(Written yesterday in church. Stupid of me to not post it until now, but oh well)
I dreamed through last night, glorious pasts and slight nightmares all in succession. I awoke remembering things I hadn't thought of for ten years, with a newly rediscovered understanding that even so long a time as sixteen years is still entirely composed of a finite number of small, bite-sized chunks of memory, with the occasional dramatic shift here and there.
I am in church right now, writing on the back of a tiny pamphlet ("Upward Basketball - Where Every Child Is a Winner!"), and have a new theory - that the huge success of Colonial Baptist Church is due to its incredibly adept emotional manipulation (a skill prevalent in a number of areas other than religion, but obtrusively obvious in this area at this time to this person). Going to a worship is like having some dealer pushing heroin on you; these people are pious junkies - that much can be easily seen in the blankly smiling faces, their reflexively upraised hands. They are defined by the drug and would be crippled without it.
Today, however, the sermon is very interesting. Part of the Scripture reading used was Romans 7:7-12:
What shall we say, then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! Indeed I would not have known what sin was except through the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, "Do not covet." But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetous desire. For apart from law, sin is dead. Once I was alive apart from law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died. I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death. For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death. So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good. I know, absolutely know that I'd never read this passage before, because it jumped out at me so strongly. I first thought I'd misheard, then, looking at the text, took it for irony or some sinner-persona. I was astounded when I found it was neither. It seems analogous to that distinctly non-Christian saying, which in all of its doubtlessly countless iterations goes to the effect that the punishment creates the crime - the implication is that humankind has no innate moral sense independent of God's law, which in turn suggests that the law is, to the purpose of humanity, arbitrary.
posted on Monday, September 08, 2003
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