Because I once had the temerity to hint . . . to imply . . . and finally to gently suggest that one of my oldest and dearest friends appeared to be making a major life-changing decision without considering her husband, children, family, friends, her fellowship of believers, or the teachings of the God she professed; I found myself vilified by her as self-righteous, blind to my own sinfulness, and out of touch with God’s will. This all because she knew God wanted her to leave her husband and marry the man she now loved.
I was stunned into silence. This was too close to home for me and my friend knew it.
She asserted her decision concerned only her husband and herself, and had nothing to do with her children, family, friends, the man she now had given her love to, or her church. There would be no lasting consequences for anyone else: “People might be sad at first, but they’ll forget about it after a while. No one cares, they’ll act like it never happened, and kids are resilient. It won’t affect them.”
I tried to process her assertions and accusations through the emotional fog created by feelings welling up from my own past and the feelings I had for the others who loved her. I felt the pain her husband and children would feel, the sadness of her family, friends, and church.
Achingly aware of my own sin, I knew, more than she could ever know, that my only righteousness was grace given and undeserved. The only self near any righteousness I had was my sinful self. I couldn't imagine why she appeared to think my sinfulness--whether admitted or denied--could validate or justify her choices. I concluded misery isn't the only state that loves company.
I didn't know how my friend knew God wanted her to leave her husband and marry another man. I have no response when someone asserts such direct and specific guidance from God. When I pray and ask for guidance that degree of specificity has seldom been my experience. I had read in the scriptures that God hates divorce, even as I concluded from other passages that he gives grace to those who choose it. I have also read enough scripture to avoid saying, "God wouldn't do that, and he would never let that happen.” I've read Job, what do I know? I wasn't around when God spoke everything into existence.
She added that Christianity was at heart selfish, because believers did good in order to receive a heavenly reward and blessings from God. That rang wrong with me, like a bell choir playing a song with one bell just a little out of tune. Christianity was selfish, she said, and I thought, "Well, she’s right, rewards and blessings are promised.” I did not offer a response, couldn’t find the thought, the words to counter what she said. I let the statement stand between us as if it were unassailable truth, even as it echoed falsely in my mind.
The longer I thought about it the louder the false ringing. I've decided her assertions were suspect. Christianity isn't selfish. Rewards and blessings are promised, but I knew I hadn’t tried to do the right thing all my life just in order to get a blessing, or to get some future heavenly reward. That wasn’t my motivation. I believe in God. I try to be what I think of as God's man. I try to honor him with my life, but I have always tried to do what I thought was right in God’s eyes, not as a barter, but because to do otherwise is . . . well . . . wrong.
It seems so simplistic to say it that way, but that’s the plain fact of it. There are blessings and rewards, but they are consequences, not results of right choices. We can’t barter our feeble good deeds with God for his blessings. I try to please him in response to his love, out of gratefulness for the blessings he's already given me, but I don't expect to earn any reward. Our relationship is not based on what secular law calls a bilateral contract.
Besides, doing right is its own reward. I wish I could testify to that truth because I have always done what is right, but I cannot. I miss the mark, fall short, and still I know trying to do right is the best way to exist. It is the true way and to do otherwise is wrong. Maybe it is not so antithetical, so black and white. Maybe there is grey, but still, striving for the center--the most correct--is worth the effort for its own sake.
I also believe one of the verities is interdependence. There are consequences for other people in every choice we make. The lie is that individuals are alone, that the consequences of our choices fall only on us. This only appears true if we narrow our perspective to the briefest ephemeral slice of time and space, if we cripple our perceptions with rationalization and self-deception. My friend's assertions were suspect because she had carefully walled up a place in her mind, blocking out all other valid considerations, until it seemed to her the thing she wanted most to do was the only thing she could do.
The grief of everyone who cared for my friend and her family was palpable when she left her family, and sadness moves through them like recurring waves of darkness still. No one, except her ex-husband perhaps, continues to be overwhelmed and drowning in the darkness of her choice, but waves wash over them still. A no longer celebrated anniversary or birthday, a smiling face missing from a table of family pictures, a sweet memory of a time and association that will never be again, the dry black hole of doubt in the part of their hearts formerly filled with the certainty of that love. All these things well up and wash over them momentarily, occasionally, calling up sadness ranging from a brief pause, a sigh, perhaps a tear hidden from those around them, or an unexpected sob that springs out in a solitary moment to hijack their present well being and take them back to that past deep sadness. I've seen it in others. I've been a hijack victim. The darkness doesn't go away. People move on, but the sad shadow trails after them.
To believe you can be so isolated, separate, or alien that the consequences of your choices fall on yourself alone is to believe a lie. Even the most selfish isolation ripples dark waves through the world around you. What you do affects all for good or ill in ways you cannot predict and in ways you may never know.
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