Faith Fills Fetid Furrows of Filth

Over the past few weeks I seem to have encountered a theme of sorts in various writings, words, messages and images. It's one I frequently find myself confronting, as a member of humanity, but I've rarely given it the thought I have of late, whether due to the frequency, poignancy, or some latent revulsion, which perhaps should be the norm, to the vile, evil, sinful, pick your euphemism, definition, or palatable poison for the term that encompasses our collective fall, and subsequent damnation outside of grace, but that's the issue.

The recent fixation settled in and culminated with some recent blogs in this small community (for me at least). When I read Butterfly Dreamer's blog, "Howl on Baby..." I had just recently finished reading the long-censured chapter of Fyodor Dostoevsky's "Devils", wherein a man confesses to what I (and most) have always thought to be the most horrendous crime imaginable. Still the confession is preempted by a question: "...can you move a mountain or not?" and the response of the isolated, aesthetic, monk is: "If God bids me move it, I can." The monk's reaction to the horrific tale told by the amoral confessor is one of the hardest depictions of grace for me to fathom; I'm not sure such forgiveness is in me, but I'm sure such forgiveness exists.

So when I read about embracing our dark side my initial response was that I've been trying not to associate humanity with darkness, or, in failing that, to be grateful for the greater things that aid us in rising above our "humanity" to become something even better:

Grace, Love, Hope, Faith, Truth, Peace, Forgiveness, Patience, Peace, every (capital letter) virtue we can name that acts as light - and darkness is nothing but the absence of light.

Thus my rebuttal to any proclamation that professes that darkness is the, or one of the primary defining aspects of the human condition, is: I'd rather not be human.

However in reading Ronnie Kerrigan's recent post, "The Human Condition, Indifference, and Evil", and having subjected myself, in degrees, to the dredges of depravity in beginning to read "American Psycho" and having watched a few random horror movies online, among them the infamous Hostel 2, (we had just booked a Hostel for our upcoming China trip) though I well knew what was awaiting me in these endeavors, I found the conclusion that "we are not all cut from the same cloth" to be slightly misleading.

I think we are cut from the same cloth, however some of us, through the accident of birth, through choice and consequence, through the guidance, care, and concern of others, but all ultimately by grace, fall into the hands of a skilled tailor, and are thereafter wrought with beautiful embroideries and embellishments, cared for, having our frayed or loose ends cut away, our tears mended, or stains cleaned, whereas others fall themselves victim to the abuses, if not of a willful other, than life at large, definitely through some volition, but without the guiding influence of those care-filled skilled hands to help, to form, to free us to be something far more than the filthy rag we could all become besides.

I try to live in the light, but there are aspects of the effort that are outside of my control. It's taken me a long time to recognize that striving for perfection is a futile endeavor. All of us need some measure of grace in our lives because we all make mistakes, willful, ignorant, or otherwise. We are all in need of someone, some human, who has endured to perfection, overcome where we have failed, stood where we have fallen, tread where we would not follow, lived in a way we wish we could, and died for all that all might live, and we can find bits and pieces of that person in the greatest people and characters in our lives, in history and in literature, but there is only one who fits the bill, and paid it in full. Perfection has been purchased for us and is offered as a gift.

We often take gifts for granted, not realizing their costs, and cost is relative, but the cost of grace is one we can all appreciate if we look at our culminated mistakes, misdeeds, and miseries and realize that they are gone, wiped clean, erased from the record of our lives except so far as the consequences play out in the here and now among our equally flawed contemporaries, but the perfect abundant grace of the only judge of life that matters has deemed that the debt is paid in full, if one would simply accept the gift.

It's not easy. There are things I've never done that I want to say are worse than those I have. The things I have done seem to me to account for a pittance of pain in the whole of existence, and of that I hope the majority has been my own, but that pain is enough to warrant the need of perfection to pay the price.

- Foster

PS: I would not recommend "Devils". It's long and I found it less engaging than Dostoevsky's other works that are among my favorites, and the passage I refer too is difficult to say the least.

PPS: I neither recommend "American Psycho" nor "Hostel 2". I feel like I am covered by grace in having subjected myself to them, but while "everything is permissible, not everything is beneficial" (1 Cor. 10:23) and I do feel all the worse for the wear, but I'm still reading the book... go figure.

PPPS: I would recommend "The Passion of the Christ" which depicts depravity, (and is equally difficult to watch at times) but those instances, those images, pale and pass in comparison the revelation of the light of the grace that shines through. So may it be for you, and I, and all.