April 22, 2009> 10:51 AM
re-post > 08-05-2002 > seeing ourselves The subject matter of this post is, as I see it, some extremely important stuff. They way we think about our "original brokenness," our separation from God and what constitutes it, is very important. And it goes on to elaborate about how this effects our life, even our Christian life now. Seeing ourselves doing and being good - hmmm. Oh, and the link to my friend Paul Fromont is an old one, but I left it there for nostalgia's sake.
Continuing the blogersation with Paul... I think this was important stuff he posted yesterday. This James Houston quote - "Prayer that is done ‘because I have always prayed’ inoculates us against true prayer, preventing us from finding a living relationship with God" - is extremely good. That along with the Screwtape Letters quote about how the demons "...should try to get them to ‘feel good’ about their prayers. Wormwood should divert their attention from the relationship of prayer to the feelings instead." says tons!
This business about us being aware of ourselves doing impressive spiritual things is such an important thing. We don't think about this. We simply take for granted that we should be looking at ourselves doing good in order to make sure that we are in fact doing it. And of course we are to then be happy about what we have seen. What is that? What have we just done? We need to think about that.
It reminds me of something I heard Thomas Merton talking about (I sound like I was a 20 year old monk in 1968) - as he borrowed from Martin Buber (a mystic Jewish writer), about how Adam's sin, Original Sin, was in fact that Adam was trying to be good - wow! He said "don't lynch me!" You can imagine why. Whaaat!? Yip, Adam's dorky deal was that he took someone else's word that he needed to do this thing in order to be like God.
It was that he was not acutely aware that he already WAS like God! He already was good. he simply wasn't aware of this fact as we are used to it. His stupid deal was that he forfeited his simple created goodness which he was not able to observe for a false self-created goodness that he was able to LOOK AT, so that he could see that he was being good. Something to think about.
April 22, 2009
> 10:51 AM
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