Monsters

I have often been thinking of the sin in this world. Yes, the ugly word we would like to live without. In Cambodia, we heard of horrific and sometimes graphic stories of young girls being deceived and raped by men. One day, during our visit at Chab Dai (a non-prof organization that works to unite all the NGOs in Cambodia who are working against the sex trade), we were reviewing their cartoon pictures that depict young girls and boys being ushered into the sex trade (used for educational purposes). They were just cartoon drawings and I wanted to vomit...the pictures were haunting and the reality is even more haunting and grotesque. I think it was that afternoon that I layed in bed and cried for a long time and listened to Rich Mullins. I felt like my heart couldn't take it anymore. Sin is appalling and I never want to be okay with it. I don't want to become complacent to the realities of this world that rape and ravage what is God's. Sin should always make me angry...angry enough to clean a temple and hunger for holiness.

I have also been thinking of my sin. Yes, the ugly reality that we live with. I am capable of appalling things. It is true. I am no better than the: adulterer, prostitute, sexual perpetrator, liar, deceiver, manipulator, thief, destroyer of beauty, desecrator of God's holiness. If I am truly honest, there resides in me the same seed that resides in Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot. If I choose to believe that I am better than these, then I have left the door wide open for all hell to break loose in my mind, heart, and soul.

I kneel not now to pray that Thou
Make white one single sin,--
I only kneel to thank the Lord
For what I have not been;

For deeds which sprouted in my heart
But ne'er to bloom were brought,
For monstrous vices which I slew
In the shambles of my thought--

Dark deeds the world has never guessed
By hell and passion bred,
Which never grew beyond the bud
That cankered in my head.

Some said I was a righteous man--
Poor fools! the gallows tree
(If Thou hadst let one foot to slip)
Had held a limb for me.

So for the man I might have been
My heart must cease to mourn,
'Twere best to praise the living God
For monsters never born:

To bend the spiritual knee
(knowing myself within)
And thank the kind, benignant God
For what I have not been.
Harry Kemp

So, what is the answer? Can the two reside next to each other: anger and disgust over the monster of sin and the acknowledgement that I am the monster? I neither want to be complacent nor pious; it is the pathway that many hell-bound men have taken and I am right on their heels if I am not clinging to the cross. I, too, am a monster, you know. My only hope is Jesus...who else can I take this monstrous skin off of my heart? Who else can rip the adam seed from my core? Who else can redeem what is God's?