by the wayside.

3) Every time I cook or bake something, I forget to take pictures!

4) I spend a lot of time on Twitter.

Number 4 doesn’t amount to much of an excuse, because I haven’t even been doing that all that frequently.

So, faithful readers, I am offering an apology.

Also, take a look at the headings on the blog. You will notice that I have introduced pages. I’ve given the story its own page (“Somewhere”), I’ve placed a few articles and short stories in a portfolio section, and I have decided I would like to examine literature the way that I did in undergrad.

That last section is more for my own enjoyment than anything else. It has been a year (or more!) since I was required to write an essay and frankly, I miss it.

So please browse, enjoy and contribute.

Dirty Laundry

Christians are remarkably good at forgetting about Christ.

I’ve been following several Christian blogs, reading different Christian books and listening to the cry of many Christians my age. Love, they moan, is missing from our generation of Christians. And it’s true. But in trying to amend that, we are making an entirely different mistake.

I confess something here that amuses me due to its paradoxical nature, but also bothers me. I poke at it, as one would a cold sore or a scab, dissatisfied with its presence, but relatively certain that time and appropriate care of the area are really the only way to usher these things out. It is this:

I can forgive everything except unforgiveness. I easily refrain from judging others, unless they are judgmental.

You see? A paradox.

There can be an aspect of pride to the above confessions, a pride that I hope I am not in possession of. In the Bible, Christ was compassionate and forgiving to everyone except those who had hardened their hearts and chose to judge those around them. So judging the judgmental and withholding forgiveness from the unforgiving can feel like echoes of Christ’s attitudes. However… I think perhaps we misunderstand what Christ was saying.

Christ’s example is to love everyone, even and especially our enemies. His command is to judge no one, to leave the judging to Him. Jesus knows the heart; that is why He can judge. We don’t; that is why we cannot. And the truth is, Christ’s forgiveness was offered to everyone, but those who had hardened their hearts were disgusted by it. Jesus’s message with regards to those people was one of warning, so that we wouldn’t allow our hearts to get like that: hardened and judgmental.

But it irks us! Christians who judge others really bother us, and so, in an effort to call them to account or to separate ourselves from them, we judge them. But this should not be. We should be forgiving of all and judging of no one.

We never know a person’s story. We never know what their background is. And we don’t truly know what their potential is, so we cannot judge.

And unforgiveness is a chokehold that clamps, not onto the other person’s throat, but onto our own. Holding something against someone rarely hurts them the way it does us. And oftentimes, the other doesn’t even know we are holding something against them. It is a stranglehold on our own lives as we harbour and rehash the bitterness we are holding onto.

We need to love those who don’t know Christ. We need to love those who do. And we need to remember that everyone is dear to Christ, regardless of how they appear to us. As He has forgiven us, so too do we need to forgive others.