Wow, that girl looks creepy.<br><br>It's ok though, she is kinda supposed to be creepy; or sketchy, at the very least. Or it's not even a she, it's more like an androgynous being, or a figment of one's imagination- but no, it's not a "she" for the sake of being a she. In context of this design post, it's the personification of the voice we all hear in our minds- some call it a conscience, others call it their moral compass, or most of us just consider it our normal conscious thought- the voice that affects our countenance and perspective more than we think it does.<br><br>I won't speak for anyone else, but I talk to myself quite often, and those who know me closely will easily agree with that statement. I have flowing conversations that are only punctuated by even more fragments of conversations within my head, and so it goes on throughout my day that I just focus these one-person conversations unto Jesus, and freely speak to him all my thoughts, learning that hiding what is already known means nothing as an act of piety, and in doing so unlocking the joys of becoming free to approach him as I am, neuroses and all; besides, he would not have implored us to come to him as we are, heavy, burdened, faulty, confused, and incomplete if he did not absolutely mean it. So on I go doing my best to remain transparent before my God, and at the same time pressing in to sharpen my discerning ears with which to hear His voice- which, I'm coming to find out, is a difficult thing to keep separate from the stained perceptions and broken understandings we carry with us. And that's how "A Miserable Comfort" began.. <br><br>It all snowballed from a friend's recent status update that drew many comments, one of them being this: "...maybe God wants you to pray more." It's purpose is innocuous but it began my train of thought regarding how I place my conception of God based on my experiences with authority figures, the church, and my culture ONTO Him, which, until I really begin asking the Holy Spirit to unlearn in me those things and get re-taught who He is according to Him, can become destructive. I don't know how many times I've tried to make sense of my life's circumstances through a god who I feel speaks to me mostly to remind me of what I'm not doing enough of and what I should be doing better at, spurring me on not by affirmation but by the whiplashes of guilt and shame, urging me to present a better self, to be perfect because he is perfect. I have lived convinced of this normalcy until that facebook comment triggered a desire to ask God, "is it really you that actively causes misfortune just to remind me of what I'm falling short at? Is it really true that you will inflict disaster on me for the sake of highlighting my failures at pleasing you? DO YOU DELIGHT IN PUNISHING ME SO THAT I CAN BE MORE SHAMEFULLY AWARE OF HOW MUCH I AM NOT DOING FOR YOU?" And those questions lead me to study Job, the poster boy of Christianity's divine explanation for tragic events. While this could tangent into the typical discourse of "does God allow evil?", I instead want to just touch on the difference between Job's reaction to his circumstances versus his three stooges of friends who came to "comfort" him.<br><br>Long story short, Job only insists on proving his righteousness before God, knowing that he will be vindicated by his faith in Him, while his three friends are appalled by his "pious" insistence and accuses him of great sin (very passively-aggressively too, which apparently is still the way to do it in this day and age) AS EVIDENCED BY HIS TRAGEDIES. "Is it for your innocence that [God] rebukes you? Is not your wickedness great, are your sins not endless?" (Job 22, spoken by Eliphaz). It's this sentence that characterizes a common attitude that plagues all of us Christians: we would rather override the truth that God IS LOVE, that God has nothing but our good in store for us, that God protectively sees us as the apple of His eye, with a misguided fragment that we earn God's goodness as evidenced by blessings, and that we earn God's displeasure as evidenced by tragedies- it's this sort of upside-down thinking that welcomes in guilt, shame, self-deprecation, and a heavy condemning spirit. Instead of His beloved that has been set free, we trudge on with desperate performances to earn respite from the heaviness we feel He has inflicted on us.<br><br> Or do we forget that Satan's name means "The Accuser", as he is the one who "lays accusations on our brothers and sisters before our God, day and night..." (Revelation 12), that he was the one who sniped at Job's character and sneered at his ulterior motivations for loving our God (Job 1), or that he was the one who stood at the right side of a high priest, ready to accuse him before God (Zechariah 3)? I don't dare to speak on behalf of anyone else's walk, but I know for myself, I have fallen under his guise too many times- that I've mistaken his piously-coated accusations as holy convictions, as God-caused, shame-inducing rebukes; never considering that, as the apostle Paul once warned the Corinthian church, "Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light... as servant[s] of righteousness." (2 Corinthians 11). This is not to say that all rebuke is terrible, that accountability has no place: THAT WOULD BE COMPLETELY WONKERS AND UNBIBLICAL AND OUTRIGHT STUPID. What I am trying to relate is that God is completely "for us... He who did not spare his own Son, how will he not also GRACIOUSLY give us all things? WHO WILL BRING ANY CHARGE AGAINST THOSE WHOM HE HAS CHOSEN? Christ Jesus... is at the right hand of God and is interceding on our behalf..." (Romans 8). And if that were the case, any "rebukes" and "corrections" that lead to self-condemnation should be recognized as the work of he who steals, kills, and destroys our identities as the sons and daughters of the Most High and not of God himself, for there is "no condemnation for those who are in him". (Romans 8). Tough, tough conversation to fully explain, but the bottom line of the design is to get at this: Our human nature will give and receive rebukes and correction to/from others that may inadequately communicate God's UNCOMPROMISING love for us, so whats important is to recognize that if/when this happens, we need to be armed with His word in our hearts to continually refresh our minds as to who we really are in His sight: those who have been snatched from the fire, the ones called blameless through faith, His people credited as righteous in His sight through Christ. In this fight for my mind, I can only hope to keep growing in discernment that sometimes, what can seem "godly" can actually really be a deceptive ploy to force more misunderstandings about my God, leaving me in nothing but a miserable comfort. 2009-06-25T10:03:19Z 26 23 33 /images/090625AMiserableComfort-990.jpg /images/090625AMiserableComfort-640.jpg /images/090625AMiserableComfort-244.jpg JesusBranded explores the difference between conviction and accusation with this Christian T-shirt 59 6 59 /images/090625AMiserableComfort-shirts.jpg 2009-06-25T10:08:55Z miserable-comfort 2009