Romans 6:20–21 (ESV)
For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death.
A bit ago, a young man I admire made a social media post featuring a photo of a modern novel and verbiage indicating he couldn’t put it down. Always up for a good read, I mentally earmarked the book and snagged a copy before a little getaway.
The first paragraph of the book and its first sentence share dual primacy – a pleasant beginning for one who hungers for meaty sentences and an author who can carry a complex thought from initial capital through commas & semicolons, direct & indirect objects, lists, harmonizing subjects & verbs, delectable modifiers, and well-fleshed clauses all the way through to a satisfying conclusion ending in appropriate punctuation.
The book and I were off to a good start.
Then too much reality crept into the story, bringing with it the inevitable carnal brutality of a world under the curse. Admittedly, the dialog did fit the themes of 1990s-era video gamers and programmers, but as the plot progressed from two kids finding community around an old game console in a hospital to the female lead finding herself in an affair with an older (and married) man, I found myself quite able to put the book down.
Each time I laid it down, I grew more reluctant to pick it up again until I finally gave up about a third of the way in and dropped it into the library’s after-hours collection.
In fairness, the novel is well written. There are some excellent word pictures, a stark exploration of human relationships, and a unique backdrop built on the progression of video games. But I didn’t make it into the novel’s turn of the century.
So why did I find this novel – well written by my own admission – so put-downable? I believe it hit far too close to home for me. It wasn’t that I couldn’t relate to the characters; it was that the female character, despite having both the wealth and direction I lacked in my youth, struck a chord or two of familiarity. She was profoundly lost.
In fact, all the lead characters were lost. The college professor was not only lost but predatory, reminding me eerily of a time in young adulthood when I made an easy mark for a much older man – who just so happened to be into PC gaming. In the late 1990s, I even had a part to play in co-running a BBS (bulletin board system) running a multi-player Doom game over dial-up on additional phone lines run to my rental house. Close to home indeed.
The real-life version of the older man was also controlling, though much older and less appealing than the fictional character. Instead, he is part of the reason I never finished college and all of the reason the smells of whiskey and weed or the sound of a modem handshake make my stomach seize.
In fact, the book reminded me of far too many things of which I am now ashamed; things I long to impart to this younger generation filled with their guileless wonder at the complexity of life and relationships and the novelty of playing with fire, even if only vicariously. To each new generation, the world is new and interesting and relatively harmless – until it is not.
How can I relate this? There is no poetry wrought in the chains of sin, no charm in the Christless human condition, no velvet allure to the darkness. Without God, there is only need and hopelessness and a striving after the wind.
All streams run to the sea,
Ecclesiastes 1:7–9 (ESV)
but the sea is not full;
to the place where the streams flow,
there they flow again.
All things are full of weariness;
a man cannot utter it;
the eye is not satisfied with seeing,
nor the ear filled with hearing.
What has been is what will be,
and what has been done is what will be done,
and there is nothing new under the sun.
Perhaps redemption came in the novel. Perhaps the characters found hope outside of human love and mere friendship or success. Perhaps. But while the old memories it dredged up are helpful to remind me what I was saved from, I found more sorrow in the pages of the novel than beauty or interest.
I’m incredibly thankful to be free of that clutching, devouring darkness. What an indescribable gift to belong to the Light of the World who gives goodness, joy, and hope in place of ashes and chains! I can only pray for others to find the Way and follow it and be faithful to share how the Great Redeemer found me wearing slave’s shackles and set me free.
Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!
Romans 7:24–25 (ESV)
mind. The purple trumpets of flower and the cheerful, heart-shaped or deeply lobed leaves seemed a very attractive addition.
Every time I take the short hike from house to garden, I keep an eye open for the little seed leaves shaped like old-fashioned ladies’ bloomers that pop up by the zillions. Despite my best efforts to scour the area thoroughly, those treacherously innocuous-seeming hearts pop up apparently the moment my back is turned, sending out their coiling tendrils to snare and suffocate the very plants I try to nurture.
Yet, left to its own devices, sin also grows quickly to overwhelming proportions. It, too, sends dainty tendrils snaking through the landscape of our hearts and minds, catching hold of those things we have purposefully sown and choking them, diminishing the harvest of good and useful fruit. Fully grown, it mocks us with the very flower of what we once desired; the very thing we once thought beautiful now nodding at us scornfully from every corner and niche. And sin, too, is prolific in its reseeding.
Running the Race 