Tuesday, November 28, 2006

A tangled web

I go to a meeting on ecunet called 'Quotes to live with' quite frequently. I revisit some of the old posts and find them helping in my meditation on scripture and how to live my life. Today I came across the familiar 'tangled web' quote of Sir Walter Scott, it brought to mind some recent instances of hidden places brought to life. The ruination of Haggard when the hypocrisy of his preaching against the homosexual lifestyle while buying drugs and sex comes to mind as but one example. But what makes some of this incomprehensible to me is all the energy one would have to devote to keeping secrets and track of the lies. I simply don't have the energy to manage that. I can do avoidance of the whole truth, but then I don't have to keep track of what I've said. But lying - it just seems like more work than I want to go through for such little results. I've done denial - I spent most of my life denying my sexual orientation. But I still didn't have to keep track of everything, though I did ignore a lot of signs that became obvious once I admitted that I was attracted to my own gender.

So Scott's tangled web seems perfectly apposite to life as a Christian or life in general. It is just too much work to deceive ourselves or others, yet we do it. Perhaps it's because there is always something that we don't like about ourselves and don't want to have to admit it to others. Yet, if we really do want to follow Christ (rather than just call ourselves Christian) we will look to hold all of our life up to the light. We'll pry around in the dark corners and bring what we find into the open. We'll cut the Gordian knot and free ourselves from the things that keep us from fully knowing God.

A tangled web may be a comfortable place in which to rest, but sooner or later we'll find that we are stuck. In the light may be a little less comfortable, but will enable us to find new joys that are unknowable while still trapped in a web of deception. So come into the light, cut the Gordian knot, escape from the stuck places and learn to be free.

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