College Christians and Sex

I talked to a couple guys at a local parachurch organization today. We all go to UofL. I was disappointed in them. Not only was one young man unable or unwilling to discuss sexuality in even the vaguest of terms, but the ideas that the remaining men expressed were...untrue, dysfuntional. They thought things such as "girls only date guys they're physically attracted to, since I do. Any woman getting married wants sex with her husband and understands what that is. Every woman will enjoy the act of sex, and if she doesn't there's something wrong with her. Attraction and chemistry are the same thing. Love and lust are the same thing."

Not. True.

None of that is true. PARTICULARLY for Christian virgin women. As far as I can tell they usually know so little of their own sexuality they can barely discern what attraction is. They know so little of their bodies they can hardly discern interest. Some don't know what they want or even if they LIKE being touched, let alone what kind of touching they like. Some are terrified to touch themselves in the shower, and certainly have never masturbated, so not only are they completely unable to help their guy with instruction but they have to fight against a lifetime of guilt and terror associated with their sexuality on their honeymoon night. If the guy is a virgin neither probably have any concept of "foreplay" (as these college guys I talked to today seemed to lack). I feel ill for these couples when I think of the disasterousness of their first coupling. Frightening, discordant, and painful. Lovely way to start a marriage.

Now, I'm a virgin. I've never even gone to second base, and yet I have more than enough knowledge about these things and a thorough understanding of why it's important to know the other side and to know yourself. Why? Because I talk to people! I look stuff up and I talk to people.

The idea that a couple wouldn't discuss their sexual wants or expectations until marriage counseling (just weeks before the marriage) is ludicrous to me. I'm not saying yes to a proposal until I know what exactly that man expects from sex (and how he plans to raise the kids). I'm not talking explicits, but at least an idea of what he expects from himself, and me. Since it's something I'm probably going to be doing at least once a week I think it's pretty important to know.

How is it that any discussion of sexuality is so taboo? Why do they talk about it only after marriage, after dysfunction has been discovered? Why is Christian sexuality only reactive and not proactive? This really really concerns me.

What concerns me more is that as sex and sexuality are so taboo, and certainly Christians are encouraged not to engage in anything sexual, and yet also not informed about the other sex's ideas of sexuality, the Christians are only being told of sex, seeing presentations of sex and sexuality, from secular culture. So, there are men decrying masturbation who do it daily, who look at porn to learn about women's sexuality, women supporting purity while they sleep with their boyfriends, who read romance novels and watch Nip/Tuck to learn about male sexuality. It's dysfunctional and two faced and distressing.

I will write more on this later.

Well, I Never was the Good-Enough Girl to Begin With

These last seven months in Korea have certainly taught me things I never expected to learn (and haven't taught me the things I did expect). As usual, I went into the new situation with a mix of anticipation and terror (perhaps in equal parts, I felt somewhat numb through the first few weeks). I had visions in my mind of what would happen. Most of those things have not happened. I got community, but not what I was expecting, friends, but not where I was looking, growth in things I didn't want to grow in. I've experienced manifold disappointments, largely due to how very real reality is. I've experienced a lot of joy, too.

Yet, still, there is one thing that has caused me considerable turmoil. It's really something simple, and I'm sure that there are enough people out there who will consider it trite. It's not trite for me.
I've found considerable joy in the company of my unbelieving male friends.
As someone raised in a conservative home. Trained in Reformed Southern Baptist churches. Advised not even to call men of the same faith lest things be misinterpreted or I prove myself lacking in character. As all these things, how do I reconcile the joy I find in spending time with them, in talking with them, in putting up with them with what I am? How do I reconcile their joviality, their openness, their...conviviality with the downright shallow and mistrustful attitude of most people within my faith. Confessions of believers are usually facile at best and edification is generally confused with criticism. We're cowards, we are. The lot of us.

How do I reconcile my general discomfort of being among other believers (namely because of that deep deep feeling of being at a masquerade and the way that advice often obfuscates a subject more than defines it), with the mandate to not abandon believers? How do I reconcile a general distaste for the deception that is required of me at church, the rigorous sanctimoniousness I feel is expected, with the Biblical saying that if you love God you will love the Church, you will love fellow believers? I love people, fellow believers I can hardly stand. How little does that mean I love God?

How do I reconcile that even more to the joy I have in hanging out with men who are not only unavailable for marriage, but also who are unbelievers? Who are like your friends.
I feel caught between a bus and razor wire. So maybe he's a bit Buddhist, and that makes me sad in a kind of deep ache because I care about him, don't want him to go to Hell, wish he could/would convert just to ease my heart, but he's my friend, and the real me is safe around him. Maybe he's about as pretentious and erudite as almost anyone I've ever me, but he's nice to me, and his pretentiousness entertains me more than it irritates me. He's layered. I like that. Maybe he's kind of scrawny, and drinks too much, but he's fun, and I like his accent, and talking with him is easy even when I hate everyone else in this stupid country. Yes, he's short, and a bit like coffee with too many shots of espresso, but he's genuine, a wears his heart on his sleeve type, and he's never afraid enough of something to let it stop him.

Yes, they curse. And sometimes they do truly stupid things. They annoy me. They've hurt my feelings a few times. But...it's worth it. It's worth it to see real people. I want to see real people. I want to be a real person. Not a real person inside, a real person everywhere.

After a month

I've been in South Korea for a month now. Hard to believe, I know.
The yellow sand has begun.
And I have a wonderful bike to get me around town.
I went to church in Sangju for the first time last week. That was interesting. Presbyterian. I'm having to adjust to different denominations in the same church. It's one thing to say "yeah, I'm happy that you're my brother/sister with different ideas" and another thing entirely to live with it.
The church is quite small (12 members, maybe) and they sit on mats on the floor. They all eat lunch together but from last year I figure that's normal.
Other interesting cultural occorances.
I got taken out by some of my sweet coteachers for doksomethingoranother, not dokgalbi, not dokbegi. Darn, forgot. Anyway, it's spicy rice cakes and kimbap. And, over the course of the meal I was informed that men will like me more if I get my ears  pierced and straiten my hair...because men find pierced ears and straitened hair more beautiful. It was definitely one of those cultural things that I had to take a second and step back for. I told them I thought guys often had different tastes in what they preferred and that maybe the magazines lied. They were quite surprised by this.
Other cultural things:
Principals asking favors of me.
Things not happening until the last minute and feeling like I can't prepare.
Working extra hours. Surprised? No way.

I found the local community gym. It actually looks quite nice and if I can force myself up at 6am regularly than I should be able to go work out.
Right now I have a headache, actually the hungover feeling is probably a migraine. Particularly because I didn't drink anything last night, or yesterday, or the day before.

I'm curious, what do you think of the social and cultural differences between different denominations and/or countries? How should they be responded to? How do you give grace to people you disagree with while still voicing your disagreements?

A Special Blessing at Starbucks

I've got ideas bouncing around in my mind but I'll try and keep them rather linear and only a couple to a post.

Tonight I went to a Starbucks. I bought a...vanilla something machiato (or toxin-laced sugar-flavored caffeine, as I think of it. Note that this didn't stop me from buying one). I was dissapointed to see that the comfy chair near the bay window was taken, and as I had no interest in impeding on the space of the guy sitting at the window (he'd also taken over the lamp table beside the other chair and the table in front of him, obviously stating with his books that he had a wide bubble right now) I moved to the comfy red chair near the back. Sadly, it was near the bathroom and the escape door. I felt a little like I'd been put in a corner but I wasn't going to sit on one of those hard chairs, if I wanted a hard chair I would have gone to Heine Bros, and it didn't smell.

So, I sit there thinking that I could have my quiet time, but deciding against that because I didn't want to think too hard and quiet times are hard thinking things. You never crack open the Bible for a foray into mindlessness. So, I'm sitting there sucking down my drink, grateful that I can't taste the coffee, wondering if there actually *is* any coffee in this, or just sugar, munching on a cupcake that's not nearly as tasty as it looked, contemplating the sensation of unshaven legs and I overhear a conversation.

Now, all this time I'm trying to get my mind on Dresden Files. Yes, I bought pulp fiction on super sale at Borders. But, despite the entertainment of a magician driving a vw bug I couldn't help but listen. Now, I'd seen this couple as I walked by to my little corner near the bathrooms. They looked like they were studying but I didn't catch the books. I wondered if they were studying the Bible. In this town, if you see someone at a coffee shop studying there's a decent chance they're studying the Bible, but I blew it off because it wasn't a coffee shop near any significant Bible school, Seminary, or church. I was wrong.

So, I'm sitting there and the caffiene hits me and I can feel the blood rushing through my veins. I figure the two are a couple, or studying for school. My skin feels like it's shifting wrong over my soul. This isn't a particularly foreign feeling to me. It's like wearing a jacket that's too tight, or jeans that you've worn every day for a week and are staring to feel a bit grungy. It's that feeling of trying to flex your legs in a cramped space and only being able to shift around a bit. It's the feeling of being in a room filled with bodies and smells and you just wish you could step out into the cold night air and take a deep deep breath. It's all those feelings but it's deep deep down inside, beyond my heart, but in every corner of my mind, deep in my gut but not touching a single organ. There but not, beyond, encompassing. It occurs to me that this is an odd place to feel this way. I thank God that I will die some day and I listen to this conversation that those two are having.

After a short time it becomes apparent that the gentleman (not even my age, probably) is sharing the gospel with the woman. They're studying the Bible. She's asking distracting questions like "so, are you a Baptist?" and "Do you think drinking is a sin then?" and he's rebuffing it all gently and turning it back to Scripture. My heart (wait, when did I switch to present tense?) sores.
I wasn't thinking about anything else anymore, I was eavesdropping on this amazing and unexpected conversation. At first I worried that the Gospel wasn't being being presented properly, or not at all, but those fears were quickly disproven (<-hey, is that a word?) and I felt this deep joy welling up in me. I prayed that she would hear the Word beyond her obvious interest in the gentleman. I prayed that he would speak true, and I listened with a happy heart to the Truth.

I also drew them. I think the girl noticed. It was all I could do to hold back. I wanted to hug the guy for blessing my evening so. I wanted to interrupt to tell him he was brave and gallant and wonderful and I knew that doing that would botch the whole thing and seem a bit odd especially since he was obviously doing fine on his own. So, instead I listened in and rejoiced that the Word was being shared and then I left.

I wonder, that stirring inside me, would I have ever listened into that conversation if it hadn't distracted me from my book? Would I have ever been blessed if something hadn't turned my thoughts Heavenward first? And why that coffee shop? Why that hour? I think God brought me there to pray for those two while the Gospel was being shared, and to bless me with hearing the Joyous News. How serendipitous, how ironic, how wondrous. Where two or more, it says. How interesting then that two were brought together in one Spirit, though we didn't even know each other.

Thoughts on Heaven and Hell

Heaven. Hell. How many people actually believe they exist? Even of those who say they do I’m finding there are many who really don’t. Or rather, they don’t think on it at all. Their visions of heaven and hell have been as much shaped by multi-media as anyone else’s.

Then, of course, there are the reformer’s ideas. Heaven becomes this boring celestial city where we sit around singing out-of-tune hymns and hell is all fire and brimstone.

I read both Mere Christianity and The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis and his ideas on heaven and hell spurred me to realize what my ideas where. Then, a few months later, I went through this panic about whether or not I really was saved. If you check further back in the blog you can read all the wonderings and fearmongerings I was doing then. And, it’s good to work out your faith from time to time. But *why* was I so upset? *Why* is being a Christian so necessary? I came to one conclusion and that conclusion has changed the way I see the world. It’s so important because I am desperate to get to Heaven, and desperate to avoid Hell.

Well, what is Heaven, what is Hell, that they should matter? I could give you a bunch of verses that may or may not make sense, refer you to articles I’ve read, and I may do that, but I’d rather just tell you about what I believe.

You may have heard the old song “when I get to heaven, gonna talk with Jesus, when I get to heaven, gonna see his face…” And we dismiss the words.

Imagine this: you die. You die and the world goes dark around you and you blink and there you are, standing before the throne of God. Light brighter than the sun on the hottest day, brighter than the sun without ozone, brighter than any star, blasts you, staggers you back, but you don’t die. You’re already dead, remember. As you squint through the light you see a man before you. He is both so big that his throne cannot contain him and just the right size to meet with you. What shines from his face is Glory, Power, Love, Justice, Mercy, and Wrath. Again you’re staggered, and this time you drop to a knee as you realize who you’re before. And, as soon as that realization hits you memory does as well. You’re no God, you’ve failed, you don’t deserve to be here. Mourning and panic and fear and awe sieze you. You drop to your face in the heavenly dirt, tears stream from your eyes. “My God, forgive me,” you beg, even as you acknowledge that you don’t deserve it.

Then a hand is on your shoulder, and you choke on even more tears, because of the warmth and generous love that spreads through you, the forgiveness. “Arise my beloved,” says a voice that is both quite and permeating in a way that no bullet could be, “you have served me well.” You look up and the One on the throne, though He is still somehow upon it, is also before you, helping you your feet, brushing off the dirt. And there is such compassion, such pride, such love in his eyes that again you are overwhelmed. At once you are entirely known and every ache and every hole in who are is healed and sealed up. The joy and intimacy you sought through sex is fulfilled, the confidence you sought through jobs is granted, the humility you sought through service is attained. You stand there, struck dumb for ages by the amazing thing that has been done for you. You who knows you don’t deserve it. You’re more real and more whole than you ever were when alive. It feels like you just woke up from a lingering dream. God himself is pleased by you and wraps you in a welcoming hug. You’re shocked that God would touch you, because all your life, though you prayed and sang and read and did your very best to believe without proof and serve without return, God was still something you didn’t quite comprehend. But now you see Him clearly, see yourself clearly. You are loved, you will never be turned away, you are known, and in that you are made the best possible you. You’re forgiven, you’re fixed. Nothing could surpass what you’re experiencing. Each new moment in the presence of your God reveals new insights. For the first time in your life you’re free, content, happy, fully informed of the state of yourself.

And then it gets better, because your eyes turn to take in this realer than real heavenly place and you see a country all around you. A city without walls. Pastures and woods stretch into the distance. Trees in fruit and trees in bloom. Soft grass and inviting riverbanks. Glorious roads leading into a distance. People, old friends who you’d mourned, enemies and now you’re excited to see them free as well, and a goodness in them you could never recognize in your Earthly life. There are people there who you never knew, and some you recognize though you’ve never met. All complex and complete. Angels and men walking and talking together. More company than you’ll ever need but how wondrous to share such a thing with them. Not only are there plants and people, but animals too, and water, and food. Such food as you’ve never had. Food untainted by toxins, or death. Sweet and rich. Food that fills you. And you find that you’re not hungry nor thirsty nor tired. Every pang of sadness is healed, every remorse set aside for the joy of where you are and in whose light you stand. This is a place that has a place for you. You belong here. You were made for here. This is where the forgiven stand. This is the home of the renewed, and it is forever.

Now, in contrast, imagine Hell.

You die, you feel your soul slip from this world like a hand passing through the surface of water. For a moment nothing and then you are aware. Of nothing. At first all you feel is pain, pain that cannot be stopped our placed, it bounces from limb to limb like a child playing hopscotch. Your skin feels like it’s burning, your bones like their breaking. You try to scream, but no noise comes. Try to thrash but feel no movement. You hear nothing. Finally you open your eyes and you see nothing. It takes a while, because you’re in denial, you think you’ll wake up, you think the real world will come back to you, before you realize where you are. You didn’t really believe in this place. It’s so hard to conceptualize. You’re in Hell. Your limbs ache like one giant amputee. You feel them while they seem to no exist. You feel like a vapor. That sense of incompletness, of being not quite whole, that lingered in life, is now consuming, maddening. You never even got a chance to see what you’re missing, but somehow you know, because now that you’re in so much agony you can easily imagine what the opposite it.

But this place has no escape hatch. It is nowhere and it goes on without end. You don’t know if anyone else is here. For all you know you’re the only one. You hope you aren’t, but you can’t be sure. No senses to tell you otherwise, not even the smell of your own burning flesh to assure you this is real, and you can’t kick the feeling that you are less real than you were before, less valid by exponents. You can’t kick at all. And you can’t take comfort from knowing your enemies are here too. You agonize over the possibility that the people you hated most aren’t here. You wish for a fair fight, try to scream that God should come down here and face you, but you know you had your chance. Now, suddenly, and with sudden clarity, you can see all the times you had chances and turned them away, all the possibilities that would have lead to a different end but you ignored. You see with stunning clarity just how unworthy you were of the good things you received, and how much you took for granted. You see with true clarity the reality of the universe, and how small you are, how messed up, how dirty, how alone. This is your fault. You’re guilty here. The weight of your pride and degradation are yours to bear. Here it is both a sensory deprivation tank and a torture chamber. None mocks you but your own failings. None but your own heart accuses you. The world has lifted away and you have fallen into the void. And with a growing sense of horror and mourning, so overwhelming in its intensity you’d cry if you could, you understand. This is Hell, and it’s forever.

When I think of Heaven and Hell these are the concepts that trail through my mind. No clouds in heaven, no boring hymns (though I’m sure there will be singing. I imagine it’ll be a bit like Sojourn, a good mix of everything), no babies with wings and harps. Neither do I think it’ll be a throng of enraptured looking people standing around a giant impersonal throne whispering words like “God” and “Savior” and “Master” (though I imagine that there will be a good bit of that as well). I think there will be singing, and eating, swimming, laughing, eye rolling, joking, painting, stone working, writing, relaxing, running and jumping, talking, hugging, reminiscing, thinking, quiet being, and shouting. I think there will be learning, and some forgetting, I think there will be making, and building, and planning, and doing. Heaven will not be static. Nor will it be impure. There won’t be sex (sex, like sleeping, are not bad at all, but will be fulfilled in different ways once we reach that Heavenly realm), or sleeping. There won’t be resentment or fights or pride or “issues” or ego or disappointment or rage. There won’t be malicious talk or depression. There won’t be failure or lying, or injury. There won’t be broken trust or broken hearts.

Hell, on the other hand, won’t be a big party with all your biggest partier friends. It won’t be the place where all the rebels go to have a good time without anyone telling them what to do. It won’t be a gathering of all the strong ones while the weak ones go to a nice quite white place. It won’t be sexy (I imagine more it’ll be castrating and filled with a sense of incontinence). It won’t be comfy. You see, all pleasure comes from God, and Hell is supposed to be, at its most basic, the absence of God. So, you couldn’t even have your favorite sins if God wasn’t in the world making pleasantness possible. Since God makes things, and holds all things together I think it’s reasonable to assume that Hell will be without true place or true form. That means there won’t even be devils or demons wandering around to yell at you and poke you with nasty pitch forks. Hell is going to be one nasty place. A to fear and a place to avoid at all costs. And, please understand me that when I say this I mean only truth and no malice: lots of very good people are going to find themselves in Hell. Being good won’t save you. And not believing in it won’t stop you from going.

Why wouldn’t you want to think on this? Why wouldn’t you want to hope for the one and dread the other? Our faith is not just for this life. Jesus didn’t die just to offer us a new way to live for the short time we walk this globe. To live is Christ, yes, but we forget the other part; to die is gain. As Christians shouldn’t we anxiously look forward to the day when we depart from our mortal bodies? Shouldn’t we be excited about what awaits us? I know, you can’t prove Heaven and our modern minds make poor doubting Thomas look very trusting. We don’t want to believe in something in which we don’t have proof. I would suggest that if Heaven seems distasteful to you, or Hell too harsh than perhaps you should reexamine how you think of God.

A disection of John 3 as much as I am able

My father says that Jeremiah is the most difficult book for him, or that's what he said last night, because it's a real book, he said, and the prayers were real. It's about God smiting people, and suffering and fear. Apparently Jeremiah got sawn in half or something.
So far...I don't know what book is the most difficult. Maybe Song of Solomon, because it goes so counter to what I know of love, and existence, and makes me to hope for things. Sometimes it feels like being hopeless is better. But it's not, is it?
John starts with Nic, who has apparently heard that Jesus is doing a lot. I'm guessing he was speaking for God more and doing more miracles than the average messiah claimer. Nic was a leader, and probably known for his learnedness and piety, not some peabody assistant, and Jesus not only caught his attention but impressed him enough that he believed that it was, in fact, God who sent him.
So, then the teacher calls Jesus, who's had no seminary training, teacher and says that God has to be working through him. Then Jesus says to him he needs to be born again to see God's kingdom. This also implies that Nic, though seeking, wasn't born again. I also want to point out here that once Jesus started his ministry he was proactive, and even as far back as the wedding his mother knew what he was capable of. He trashed the temple, he did all these miracles, and then he told Nic what he needed to do before he even asked.
Nic, who no doubt had seen Jesus do, or heard of him doing, some pretty wild things, was probably envisioning this guy pushing him back into the womb. He also wants to be born again. He understood that that was something good, something he wants. He asks "how's that going to work, since I'm old?"
So, Jesus tells him that baptism with water and the Spirit will be what sends him to heaven. So, does that mean that you have to be physically baptized to be saved? I'm sure the Church of Christ would say that, but there are plenty of other verses that don't include baptism in requirements for salvation. Could the kingdom of God mean something other than Heaven and citizenship in God's family? Like, could Nic only need to evolve his faith that next step? To accept that the savior had come rather than reject his claims? If he was predestined did God know that he would hear and accept? Did he even accept? Because it never says that later.
He says that Nic shouldn't be surprised about the born again thing because the wind blows where it will. Basically, "why are you trying to figure out how this works, somethings just happen that way and that's the way it's willed and you don't get it but that's the way it is. So, being spiritually born is....lost my train of thought....something that you can't get. You feel it's effect but beyond that you can't really get it.
Thus ends verse 8.

A Quote for when the Heart Grows Faint

" What are you to yourself? worthless? vile? empty?

What is Jesus to you? precious? lovely? all your salvation? all your desire?

What is sin to you? the most hateful thing in the world?

What is holiness to you? most lovely? most longed for?

What is the throne of grace to you? the most attractive spot?

What is the cross to you? the sweetest resting place in the universe?

What is God to you? your God? your Father? the spring of all your joys? the fountainhead of all your bliss? the center where your affections meet?

Is it so? Then you are a child of God!

Those low views of yourself ... that brokenness, that inward mourning, that secret confession, that longing for ... more spirituality, more grace, more devotedness, more love, does but prove the existence, reality, and growth of God's work within you.

Cheer up, precious soul!

That soul never perished, that felt itself to be vile, and Jesus to be precious!"
(Octavius Winslow, "Evening Thoughts")
(Found it on Boundless.org)

Sometimes it amazes me how smart people were hundreds of years ago. All we usually hear are the bad things, or, conversely, the idea of "the good old days," but it wasn't like that. There were good things and bad things, stupid people and brilliant people, greedy people and amazingly gracious and humble people.

I am particularly grateful for this wise person, who lived so long ago, because this quote has settled much of the turmoil that totally dominated my heart in the last couple of months.

Haunted

"Cause I'm so easily satisfied
By the call of lovers so less wild"
-Wedding Dress, Derek Webb

Ok, maybe those aren't the exact lyrics, but that's what I hear when I listen to the song, and those are the words that keep haunting me. "easily satisfied...lovers so less wild."

I don't want to be easily satisfied. I don't want less wild lovers. I want the one who's so grand he frightens me. But I'm so easily satisfied. How disappointing. Is He disappointed in me, too?

It reminds me of this chapter in John Eldridge's book The Sacred Romance. I think the chapter is actually called Less Wild Lovers. I'm not sure I even read it. I think I was afraid of what I'd find. I'm still afraid, but not so afraid that I want to stop. I want to run. I want to run until I'm home. I want to run until I'm in my Father's arms. How do I run? How do I please the one who became incarnate for me, who loves me, who died for me, who knows me? Be a good girl? But I'm not a good girl. Be perfect? I would love to be, but I believe it's beyond my capability in this life.

Do you know Rebecca St. James' song Lion? That's what I want. The rush of knowing the power before me, the terror of it, and the confidence that what's before me is Good.

What are these whispers in my head? What will they turn me into, and am I ready?

"Because money cannot buy
A husband's jealous eye..."

My biggest fear about my Faith

Do you ever worry that it's not...real? Worse than that, that it is real and the answer's right there and you can't quite grasp it?

So often in my life I've felt like that scene in Dante's Infirno, where you're constantly chasing flags while fleeing a swarm of bees, knowing both that you'll never catch the flags and if you stop you'll be overtaken.

My greatest terror is not that I'll end up alone, or even that I'll end up with someone "bad," but that on the day that I am judged, as I wait in longing, it will turn out that longing for God was not enough. That believing with what little faith I have was not enough. That it will turn out that I simply didn't get it, or, for you Calvinists, that It simply didn't get me. And that God will turn to me and not know me and not love me and I'll be cast from the presence of the one thing I truly ache for. Perhaps because I didn't ache for it enough while not in His presence.

Which brings me to wonder about a works based salvation and if, in fact, that's really what I've turned this into. Even if the work is "getting it." I have a difficult time believing that believing and confessing is all we do, or that we only have to do it once. And, even if it's true, how do we know personally that we're among the elect?

There's a song by Sojourn that goes -
Mistaken souls that dream of heaven and make their empty boast
of inward joy and sins forgiven while slaves to greed and lust

I am terrified of being that person, the mistaken soul. It's a desperate consuming terror. Forget Hell. This isn't even a discussion of the punishment as much as the deprivation of the presence of God. How could you even notice suffering if you'd just seen Him only to be deprived of Him? Your own internal suffering would overwhelm everything else. The dispair would be never ending. And that's what I'm afraid of.

I'm not fool enough to claim inward joy. I'm not sure I've ever had sustainable joy or peace. I long for it, but I've not got it. Instead, I have longing. Consuming longing for something I can neither see nor sense nor touch. I've never felt much different any of the hundred times I said the sinner's prayer as a child, nor when I said my own as an adolescent, nor when I was baptized. I thought there was supposed to be something, like, like love at first sight. You just *know*. But all I know is that the older I get the more I realize that I don't *know* much.

Being a Christian is supposed to change us. How much and how fast? How much and how fast is personal proof? Or, is personal improvement not proof of anything more than a strong will? What if you didn't want to improve? Situational conditioning? Softening with age? If "belief" is all that's require than those who prayed a prayer and went on to live their lives as normal, are they going to be in heaven? Will God know their names? Will he know mine, even if I had sins I never overcame?

And, what is the standard for a godly woman? I hear things like good marriage is a "godly man and a godly woman pursuing and loving one another through godly means." But...what is godly? That goes back to the "how much is enough?" question. And, I don't ask it in a desire to do as little as required, rather more the opposite, but a desire to have some point in which I can quench that nagging voice that tells me that I never do enough I never am enough. I tend to go with "you're godly if you're as perfectly like God as a human can be." Unfortunately I'm pretty sure I'll never reach that standard while alive, and if I've somehow misunderstood the Gospel than not when I'm dead either. So, what happens if I meet a godly guy? Well, if he's interested in me than I can't accept his advances because I am most certainly not godly. Though equally I'd be baffled how he managed godliness. And yet, to live as an unbeliever is unacceptable, right? To bend scripture to make excuses, or to fit it to what you understand of the practical world, or to what you desire or think is best; all of that is unacceptable. So, if you don't do that are you godly? Or, do you have to do that plus be sociable (an extrovert if possible, get brain surgery if neccessary), have an hour long quiet time every day, write devotionals, be a leader (be going into ministry if possible, apparently there's one acceptable reason for debt; seminary) in some ministry in the church, go to church at least twice a week, participate in at least one weekly bible study, street evangelize, go on mission trips for foreign countries, wear cardigans and kackies, pray under your breath all the time, adopt an annoying person, read only Christian books, and have at least one accountability partner (or, if you're a woman, also have a mentor).

Is that what being a good Christian is?
If I somehow manage all that plus a job and personal interests without having an nervous breakdown will I than feel solid in my salvation?
If we can't be saved through good works can we be sanctified through them?
Can you *want* to be saved but not be allowed?
Is desire proof enough? What if desire rarely (or never) becomes action? What then?
How do you define godliness, and why does everyone assume that the definition is universally understood?

And, how do I know that I'm not just chasing after the wind in everything I do. And, if perchance I look inside myself and see that all my motives are tainted, that all actions are selfish at their root, then what? How does someone corrupted in a corrupt world become pure? How can I become anything to anyone? How can I be sure God wants me and has chosen me? How can I work out my salvation with fear and trembling so that the fear and trembling eventually gives way to confidence and...godliness (whatever that looks like)?