| ON TEXTS AND TEXTILE: I have been watching a video series on the history of the English Language. In one portion of the series, the teacher said that the words “text” and “textile” come from an indo-European root that had to do with weaving. So, the word later came to be used in two different senses: a “text” is a weaving of words; “textile” is the weaving of fabric. The teacher in this video noted that indo-European literature (the literature of people groups from Europe, Asia Minor [I.e.-- the Persians and Hittites], and India [I.e. - those who wrote in Sanskrit, Hindi, etc]) -- that is, that among each of these groups, there was a tendency to compare writing and poetry-making to weaving. I thought this was interesting, but then I just happened to read a passage in George MacDonald’s “The Princess and Curdie” that makes this comparison: As he (Curdie) hesitated, he heard the noise of a spinning wheel. He knew it at once, because his mother’s spinning wheel had been his governess long ago, and still taught him things. It was the spinning wheel that first taught him to make verses, and to sing, and to think whether all was right inside him… He stood listening, so entranced that he forgot to knock, and the wheel went on and on, spinning in his brain songs and tales and rhymes, till he was almost asleep as well as dreaming….” ON GRACE AND WORKS: I have always wondered about the balance between works and faith, as it has been taught since the Protestant Reformation. Of course, we hold it as a fact that we are saved only by the grace of God through faith, and that no amount of good works can save us or bring us into God’s favor. We also believe that we are not transformed into Christlikeness except by the grace of God. That is, apart from the grace of God, we could pray and read our Bibles and serve others all day long, but it would be of no avail. In itself, these good works could create no change within us. With this in mind, I often wonder why God’s grace hasn’t overcome the many shortcomings and sins that I see in my life. And I tend to wonder how, if God’s grace hasn’t worked to overcome this sin in my life (and only His grace can), how can anything I do help? Why do anything at all if God isn’t already clearly solving the problem? In short, I dig a hole for myself and wonder what hope there is for me to press on any further in Christlikeness. However, I think an excerpt from “The Princess and Curdie” at least begins to express a solution to this problem: “But please, ma’am -- I don’t mean to be rude or to contradict you,” said Curdie, “but if a body was never to do anything but what he knew to be good, he would have to live half of his time doing nothing.” “There you are much mistaken,” said the old quavering voice. “How little you must have thought. Why, you don’t seem even to know the good of the things you are constantly doing. Now don’t mistake me. I don’t mean you are good for doing them. It is a good thing to eat your breakfast, but you don’t fancy it’s very good of you to do it. The thing is good -- not you.” The first point is that, well, nothing we do makes us any better. But there are good things that we are called to do each day (and many things that are good that we don’t even think about), and we must do them whether or not we see any change in ourselves. Reading the Bible is good, praying is good (as are sleeping, eating, working out, reading a novel, working and smiling), and they are good even if we are not. So why not do them if we have the physical strength to do them. There is another point, however, that is latent in the above excerpt, and that Curdie brings out more clearly in a later quote: “I was doing the wrong of never wanting or trying to be better. And now I see that I have been letting things go as they would for a long time. Whatever came into my head I did, and whatever didn’t come into my head I didn’t do. I never sent anything away, and never looked out for anything to come. I haven’t been attending to my mother -- or my father either. And now I think of it, I know I have often seen them looking troubled, and I have never asked them what was the matter. And now I see, too, that I did not ask because I suspected it had something to do with me and my behaviour, and didn’t want to hear the truth. And I know I have been grumbling at my work, and doing a hundred other things that are wrong.” Curdie clearly says that if we do not attempt to be better than we are, we are already going wrong. It is a sin to give up and not try to be better. As Christians, this is a helpful point. We don’t have to feel as if we are somehow offending grace by trying to become better people, better Christians. That is our duty, and we do it with the hope that God is continually pouring out his grace on us. We do it with the hope that God is continually working on us in ways that we cannot see. We do it with the hope of what we will someday be. Furthermore, Curdie makes the point that, by not trying to be better, he just slides into whatever state of being is most natural, given the circumstances. Unfortunately for us, if we do not try to be any better, we slide into a cycle of sin and become apathetic about it. I believe that Martin Luther, the great Protestant Reformer, actually says that the whole point of spiritual disciplines (i.e -- prayer, meditation, fasting, solitude -- commonly called “works”) is that they keep people from comfortably sliding into this cycle. As long as Christians are in the flesh, they tend toward indulging their desires even when it goes against the work that God is doing inside of them. So “works” are needed in order to control the body, so that it won’t get in the way of the Holy Spirit’s work. (At least, that is what I remember him writing, though not in those exact words.) Anyway, I could probably state all this much better, but this note has already taken up too much time and too much space on my Xanga site. |
