Tribulation Is Our Natural Element

I’m neither conservative nor liberal. Both of those terms presume a placement within the dominant culture. I rejected that a long time ago; I’m a primordial. I adhere to something that came before there was a Western Civilization. It’s a value system so alien to the common assumptions of today that you simply cannot understand it from within those common assumptions.

Thus, one of the things I take for granted is that folks will not understand my motivations most of the time. The vast gulf of difference tends to make me reticent about the whole thing. Until I am granted a reasonable space to explain at length, I tend to avoid explaining anything at all. My responses to simple queries are often designed to stop the questions that will surely go in the wrong direction and entangle me, typically at the very moment I most need a free hand to work.

Since I don’t believe in objective truth, I don’t feel guilty when people accuse me of misleading them, as if they could pin on me a charge of lying. It’s not a lie; it’s a functional answer that fits the context. Since the questioner will not and cannot enter the realm where the answer stands, I have to find a way to prevent their interference in something they refuse to understand. It sounds patronizing, but it’s unavoidable. I don’t feel guilty because I’m not the cause of truth being hidden from them.

But I keep the door open, should it appear to me someone is being drawn into the truth. I’m not some keeper of secrets, only the keeper of my own mission and calling. I’m called in part to defend the mission from interference, but that defense itself includes welcoming those who may be in transition, ready to enter into the mission themselves. The mission is not the objective; the driving interest here is the Lord’s glory.

Even in saying that, the inherent meaning is outside the prevailing culture. The world defines glory quite differently, as it does with things like truth, revelation and moral discernment. It gets them all wrong, but trying to tell them that provokes charges of arrogance and even more truculent misunderstanding.

This is why Jesus was crucified.

This is why His followers tribulate. Either we get entangled in ways that hinder the gospel truth, or we serve faithfully and piss off everyone around us. It’s why we are in turn so deeply incensed about the sins we see in the world.

Recently we hear the most egregious blatant lies from government officials. It gets to the point you run out of words to express the depth of offense those lies give. The typical partisan bickering and propaganda wars are bad enough, but we have officials lying about the rest of the world, too. The lies are so insufferable and insulting to God, how do we not react with anger? And it’s more than just having to hear this crap, but we and our resources are being conscripted to serve these audacious lies. It’s like acid to your soul.

Yet, if we dare to say anything, we are castigated as traitors. Again, that’s why Jesus was crucified.

I don’t have any good easy answers. You’ll find it in your own mission and calling. Your faith commitment to Christ comes in the same package with His choices for you. The mere act of staying in this world takes monumental faith in the Lord to accomplish something worthy in our lives in the midst of such chaotic evil. Don’t ask me why I’m still here; ask God. He hasn’t granted me permission to leave yet.