poetry and the revolution

G.K. Chesterton said that the poet tries to get his head into the heavens, while the rational man tries to get the heavens into his head. Consequently, it is his head that splits. This is why there are no poets in the madhouse.

In about 2 weeks, it will be the 2 year anniversary of the death of Stephen Robert Johnson from cancer. For those of you who were not blessed to know such a great friend and God-bought soldier, he died within a week of his diagnosis. Nobody had any idea he was sick, one day he was healthy, the next he died.

Do you realize what that kind of stuff does to a little pentecostal kid? I thought God moved and worked and did stuff. I thought he was active and alive. I thought he healed! So why did my friend die?

I still don't know. But last night, I learned that I don't have to know. In some deep mystic sense, God allowed me to believe a contradiction: that I was not responsible for his death and God wanted me to pray for the sick so much so that I believed they would be healed.

I mean think about it. If we lived in the cold iron prison of logic, then because I prayed for him and he was not healed, I was responsible. I couldn't deal with that responsibliity, so obviously God didn't want us to pray for the sick.

I was wrong in both counts. Last night at visions, through a series of events most peculiar, I was led to pray for my friend Laurie. She has fiber myalgia and the doctors said she will live in pain for the rest of her life. She had to give up sign language, the violin and many other things she loves because of this pain that made efforts to dominate her life. We prayed for her and now she is no longer in pain.

I WAS NOT RESPONSIBLE! GOD WANTS ME TO PRAY FOR THE SICK! Logically, this makes no sense and I'm not advocating we check our brains at the door here, but maybe we should acknowledge our reason has limits. There were several varied factors that led to Steve's death; these factors were both spiritual and physical, emotional and mental. We live in a ruined world. Cells divide and destroy a man's brain, tsunamis kill millions of the coast of Asia, mothers kill there babies and children blow the brains out their classmates. Why? Where is God? Why doesn't he do something to fix His world?

I really feel after last night that we are the answer to this question. There has been this huge dichtomy in the middle of evangelicalism between social justice and miracles. The pentecostals (usually republicans) want people to help themselves. Have enough faith and be healed. Work out your own salvation. Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps (with the help of the word of God, of course!). The liberal Christians (usually democrats) want to look after the physical needs of a person, ignoring the spirtual. They exchange being happy for being good. "those who are too heavenly minded are no earthly good" they shout, never understanding that denying the people spirtual good is to slip them a poison just as deadly.

How does this relate to healing? Because the world is fallen, people hurt, die, sin. Bodies get sick, souls sin, earthquakes happen and DJ's die of cancer. All of these are problems and all of these, God never intended to happen. He designed the world with life in mind and not death. This is what he sent the church to fix. We will not get all of them. That's not the point. The point is that we try. Because in a mystical sense, fighting for God against sickness, disease, poverty and death rescue our own souls. To believe that God might actually say yes to something we ask is to treat Him not only as a person but as one who loves us. God is not a concept. He is a person.

I mean I understand God has a plan for everything, that trying to manipulate God with a contrived formula of faith is trying to tame the Wildness of the All-mighty Lion of Judah. God will not be cajoled nor will he be manipulated. You cannot put Him into a box so He must do what You want.

But you also cannot put Him into a box by saying He can't heal either. Plus, I think He is a sucker for people. He gives Israel a King because they asked. It was the worst thing that ever happened to them. The Kings were a large part of why Israel just got nationhood back 50 years ago after a dispersion of several millenia. The effectively shafted the people of God in the worst possible way. God is almost willing to try our requests out, even if He knows it will probably be harmful for His people in the long run. Maybe, He wants us to love Him so bad that He is willing to make every concession He can. Maybe He is infintely more concerned about being in love than He is about being right. Maybe, This is why Christ tells us to pray, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. That when we pray the Lord's prayer, we really say, "God I will make petitions on a regular basis. Say no, even if I ask, because I ask for harmful things." Maybe to ask omniscience anything is to ask for a step down from His plan in the first place. Wouldn't He have know the best and given it anyway?

This is all speculation and proabably a lot more jarbled than it needs to be. I am not trying to make theological statements here. I have no idea how to begin such a discussion. All I am advocating is that we accept two very contradictory statements: We are not responsible for the world's sorid state of affairs, but we are called to fix it.

post lots

Daniel