Ponderings
I actually had a few thoughts today about my Bible-reading, and since I have the leisure to do so, thought I'd jot them down here.
In the Old Testament, I read the story of God providing the children of Israel daily manna when they left Egypt and were wandering in the desert. Now, I believe all of the Old Testament is relevant. Even the laws that seem ridiculous had some sort of important symbolism. I can't pretend to discern what they all stand for, and of course Christians believe that the coming of Christ fulfilled certain aspects of the law which rendered them no longer necessary (the sacrifice of innocent animal blood being the most clear-cut).
This story, however, has always had a pretty clear-cut symbolism, and one that is absolutely still relevant. God wants us to depend only on Him every single day. Being willfully dependent is not a mindset that is easy for us to embrace in this day and age. We tend to look on those who want others to do everything for them with contempt. Heck, I've been feeling that way about my Dad for the past... forever. But obviously there is a difference between dependence on God and dependence on man.
For those of you who are reading this that might not be familiar with the story, the manna was a honey-flavored bread that appeared on the ground every morning for the children of Israel to gather and eat. With the exception of the day before the Sabbath, they were explicitly commanded not to gather any more than what they needed for one day. Those who disobeyed found that the manna got moldy and full of worms the following day.
God is not providing us with literal manna from heaven. There is no need of it. Some day, if there were a need, he absolutely could. But he does provide us with renewed daily portions of faith, of talent, of perseverance, of humility, of compassion, of forgiveness -- any virtue that he has stipulated which we are to use as a tool to navigate this life is one he provides. And we should use it all up every day and not hold any back for tomorrow. He will provide all of it fresh tomorrow.
I learned a lot about this two years ago when I was job-hunting. Ever since I started having a job at sixteen, the next job in line was always waiting for me (or achieved) as soon as I needed it. I had always been almost constantly employed. And it wasn't as if I wasn't grateful to God for each job, or recognize that he was taking care of me, but I expected when I got back from Chile that it would be the same situation. Snap, crackle, pop I would be back in the workforce with very little effort, because I had faith in that provision.
Well... I believe God wanted to demonstrate to me what it was like to have that faith in the low times and not just the high. Those seven months of not having a job were incredibly grueling to my spirit. It wasn't so bad at first when I was in class and when Pappy came to live with us in hospice. At that point, it because clear that I was exactly where I needed to be and that my unemployment was providential. So after he passed away, I once again lifted my attitude to the 'Snap, Crackle, Pop' and redoubled my job search efforts. That's when I started getting great interviews and striking out as the runner-up. I hit a low. I felt like a failure. I felt ashamed. All I wanted to do was sleep all day and escape the mental trap. I also found myself closer to the Lord than I think I ever have been, praying more, especially for other people. It got to a point where every time I started to 'woe-is-me' about the job situation, I would consciously stop and pray for somebody else to keep myself sane, and also try to keep things in perspective. After all, I had mom, who was putting me up: Food on the table, a warm, place to sleep. I wasn't suffering any place but in my head and my pride. I learned so much about being humble, and also about sympathizing with people who were in an even worse boat than I was with respect to livelihood.
Then I got the Goodyear job, and sometimes I still stop and feel amazed, like I might wake up and it's all a dream. I pray to God that I never, ever lose sight of what a blessing it is, or complain too loudly about having to go to work. It's SUCH an easy trap to fall into, and every once in a while I have to backpedal and reboot my gratitude circuits. Perspective, perspective, perspective.
God give me the discernment and willingness to use up my daily allotment of manna.
For the New Testament, the reading was one of the encounters between Jesus and the Pharisees, where they try to trip him up on doctrine. Asking, if a single woman is married to seven men (in accordance with the law, wherein each preceding husband dies), which of them will be her husband in heaven? He answers that marriage is not the same in heaven, but that we are like the angels.
It occurred to me, first of all, that this scripture is likely the origin of the popular imagery of people becoming angels when they get to heaven, which is not something I believe at all. Angels are one kind of creation. Humankind is another. I believe he was only saying that the sexual need to bond and cleave will be gone.
I've always taken immense comfort in this scripture, because human sexuality causes so much grief at the end of the day. I know, I know, that's almost blasphemy in this country. I mean, SEX IS TEH BEST THING EVER OMG WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO LIVE WITHOUT IT?!?!?!?!?!?! Well, for starters, we would have relationships with other people as God intended, where that cloud of confusion is lifted and we can know each other without all the tension.
It's a really strange thought, I know, but I believe people who were husbands and wives here on Earth will be more like brother and sister in heaven. There will be no side effects of our sin-stained existence, no need to procreate (which isn't to say there couldn't be any-- I think God delights greatly in children), but without the driving need what use would you have for libido? It's such an instinctive thing.
As for the pleasurable aspects, I don't even think our human minds are in any way, shape, or form capable of comprehending what an existence free from all evil temptation would be like. Sometimes I feel like I can catch a small sliver of it out of the corner of my spiritual mind, and it's so beautiful. What a relief. I think what I'm saying is, the idea that we're going to miss being carnal creatures is just plain laughable.
This is one of the reasons, as a Christian fully ascribing to Biblical morality, I try to temper my attitudes toward homosexuality. Or rather, homosexual people. I do believe homosexuality is wrong, but in the light of everything I've just been saying, I really kind of believe heterosexuality to the degree we take it is just as wrong-- that is, none of us were meant to be this way. I know that there are some homosexual people who no matter what happens, what people say to them, what struggles they might have internally, they're never not going to feel homosexual. Do I believe it should be turned away from? Yes, yes I do. But I have compassion on the fact of it. It's not something that's going to go away just because someone flings a Bible verse self-righteously in someone's face to hide their discomfort. I struggle with how to communicate this compassion, (and oftentimes fail), but I pray daily that God will help me find the right balance between conviction and love.
This verse and these concepts were also the inspiration for a particular element of the series that Laura and I are writing. Our world features a race of fairies, and after writing them in the early drafts we were trying to find ways to make them not feel simply like tiny humans with wings, but a truly unique species. After years of fandom and being discouraged that people want to kinky ship EVERYTHING THAT BREATHES (I mean, my gosh, people write Toothless/Hiccup fanfic. Toothless is an animal, for crying out loud!!!) we made the decision that the fairy race in our series does not experience romantic love or sexuality. They do have a means of procreation (which probably won't ever be mentioned in the series, but we have worked it out in case anybody asks), but all of their one-on-one relationships are always 100% platonic. Now, I know that this would never stop fanfic writers from doing their own thing, and I've broken enough canon here and there to not really care, but I just hope that someone, somewhere with the knowledge that these two characters will never, ever feel that way about each other, literally CANNOT feel that way each other, will shine the focus for once on the higher, purer kinds of love that are just as strong, just as important, and so often overlooked.
Well, I didn't mean to ramble so long. Apparently I had a lot to say!!
In the Old Testament, I read the story of God providing the children of Israel daily manna when they left Egypt and were wandering in the desert. Now, I believe all of the Old Testament is relevant. Even the laws that seem ridiculous had some sort of important symbolism. I can't pretend to discern what they all stand for, and of course Christians believe that the coming of Christ fulfilled certain aspects of the law which rendered them no longer necessary (the sacrifice of innocent animal blood being the most clear-cut).
This story, however, has always had a pretty clear-cut symbolism, and one that is absolutely still relevant. God wants us to depend only on Him every single day. Being willfully dependent is not a mindset that is easy for us to embrace in this day and age. We tend to look on those who want others to do everything for them with contempt. Heck, I've been feeling that way about my Dad for the past... forever. But obviously there is a difference between dependence on God and dependence on man.
For those of you who are reading this that might not be familiar with the story, the manna was a honey-flavored bread that appeared on the ground every morning for the children of Israel to gather and eat. With the exception of the day before the Sabbath, they were explicitly commanded not to gather any more than what they needed for one day. Those who disobeyed found that the manna got moldy and full of worms the following day.
God is not providing us with literal manna from heaven. There is no need of it. Some day, if there were a need, he absolutely could. But he does provide us with renewed daily portions of faith, of talent, of perseverance, of humility, of compassion, of forgiveness -- any virtue that he has stipulated which we are to use as a tool to navigate this life is one he provides. And we should use it all up every day and not hold any back for tomorrow. He will provide all of it fresh tomorrow.
I learned a lot about this two years ago when I was job-hunting. Ever since I started having a job at sixteen, the next job in line was always waiting for me (or achieved) as soon as I needed it. I had always been almost constantly employed. And it wasn't as if I wasn't grateful to God for each job, or recognize that he was taking care of me, but I expected when I got back from Chile that it would be the same situation. Snap, crackle, pop I would be back in the workforce with very little effort, because I had faith in that provision.
Well... I believe God wanted to demonstrate to me what it was like to have that faith in the low times and not just the high. Those seven months of not having a job were incredibly grueling to my spirit. It wasn't so bad at first when I was in class and when Pappy came to live with us in hospice. At that point, it because clear that I was exactly where I needed to be and that my unemployment was providential. So after he passed away, I once again lifted my attitude to the 'Snap, Crackle, Pop' and redoubled my job search efforts. That's when I started getting great interviews and striking out as the runner-up. I hit a low. I felt like a failure. I felt ashamed. All I wanted to do was sleep all day and escape the mental trap. I also found myself closer to the Lord than I think I ever have been, praying more, especially for other people. It got to a point where every time I started to 'woe-is-me' about the job situation, I would consciously stop and pray for somebody else to keep myself sane, and also try to keep things in perspective. After all, I had mom, who was putting me up: Food on the table, a warm, place to sleep. I wasn't suffering any place but in my head and my pride. I learned so much about being humble, and also about sympathizing with people who were in an even worse boat than I was with respect to livelihood.
Then I got the Goodyear job, and sometimes I still stop and feel amazed, like I might wake up and it's all a dream. I pray to God that I never, ever lose sight of what a blessing it is, or complain too loudly about having to go to work. It's SUCH an easy trap to fall into, and every once in a while I have to backpedal and reboot my gratitude circuits. Perspective, perspective, perspective.
God give me the discernment and willingness to use up my daily allotment of manna.
For the New Testament, the reading was one of the encounters between Jesus and the Pharisees, where they try to trip him up on doctrine. Asking, if a single woman is married to seven men (in accordance with the law, wherein each preceding husband dies), which of them will be her husband in heaven? He answers that marriage is not the same in heaven, but that we are like the angels.
It occurred to me, first of all, that this scripture is likely the origin of the popular imagery of people becoming angels when they get to heaven, which is not something I believe at all. Angels are one kind of creation. Humankind is another. I believe he was only saying that the sexual need to bond and cleave will be gone.
I've always taken immense comfort in this scripture, because human sexuality causes so much grief at the end of the day. I know, I know, that's almost blasphemy in this country. I mean, SEX IS TEH BEST THING EVER OMG WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO LIVE WITHOUT IT?!?!?!?!?!?! Well, for starters, we would have relationships with other people as God intended, where that cloud of confusion is lifted and we can know each other without all the tension.
It's a really strange thought, I know, but I believe people who were husbands and wives here on Earth will be more like brother and sister in heaven. There will be no side effects of our sin-stained existence, no need to procreate (which isn't to say there couldn't be any-- I think God delights greatly in children), but without the driving need what use would you have for libido? It's such an instinctive thing.
As for the pleasurable aspects, I don't even think our human minds are in any way, shape, or form capable of comprehending what an existence free from all evil temptation would be like. Sometimes I feel like I can catch a small sliver of it out of the corner of my spiritual mind, and it's so beautiful. What a relief. I think what I'm saying is, the idea that we're going to miss being carnal creatures is just plain laughable.
This is one of the reasons, as a Christian fully ascribing to Biblical morality, I try to temper my attitudes toward homosexuality. Or rather, homosexual people. I do believe homosexuality is wrong, but in the light of everything I've just been saying, I really kind of believe heterosexuality to the degree we take it is just as wrong-- that is, none of us were meant to be this way. I know that there are some homosexual people who no matter what happens, what people say to them, what struggles they might have internally, they're never not going to feel homosexual. Do I believe it should be turned away from? Yes, yes I do. But I have compassion on the fact of it. It's not something that's going to go away just because someone flings a Bible verse self-righteously in someone's face to hide their discomfort. I struggle with how to communicate this compassion, (and oftentimes fail), but I pray daily that God will help me find the right balance between conviction and love.
This verse and these concepts were also the inspiration for a particular element of the series that Laura and I are writing. Our world features a race of fairies, and after writing them in the early drafts we were trying to find ways to make them not feel simply like tiny humans with wings, but a truly unique species. After years of fandom and being discouraged that people want to kinky ship EVERYTHING THAT BREATHES (I mean, my gosh, people write Toothless/Hiccup fanfic. Toothless is an animal, for crying out loud!!!) we made the decision that the fairy race in our series does not experience romantic love or sexuality. They do have a means of procreation (which probably won't ever be mentioned in the series, but we have worked it out in case anybody asks), but all of their one-on-one relationships are always 100% platonic. Now, I know that this would never stop fanfic writers from doing their own thing, and I've broken enough canon here and there to not really care, but I just hope that someone, somewhere with the knowledge that these two characters will never, ever feel that way about each other, literally CANNOT feel that way each other, will shine the focus for once on the higher, purer kinds of love that are just as strong, just as important, and so often overlooked.
Well, I didn't mean to ramble so long. Apparently I had a lot to say!!