On Self-Observed Boyishness: Tonka Trucks & Destruction vs. Death

[lhynard]

Sadly, I must confess that I spent at least 15 minutes today right after lunch watching a big, yellow, Caterpillar roll over a mount of crushed and broken brick, stone, and wood and rip and bash to shreds and bits yet another house on 3200 block of N. Charles & St. Paul. Mournfully, I must confess that I enjoyed watching this destruction.

Comments

[sadeyedartist]

??? No clue. This is one that I have accepted but completely without understanding it. Its one of those "what the heck, God?" questions I probably asked repeatedly in childhood while watching my brothers. (Who, as I recall, had at least three Tonka trucks.) I wonder if this is a flipside of loving to build because of the fall or something. I can't tell whether this bent toward distruction is sin-related or somehow naturally good. (Not that I have any first-hand understanding.) When I destroy things, it usually is a. out of frustration (not that this happens often, and the thing being destroyed is generally something that needed to be destroyed anyway--such as excess paper.) or b. am preparing it to be rebuilt in some way/made into art

[shadewright]

In the same vein as my comment below:

Dressing up is mostly a girl thing because women were created to find great joy in their husbands' joy over them. (Before anyone cries chauvenist, read Genesis 3:16b. Also, the Song of Solomon.)

You were created to be a chaste seductress -- to find in your husband's attraction to you an echo of a holy God's desire for all of us.

The possible perversions of this God-given desire are too obvious to enummerate.

[sadeyedartist]

No idea of chauvanism crosses my mind. Being a girl, you see, I understand this personally from the flipside. One of my deepest desires is to fulfill a need in someone that only I can, and to please him in ways that only I know how to. I think that if I were to modify language, I would make two verbs for "to be beautiful". They would be: "to be beautiful" and "to be beautiful for". These are very different things. An objective beauty can be meaningless. Objectively, I would not consider myself beautiful. On the scale of hotness, I am average to slightly above on a good day. Ironically, though (and although I usually believe in the idea of objective beauty--my sixth graders semi-proved that during a critique. Art has fairly obvious standards when you are dealing with observational work), this does not have the capacity to bother me IF one person finds me specifically beautiful. What do I need with the whole world if I'm only in need of one pair of eyes? If I have "his", I don't need "theirs". I believe this is true of every woman. (

[shadewright]

Yes, there is a genuine void. For guys too.

Let me ask, though:

Would your life and self-perspective be different if you believed deeply that God takes delight and satisfaction in you, that He is inpsired even to song by your beauty? That your every breath gives Him pleasure more surely than it will your husband?

[sadeyedartist]

I'm rather disinclined to believe this. It also seems pretty abstract. (Aren't we made "like the angels" in heaven anyway?) You can't really dress up for God. . . .

[shadewright]

I think that I was trying (clumsily) to get to something broader than dressing up. You said that, without someone to appreciate you, there was a part of your femeninity missing, and that you might as well be a soul-carrying robot.

Do you believe then that God loves only the abstract thing you call your "soul?"

Or is He, like a loving Father, pleased and blessed by everything about you, simply because you are His, and He made you the way you are?

Spousal void

[lhynard]

Even if God is blessed by everything about His children -- and I think He is -- I do not think that appreciation of us, His creations, fills this -- shall we say? -- "spousal void

[sadeyedartist]

I need faith to believe this, I guess.

[shadewright]

I would like to see you believe this only because I think a lot of you (you come very highly spoken of), and it is my heart to see you blessed and fulfilled as much as possible this side of heaven.

Let me encourage you to re-read Phillipians 1:3-11. What is the work that God began in you at salvation, that He is even now performing in you, and will only be complete upon the day of Christ Jesus?

Let me also encourage you to re-read John 17:20-25. What do you think it meant when Jesus prayed that we would be one with the Trinity, He in us and the Father in Him?

I'll be praying for you--not that you will agree with me but that, no matter what you decide about the "issue," you will know more deeply that it was God's love for you that drew Him to you in the first place.

[sadeyedartist]

I've never responded to this, but I have oft thought about it