Second-hand Allegiance

It’s not as uncommon an occurrence as one might expect to grow up surrounded on all sides by a guard of upright Godly people, fully clothed in battle armour with razor- sharp blades adorning their sides. Yet, with such strength in arms surrounding you and such force in battle alongside you, protecting your back; is it possible to then leave your own weapons and armour back at the strong tower because you never need them?

I’ve heard it said that when you’re walking with God, you can’t help but be a light for others to see from afar off. But it’s a rather strange phenomenon when that light is charged up and made to run from the overflow and excess light of the believers who surround you on a daily basis. You can’t help being built up and feel like you have a perfectly healthy flame when you are surrounded by such champions of the faith all the time. But when those secure people aren’t around you, or their light goes through particularly dark places, then your own light will flicker, falter, and then finally, when you need it most it will go out.

There has always been something entirely bewildering to me about the seemingly illogical choice people make to run back to the horrifying darkness they were so mercifully pulled from. But perhaps they didn’t run back at all; maybe they relied upon the strength within the people daily surrounding them to keep them safe, secure and comfortable. And maybe when those things propping up their faith were not around, fighting incessantly on their behalf, the enemy came upon them in their weakest moment and they could not--did not know how to--protect themselves.

That same horrifying depth of darkness probably doesn't look so petrifying when cloaked with promises of deep pleasure and happiness as opposed to moths and rust. If those in the ranks of the armies of the enemy always showed themselves for what they are then I would say there would be a lot of people rushing for their weapons. I would also say that is why they prefer to remain hidden.

We are all lost without God. We are all sinners but by His grace. We were all plucked out of the same darkness by his endless reach. And I believe that the ones who have gone back to the pit they were rescued from, God will continue to strive with to bring them back to paths of righteousness and truth.

Live off your own faith; get plugged directly into the primary source of power; replenish your electricity straight from the fountainhead.

You won't find yourself lost in the dark when you most need to know the way.

return//jun 09

return | short story//jun 09

by stephen garton

Short Story 003

The journey comes into its concluding moments, unraveling with ever increasing intensity to the last showdown.

The pale lights from the drug lords’ pad came filtering through the thick branches so suddenly that Oliver instinctively pulled up and stopped, doubling over to catch his breath. But what he saw would not let his heart stop racing. He found himself at the edge of a forest overlooking a clearing in a shallow valley, hemmed in on three sides by trees with a gravel road snaking away and to the west. But what kept his heart hammering against the sides of his throat was the coal-grey establishment sitting directly in the centre of the valley staring coldly back at him with lifeless eyes—-an obtrusive and fear-inducing smudge on the horizon. It was the last place he ever wanted to be, but the one place he would find the person he now knew mattered most to him.


A section from Return: The third and final chapter in the journey begun with Mistake and followed through by Equitable.

Return | Short Story
Coming 21st June 2009

Windows 95 goes yuppy

The mobile generation in its prime, as witnessed at Starbucks on 7th Ave.

Inconsistency: The Currency of the Realm

From the very outset of life as a follower of Christ, one is taught to see that there are numerous threads of substantial reason you must hold on to when circumnavigating the endless cycle of questions concerning the boundaries in Christian morality. The questions themselves, or the roundabout way they are structured, are so common that you could be forgiven for forgetting the reason behind the motive; the question behind the question, and thus, unduly lose sight of the real search . . . the one for truth.

The particular question in question goes a little something like this:

Where do we, as Christians, draw the lines between innocent indulgence for pleasure's sake and stepping into sin . . .

Examples
[. . . when watching secular movies?]
[. . . when talking about physical intimacy in dating?]
[. . . when talking using coarse language?]
[. . . when listening to secular music?]
[. . . when piercing, tattooing, drinking, smoking . . . ]

And the list goes on, and on, and on.

If you search any one of those examples (or slight variations thereof) in forums with Christian viewpoints you will find thousands of replies, the majority of which are stating, where they believe the magical line lies. In your search for answers on this line you will no doubt run into more questions and find that nothing is clear cut; it's simply a never-ending surge of human perceptivity on where you must take your marker and draw a line and set up your home-base right beside it. This is where everything becomes a haphazard array of inconsistency. One person does it this way, then tells someone else who then stumbles because it puts his way into question.

It seems as if the motive behind these inquisitions is how far we can tread before right-with-God becomes not-so-right-with-God, doesn't it? It's like we want the sin without the sin. We're sitting on the edge of a boat, far out in the ocean, trying to get our feet as close to the water's edge as possible without touching it, when the real danger is hardly in getting wet; the real danger lies in falling in and getting torn apart in shark-infested waters.


As John Thomas of Boundless so masterly puts it:

Lines are important and we need them while we grow into maturity. I draw boundary lines for my preschool children because they're immature, they lack knowledge. I have to tell them not to play beyond our driveway because the street can be dangerous, even deadly. My four-year-old son is obsessed with how close he can get his toes to the street when he's standing at the end of our driveway. "So where exactly does the street begin, Daddy?"

I'm trying to teach him about the danger of getting hit by a car and all he wants to talk about is where the driveway ends and the street begins. He's missing all the fun he could have on the driveway by obsessing over the line.

So then, our questioning should not be "how far is too far" or “where do we draw the line” but "what builds myself and others around me up in the things of God and brings glory to His name." Otherwise you'll be so focussed on your own fleeting lines in the sand--lines that will change with every whim and want--that you'll sprawl headlong into shark infested waters.

No matter where you draw the line, someone will want to put their feet on the other side. Sin is, after all, the master of concealment. It’s the baited hook, the masquerading angel-of-light, the inviting ocean concealing hungry sharks.

Don’t snag the hook while obsessing over the line.