Wednesday, September 14, 2005
Tortured Souls
By The Erudite Redneck
March, 1998
Maybe faith is just a fairytale to you. Or something from dull history. Or questionable philosophy. Or a murky lesson from a big musty black book.
Maybe it’s something you never wanted to hear to begin with and that you’d just as soon forget.
Maybe you think it’s just a myth used by bad people to trick gullible people. Or it’s just a waste of time. Maybe it’s something that makes you mad and you’re not sure why. Or it makes you sad because you had it once, before you forgot it, before you got so smart.
Maybe you’re offended to even see it mentioned in a public place. Maybe, as far as you think about it, it all makes sense. But you don’t think about it that much. You just go and listen, put some money in the plate, sing a song and go home. Or maybe you just stay home.
It’s easy, with all those maybes.
Or, perhaps you believe, simply and quietly and genuinely. And you’ve been blessed with a great measure of peace about it all. Be glad.
For others it’s hard.
When Jesus and the devil are as real to you as your brothers and sisters, and they both live in your house, wake up with you, go with you to school or work, follow you around during the day, sit at the dinner table with you, hang out with you in front of the TV in the evening, watch you as you drift off to sleep at night, one constantly beckoning you to do good, the other constantly tempting you to do bad, when the stories in the Bible are messages carried by the very breath of God himself sent through specially chosen messengers and meant for you personally, when you go to church and you love the people in it and you BELIEVE and you’re strong singing hymns on Sunday morning but you were a weakling raising hell on Saturday night, when your prayers have to blast past the demons teasing your mind and racing your heart and you’re saved and you know it but in the dark hours of the night you start to wonder, when you feel an otherworldly presence in a breeze from nowhere that touches the curtains in the front room ever so slightly or rattles the screen on the back door, when you don’t know whether the spirits are there for you or against you because you see through a glass darkly, when you’re tortured in your soul yet still praising God, then it’s terribly easy to be walking with Jesus one minute and dancing with the devil the next.
Amen. Or, oh hell. Jesus is a first cousin, the devil is a cousin once removed – but you’re all still kin. And you’re all close.
Salvation is something that started when you first saw the light and it’s still under way and will be ‘til you draw your last breath and it’s complete, not just “fire insurance,” not something that happened one time that you think about on Christmas or Easter and once in awhile in between: Heaven and hell are constantly before you. And in some ways it’s hard but in another way it’s the easiest thing in the world.
It’s your self, or his, day after day, sometimes hour to hour, and when things are really rough it’s minute by minute. Redemption is painful.
Then you’ll get it when Alan Jackson sings: “The gates of hell swing open wide, inviting me to step inside. ‘I’ll be your friend,’ he calls again. I know it’s him. The flames are spreading everywhere, but through the smoke I see her there. She’s all I see between the devil and me.”
And you’ll feel it in your heart, and it’ll hurt, when you hear that his 17-year marriage is on the rocks.
You’ll get it when actor Robert Duvall, as Euliss “Sonny” Dewey, a country preacher called from on high but still stuck down below, with his own marriage wrecked because of his own sins, angrily shakes his fist in God’s face and in bitter anguish cries out for help. And a little bit later he reaches for a bottle.
In the movie “The Apostle,” Sonny is upsetting his neighbors late at night with his hollering and carrying on, alone in his room – but then you know he’s not really alone. He’s not talking to himself. He’s praying out loud – a true tortured soul. And to anybody who’s ever been there, or even close, it’s as real as it gets.
If God is a “concept,” Jesus was just a man and the devil is a bad joke, life’s probably a lot easier, truth be told, but you won’t get Alan Jackson’s song, or Robert Duvall’s movie, at all.
And you won’t smile inside when you see “Jesus Saves” on a hand-scrawled sign stuck up along the highway – and when you realize there are signs like that all over the South, where Jesus needs the least PR to begin with since there’s a church at almost every crossroads. You’ll scoff.
You won’t be kind when some kids from a neighborhood church stop by to see if there are any kids on your place to be invited to Vacation Bible School. You’ll be gruff.
You won’t cringe when another preacher or priest gets in trouble. You’ll laugh.
You won’t pray for the president and the country, then curse, then pray again.
You’ll just curse.
##
ER Note: This is a little dated, but I've been through this kind of ringer again -- again! again! -- lately, and another president needs prayer, whether I agree with his dang policies or not.
END
March, 1998
Maybe faith is just a fairytale to you. Or something from dull history. Or questionable philosophy. Or a murky lesson from a big musty black book.
Maybe it’s something you never wanted to hear to begin with and that you’d just as soon forget.
Maybe you think it’s just a myth used by bad people to trick gullible people. Or it’s just a waste of time. Maybe it’s something that makes you mad and you’re not sure why. Or it makes you sad because you had it once, before you forgot it, before you got so smart.
Maybe you’re offended to even see it mentioned in a public place. Maybe, as far as you think about it, it all makes sense. But you don’t think about it that much. You just go and listen, put some money in the plate, sing a song and go home. Or maybe you just stay home.
It’s easy, with all those maybes.
Or, perhaps you believe, simply and quietly and genuinely. And you’ve been blessed with a great measure of peace about it all. Be glad.
For others it’s hard.
When Jesus and the devil are as real to you as your brothers and sisters, and they both live in your house, wake up with you, go with you to school or work, follow you around during the day, sit at the dinner table with you, hang out with you in front of the TV in the evening, watch you as you drift off to sleep at night, one constantly beckoning you to do good, the other constantly tempting you to do bad, when the stories in the Bible are messages carried by the very breath of God himself sent through specially chosen messengers and meant for you personally, when you go to church and you love the people in it and you BELIEVE and you’re strong singing hymns on Sunday morning but you were a weakling raising hell on Saturday night, when your prayers have to blast past the demons teasing your mind and racing your heart and you’re saved and you know it but in the dark hours of the night you start to wonder, when you feel an otherworldly presence in a breeze from nowhere that touches the curtains in the front room ever so slightly or rattles the screen on the back door, when you don’t know whether the spirits are there for you or against you because you see through a glass darkly, when you’re tortured in your soul yet still praising God, then it’s terribly easy to be walking with Jesus one minute and dancing with the devil the next.
Amen. Or, oh hell. Jesus is a first cousin, the devil is a cousin once removed – but you’re all still kin. And you’re all close.
Salvation is something that started when you first saw the light and it’s still under way and will be ‘til you draw your last breath and it’s complete, not just “fire insurance,” not something that happened one time that you think about on Christmas or Easter and once in awhile in between: Heaven and hell are constantly before you. And in some ways it’s hard but in another way it’s the easiest thing in the world.
It’s your self, or his, day after day, sometimes hour to hour, and when things are really rough it’s minute by minute. Redemption is painful.
Then you’ll get it when Alan Jackson sings: “The gates of hell swing open wide, inviting me to step inside. ‘I’ll be your friend,’ he calls again. I know it’s him. The flames are spreading everywhere, but through the smoke I see her there. She’s all I see between the devil and me.”
And you’ll feel it in your heart, and it’ll hurt, when you hear that his 17-year marriage is on the rocks.
You’ll get it when actor Robert Duvall, as Euliss “Sonny” Dewey, a country preacher called from on high but still stuck down below, with his own marriage wrecked because of his own sins, angrily shakes his fist in God’s face and in bitter anguish cries out for help. And a little bit later he reaches for a bottle.
In the movie “The Apostle,” Sonny is upsetting his neighbors late at night with his hollering and carrying on, alone in his room – but then you know he’s not really alone. He’s not talking to himself. He’s praying out loud – a true tortured soul. And to anybody who’s ever been there, or even close, it’s as real as it gets.
If God is a “concept,” Jesus was just a man and the devil is a bad joke, life’s probably a lot easier, truth be told, but you won’t get Alan Jackson’s song, or Robert Duvall’s movie, at all.
And you won’t smile inside when you see “Jesus Saves” on a hand-scrawled sign stuck up along the highway – and when you realize there are signs like that all over the South, where Jesus needs the least PR to begin with since there’s a church at almost every crossroads. You’ll scoff.
You won’t be kind when some kids from a neighborhood church stop by to see if there are any kids on your place to be invited to Vacation Bible School. You’ll be gruff.
You won’t cringe when another preacher or priest gets in trouble. You’ll laugh.
You won’t pray for the president and the country, then curse, then pray again.
You’ll just curse.
##
ER Note: This is a little dated, but I've been through this kind of ringer again -- again! again! -- lately, and another president needs prayer, whether I agree with his dang policies or not.
END
Comments:
<< Home
Your'e Dang right about one thing, ER, the President NEEDS your prayers. And the more you disagree with his policies, the more you need to pray for him.
I pray for him every day.
I pray that the Lord will give him wisdom that far exceeds my own.
I pray the the Lord will give him the wisdom to face the problems that will affect the Nation, and the World, and that the Lord will guide him in his decisions.
I pray that the Lord will give him the Wisdom to follow His devine guidance, for the good of us all.
And then I pray that the lord will give me the strength to follow the leadership of the people that I have prayed for the Lord to give this wisdom and strength to, whether I understand their decisions or not, because I have prayed in the beginning for the Lord to give them wisdom that exceeds my own, and for Him to give them the wisdom to follow His leadership.
I don't second guess God.
I pray for him every day.
I pray that the Lord will give him wisdom that far exceeds my own.
I pray the the Lord will give him the wisdom to face the problems that will affect the Nation, and the World, and that the Lord will guide him in his decisions.
I pray that the Lord will give him the Wisdom to follow His devine guidance, for the good of us all.
And then I pray that the lord will give me the strength to follow the leadership of the people that I have prayed for the Lord to give this wisdom and strength to, whether I understand their decisions or not, because I have prayed in the beginning for the Lord to give them wisdom that exceeds my own, and for Him to give them the wisdom to follow His leadership.
I don't second guess God.
Nicely written, Press.
Not to interrupt, but thanks for gettin' my back over there on Maness's blog. Like I say, I've largely stopped commenting over there because it's pointless, in my view, and what was being thrown at me over there was crap of the worst sort.
Cats Dig Me (my brother's brother-in-law, just to give away the game a bit) put it pretty nicely in an email to me the other day when he pointed out to me that even in this tiniest of ways, the conservatives continue to set the terms of the debate, and everyone else, in some rush to be gentlemen or something, tries to please them. "Can't use that word, can't say the following..."
And then they turn around and say hysterically offensive things, and expect everyone else to sit there and take it, going on and on the entire time about how only lefties do that sort of thing. It's sickening.
This is just the one planet we live on, and you, me, Carrier, Cats, Tug, Maness, Wordsmith etc. live in the best armed country on it. We act like our political agendae are somehow more important than the survival of the species, which I feel is in deep trouble, at this point. I feel too that all I'm getting over there is some sort of appeal to make the same mistakes of the past, with the even worse corollary that to disagree with such reasoning makes me and mine unfit to live in this, the greatest society ever wrought by God upon Earth.
Stoppin' now, but did you know that Screwball (my brother's brother-in-law's cousin) is an Oklahoman?
Not to interrupt, but thanks for gettin' my back over there on Maness's blog. Like I say, I've largely stopped commenting over there because it's pointless, in my view, and what was being thrown at me over there was crap of the worst sort.
Cats Dig Me (my brother's brother-in-law, just to give away the game a bit) put it pretty nicely in an email to me the other day when he pointed out to me that even in this tiniest of ways, the conservatives continue to set the terms of the debate, and everyone else, in some rush to be gentlemen or something, tries to please them. "Can't use that word, can't say the following..."
And then they turn around and say hysterically offensive things, and expect everyone else to sit there and take it, going on and on the entire time about how only lefties do that sort of thing. It's sickening.
This is just the one planet we live on, and you, me, Carrier, Cats, Tug, Maness, Wordsmith etc. live in the best armed country on it. We act like our political agendae are somehow more important than the survival of the species, which I feel is in deep trouble, at this point. I feel too that all I'm getting over there is some sort of appeal to make the same mistakes of the past, with the even worse corollary that to disagree with such reasoning makes me and mine unfit to live in this, the greatest society ever wrought by God upon Earth.
Stoppin' now, but did you know that Screwball (my brother's brother-in-law's cousin) is an Oklahoman?
Just don't prayin' for "Roberts to be confirmed," or for "House Bills 1234" or for "a permanent tax break."
THAT kind of "prayer," and I am sayin' this with my hand up, is the height of arrogance and is a big part of the reason I an always suspicious of Republican religion. Not sayin' you do, Tug, but I'm sayin' many, many do.
Rich, you answered your own question. Casting pearls before swines.
Mark, every time anyone trots out "treason" because they are offended at what someone has written or said, they make a mockery of patriotism and show how easy it is to rattle conservatives, which makes some of us wonder just deeply they think about anything.
If your "core beliefs" have anything to do with politics, maybe you should dig a little deeper. Conservatism is a political agenda, as is liberalism.
Now, boys, THIS rhubarb is over on this post. Talk about "grieving the Spirit." Shame on both of you. ("Payback," with a strained smile, to Mark. Meant with a light hand to Rich).
--ER
THAT kind of "prayer," and I am sayin' this with my hand up, is the height of arrogance and is a big part of the reason I an always suspicious of Republican religion. Not sayin' you do, Tug, but I'm sayin' many, many do.
Rich, you answered your own question. Casting pearls before swines.
Mark, every time anyone trots out "treason" because they are offended at what someone has written or said, they make a mockery of patriotism and show how easy it is to rattle conservatives, which makes some of us wonder just deeply they think about anything.
If your "core beliefs" have anything to do with politics, maybe you should dig a little deeper. Conservatism is a political agenda, as is liberalism.
Now, boys, THIS rhubarb is over on this post. Talk about "grieving the Spirit." Shame on both of you. ("Payback," with a strained smile, to Mark. Meant with a light hand to Rich).
--ER
ER, I deleted my statement but not, apparently before you saw it. Must have been the same time that you posted yours. I wrote it in anger and I don't want to be that way. I hate being angry.
I guess this whole thing applies to your post, which up till right now, I wasn't sure I understood. I will try to have more decorum in the future.
See? I don't need to be chastised. I chastise myself quite adequately.
I guess this whole thing applies to your post, which up till right now, I wasn't sure I understood. I will try to have more decorum in the future.
See? I don't need to be chastised. I chastise myself quite adequately.
Hey Man, when you wake up and the house is cold and you feel like something is there in the dark watching and waiting for you to slip up, just sit up and say "I command you to leave this place in the name of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ".
# posted by 
: 10:36 AM
: 10:36 AM
When you mentioned praying for George W., it reminded me of the Rabbi in Fiddler On The Roof. When he was asked if there was a proper blessing for the Czar, his reply was, "Yes, may God bless and keep the Czar, far away from here."
# posted by : 11:36 AM
: 11:36 AM
When asked what his position is on Roe vs. Wade, George W. Bush answered, that he doesn't give a shit how they get out of New Orleans.
# posted by : 12:02 PM
: 12:02 PM
If only John Kerry had been elected President. He would have prevented that damn hurrican!!!!!!
# posted by : 2:25 PM
: 2:25 PM
Once again, a sophomore has crashed a party of seniors. No, you can't have any of our beer until you get a little hair on yer chin.
--ER
--ER
Ahem. One of the "seniors" wants a short yellow doghouse for his 'tard dog.
Sounds pretty sophomoric to me.
Sounds pretty sophomoric to me.
# posted by : 2:59 PM
: 2:59 PM
No, no, no. Not pompous.
Just smarter.
(Hey, if you can't jack with smart-ass anonymi, who can you jack with?)
--ER
Just smarter.
(Hey, if you can't jack with smart-ass anonymi, who can you jack with?)
--ER
Finally, mystery solved.
ER = Nick Toper.
Can't have TWO distinct individuals that are smarter than everybody else.
ER = Nick Toper.
Can't have TWO distinct individuals that are smarter than everybody else.
# posted by : 4:31 PM
: 4:31 PM
Sometimes when faced with adversity a person's faith is the first thing to go.
When I first had my accident and suffered a spinal cord injury, I questioned most things especially faith. And when I would hear people tell me that "God had a plan, that everything happens for a reason or that God will only give us as much as we can handle", it would take all of my energy to not flippantly reply "yes well you're walking".
I still question why bad things happen to good people and why many times those with wrong intentions seemed to be skating through. Yes, I am thankful for what I still have
When I first had my accident and suffered a spinal cord injury, I questioned most things especially faith. And when I would hear people tell me that "God had a plan, that everything happens for a reason or that God will only give us as much as we can handle", it would take all of my energy to not flippantly reply "yes well you're walking".
I still question why bad things happen to good people and why many times those with wrong intentions seemed to be skating through. Yes, I am thankful for what I still have
Sorry I am using a voice activated program and sometimes it gets a little trigger happy.
And I am thankful for what I can still do. I don't put blame on God or the devil, but I don't look too to either of them for answers as well.
And I am thankful for what I can still do. I don't put blame on God or the devil, but I don't look too to either of them for answers as well.
Re, "I command you to leave this place in the name of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ".
If that worked, "I" would command the disabled to walk again. Alas ...
Still life, thanks so much for coming by. You are welcome anytime. I lurk around your place some. :-)
AE, gracias.
--ER
Post a Comment
If that worked, "I" would command the disabled to walk again. Alas ...
Still life, thanks so much for coming by. You are welcome anytime. I lurk around your place some. :-)
AE, gracias.
--ER
<< Home
