dead in sin

And one week later...

I am not in a good place.

I just flicked through some of these old entries, and it's occured to me what a distorted picture I've been painting of myself here. Bible verses, prayers, songs, thanksgiving. I am really not quite the girl I might sound like. I guess you'd know this already if you know me personally.

This is who I am: I am rebellious, hard-hearted, ungrateful, insensible, lustful, deaf, blind, stubborn and prideful. I admit now, that this is who I am beneath my I-will-trust-in-Jesus facade. This is who I become the moment I step away from Jesus, and the truth of the matter is, I've nurtured this side of me so much more that it's become almost all of who I am. I turn to Jesus now and I spurn his love. I am in love with the things of this world. I see a choice between Jesus and the world, and I choose the world; and though I see that I have gained absolutely nothing, and stand to lose everything, I stay. I see the irrationality, the pure stupidity, the blindness of my own heart, yet still, here I stay. - Why? Why do I choose an empty hope? Why do I put my trust in what is hollow? Why do I believe what I know to be lies? Do I not truly know that they are lies?

I can't answer these questions. I don't know what I truly believe - with this discrepancy between what I proclaim with my mouth, and what actually shows up in my life. I know that Paul talks about this in his letter to the Romans - all that stuff I put up in my previous post - and if this is the case, then I remain dead in my sin. I was working out my salvation, and slowly coming to doubt it was even mine. Or whatever. All this religious jargon also annoys me sometimes. And I am the one who uses it. I hate the way my relationship with Jesus is slowly becoming so religious. The way the centre of it has moved away from him (that is, if it was ever fixed on him at all) and the way church is no longer purely about God. These days I can attend or even serve in church, and my heart can be so far from God. It's become absolutely pointless. It's a show. It's shameful. I hate it.

Where to from here? After "giving myself back" to God a billion times, now I realise, perhaps I have never truly been his. I have never given him all of me. Almost everytime that I've 'returned' (how can you return to where you have not been?), I've withheld something. And even everytime I actually do forget myself completely, I unfailingly take back my surrender and return to this ugly state like a dog returns to its vomit. The bible has a specific word for such a person: fool.

I don't believe that it is simply theology that I fail to understand rightly. There is always a way to twist things, with theology. This roots from a deep evil, one that prefers the world to God himself.

Despite this mess, and my own stubbornness, I continue to harbour hope that God will save me from even this. From this inability to submit to the work of his Holy Spirit, from my own mocking lips, from an eternity of separation from himself. I don't speak of the romanticized version of hope we hold in christian circles - that glorious and admirable thing that arises from faith. My hope has a selfish root. I hope this for my own sake. Out of desperation, as my last resort. Nothing vaguely admirable. It's the kind of hope an unrepentant villian bears, that he will somehow escape punishment.