Dark Thoughts

The little drummer boy comes so close to expressing it.  We have nothing to offer the little babe in the manger.  We have nothing.  The drummer boy plays out a song on his drum - all he has that can impart meaning.   The deeper tone is that our hearts beat out the only offering that we have.  The old testament talks of snapping necks and slitting throats and sinned paid for in blood.  We have been paid for by the infant in that manger and we have so little thanks for it.  Our hearts are the only offering we have to give and yet we are reluctant to play a tune for our new born king.

I remember a friend watching The Phantom Menace and wondering at the life that could turn such a sweet little boy into a monster of armor and darkness and red lighted scimitar.  The idea was that innocence found so young could not be evil in such a few decades later.  I found myself holding my tongue about the fun house mirror of our lives that she never knew she was looking into.  The story is told, poorly, as if it is solitary or unusual.  It is not.

People sit back and hear of tragedy and wonder why God allows evil to run rampant in the world.  They pay so little attention to the ones forcing evil onto their fellows.  We wipe out our own guilt in looking at a world that is ugly and festering and cruel.  We blame God for the awfulness and the heartlessness and we so conveniently leave ourselves out of the story.

I wonder at stories that bestow godly powers on mere mortals.  From Superman to Bruce Almighty we have stories of beings that are so far above the human norm as to be considered a god.  And we never question our existence.  But what if one of us was given God-like power?  Does anyone take into account that he (or she) could see into all of our hearts just the way of the actual God?

How could we survive one second of that?  The fact that we have been able to exist this long at all is a testament to a merciful God.  We are cruel and heartless and just plain mean.  The greatest threat to a human being's life is a human being.  And that is assuming that all we want is to  kill you.   We may want to make you suffer first.

One instant of knowing the heart of the race of men, and any immortal deity that came from our stock, would end the rest of us in a thought.  A fleeting thought.  A whim.  It would be the kind of decision that would never be questioned.  It might not even be considered a decision in much the same way that breathing is not considered a choice.

We indict God for allowing the world to exist this way and we castigate believers for wanting to be slaves to an Almighty Being.  But how could God be just or fair if we were not allowed free will?  Our suffering is not a result of His indifference.  His Will - His Patience - His Willful Patience allows us to be.  Simply that - He allows us to be.   That is more than we deserve and punishment enough in many ways.

But I hear you now protesting in unwitting blasphemy that you would bring mercy to the world.  That you would end suffering and death.  And all that you would have to extinguish is free will.  You would take away all choices that led to pain and hardship and hurt feelings and soon you would have billions and billions who were only a pale shadow of your simplest, most straight forward thoughts.  All of us reduced to echoes.  All of us reduced to echoes.

Echoes can be rich and deep and comforting.  Echoes can be loud and shrill and jarring.  Echoes can be musical and echoes can be thunderous.  But echoes can never be original.  Echoes cannot think and worship.  Echoes cannot murder and rape, but echoes cannot love.  

As a benevolent God you would exchange our evil and horror for basic nothingness.  Cruelty exchanged for a hollow shimmering reflection of sound.  One is corrupt and the other is empty.

I only know my own guilt for certain.  I only know my own heart and even then I have hidden things behind lies and rationalizations that I don't know the true extent of anymore.  And, maybe this is another of those rationings of reality, but I cannot fathom that I am alone in my guilt.  But that is the way we sell ourselves to ourselves - we have all fallen short of the glory of God.  

These shadowy thoughts glide across and cast a gloom across everything that I see.  I take the time to type the darkness onto the page to clarify.  I find comfort in the written word.  I start typing and I don't always know how the sentences are going to end.  This is part of the fun of writing.  I can experience the words sooner than any other reader, but I experience them many times in exactly the same way.

I know that humanity is evil.  I know it.  I have seen too much of the darker aspects of life to doubt it for an instant.  And there are times like these where I find us overwhelming.  Christ came for us.  Christ died a horrible death on our behalf.  We have nothing of value to offer in exchange for that.  We are allowed free will and even after making the correct choice we can still reach back to our old, cancerous self and do unspeakable harm to one another.   I wish for the power to make that not so.  But having it, I know that humanity would end in that moment.  And strangely, all that suffering and pain, would not be so.  No more than we deserve.