life: unmasked — the ugly truth (in which i talk about not talking about mark driscoll, and other things)

Today, I share a post about life: unmasked, a blog meme started by my sensational friend, Joy.

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This space has seen a lot of transition in the past year. There was a time–please, I beg you, do not search my archives–where I thought self-depricating humor drew the most attention. (Yes, I blogged for attention.) Then I spent my time floundering around trying to come up with topics in a breathless, airy sort of jargon. And now, here, as I try to watch the rerun of Top Chef I had missed and blog at the same time, the space feels that it has come into its own, has become an entity with a reliable tone.

And often, that tone is a mingling of reverence and aesthetic holiness.

I’m aware of this, for it accurately reflects how I think. But I wonder if sometimes what is written here gives you the impression of a person very different from who I am. As the commenter pointed out a few months ago, apparently in real life I can be a jerk.

Fair or unfair, that assessment is true from time to time. As I reflect on the past year, how this space has changed, I realize that I do give an awful lot of time to talking about how the light hits a painting, or the candles on the alter, or the way the ground feels when you traverse it with bare and hallowed feet. That’s who I am, deep and true.

But I am also posts about Proverbs 31 movements that are horribly misguided and a handful of other things that rub me raw in my spirit.

For instance, I have been asked by now well over ten respectable, good blogging friends to review Mark Driscoll’s new book. I spent some time considering it, I even read the first chapter, and while I applaud many of my dear friends who have carefully picked apart the lurid piece of trash that it is, I myself cannot begin to write a review about it.

Why?

Because, I am honest with you here: Mark Driscoll makes me physically angry.

Nearly everything he says comes across to me as a manipulation of the Gospel. I am one of those people that feel a violent indignation when God is misrepresented, to the point that it makes me feel ill. So when Mark misquotes Scripture or claims at a youth conference that the cross was the earliest symbol of the Christians–even though the crucifixion is not depicted until the fourth century in art and before that Christ was most often featured in images of baptism and as the good shepherd–my hands clench into fists and a fury walks down my back.

This is wrong.

I don’t think it’s wrong for me to feel this way about what he says, for I do find it often contrary to Scripture and, well, history. But the way I feel it, the way it can creep in and sit in my heart, that is a mark of sin.

And Mark’s not the only person or thing that does this to me. I have stayed my hand much on exactly what I think about fraternities and sororities, though the day will come when I do not; I have held my tongue when it comes to translations of the Bible that misinterpret for the sake of audience entire passages of the Text.

This is not to spring a surprise in which I say that a series is rolling out where all the things that piss me off shall have their own post to be an outlet, but to confess an ugly truth: as inhuman the things I blog are–brushing up against the hem of the Divine–I am still very much human. I am still very much painfully aware of my need for grace.

I have learned enough to know that there are some things that are more flesh than Holy Ghost–though those two get tangled an awful lot.

So when a Proverbs 31 rolls around, Holy Ghost pools in my fingers and I know it’s time to write. But more often than not, it’s flesh. When Driscoll rides up with his butchering the Gospel for American Idol style preaching, I have to learn to sit out on some battles because they aren’t worth my time and they aren’t of the Spirit.

For, let’s be frank, my wit is often stronger than my heart, and I can turn a very, very cruel phrase.

As all my wonderful, honorable friends review that trite book this week, I need to sit this one out. They have a way with grace that I do not.

So the next time you stumble on a post from me about Holy Ghost tumbling over the water and the fullness of time, remember that I, too, from time to time, swear when I stub my toe.

And, goodness, that’s the least of it. (Ask my closest friends. Lord have mercy upon them.)

And this, my friends, is life unmasked.

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It is my joy, with Joy, to share here words that expose life honestly, openly, and messily. Some days my posts for this meme are about this chaos of being, other days I manage a bit more gentle words.Would you join us in sharing the vulnerable times, the unordered times, the unkempt rooms? 

© 2012, Preston. All rights reserved.