There have always been thing that are hard to do. That is, at best, an obvious statement. Someone also once said, "anything worth doing is going to be hard". I suppose that difficult things always bring some sense of accomplishment when they are done. To cross a finish line, complete a project, strive over opposition, these are fullfilling hills to climb. There is even a theory called the Theory of Optitmum Experience that attempts to map out, methedologically, the dynamic relationship between skills and perceived challenge that brings the mind to a total focus and then results in a sense of optimum expereince or reward once the challenge has been completed successfuly (thank you Mike from Psyche). But methinks that perhapse, there are things that are so easy that they become unsurmountably difficult. For instance, I am a part time janitor at an office building. The job is not hard, infact it is mind numbingly easy. Yet with in that ease, there lays an odd difficulty. I cannot tell you how difficult it is to vacume when you are more than ready to do a million other things, and you are filled with the energy to do it. I do believe that this difficulty in ease, is a common experience and I need not try to justify or explain it any further. But something that might be explained further, is how this reality can affect the Christian walk to a degree that truly boggles the mind.
Let me use a most relevant example to my sex. Me being a male. For my sex, the male sex, lust is a thing of daily struggle. For most men, lust is a thing of the eyes. I dont mean to say that lust is more visual for men, for that would be an understatement. Men are keenly aware of the draw of the visual. We have affinity to images, not just becuase the image is of something else we want, but men do indeed enjoy the image itself for its own sake. When men struggle with lust, it is common among us, that the struggle is with the eyes. And even if the physical eye is averted, there is the mind's eye which is much harder to shut. When I think of sensuality, I do not think of expereinces. I do not imagine sensations, at least not at first. The trap begins with pictures. There is a whole catalog in my mind that has been collected and arranged over my hormonal youth, that I am free to pick from as I feel the urge. Where there are missing images to my encyclopedia of sexual imgaginations, it is not hard, with practice, to conjure up the picture and fill in the gap. If you were to ask most men if they would actually engage in most of the things they imagine in their minds, I would bet you that most of them would say no. Many of those images are in reality, rather nasty to enact and experience. We are dealing with human bodies after all, and there are smells and fluids, secretions and sensations, risks and deiseases that are a part of sexual realities. But I can assure you that those same men find great pleasure in thinking about those images none the less, and where there is opportunity, I am sure that most men would not deny a dark desire to watch those imginations on a sceen, and maybe, in real life.
The image itself is where the delight is found. Men see more than you might think we see, as we look around the office or classroom, or dare I say it, Sunday morning services. If there is a visual morsel to be found, either in a tight shirt or a particularly short skirt, or maybe even in a subtle accentuation of curves due to her posture or his point of view, you may be sure that men in the room have noticed and are either casting it out of their minds as best they can, or catagorizing it for later use......it is appalling.
This is the crux of the matter. How difficult is it for a man to avert his eyes and stare at his shoe laces instead of at the young woman accross the room? How hard is it for a man to train his mind upon another memory besides a sexualy explicit excerpt of his accumulated catalouge? How hard is it to change the chanel or click the X at the top right corner of the computer screen? How difficult is it for a man to stare at her eyes....no higher, I mean her actuall eyes, and give her the dignity of being a person not an object? How difficult is it for a man to make a simple turn of direction and walk with his toes pointing in the direction opposite of temptation? These things, these actions and redirections of the mind, are not in themselves difficult. We do them everyday within other contexts, without much thought or effort. We make turns, and think of lots of other things, and avert our eyes at other sights everyday, all without breaking a sweat. And yet because they are so easy to do, they are so easy not to do. It is so easy just to take one glimpse, one little bite for the mind, of the woman walking in front of you. It is so easy to type that search word into the computer that will lavish and lambast you with images. It is so easy to simply think of things that you would not dare say out loud. It is all so easy, and yet because of that, it is so monstruously difficult!
"but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart" Mathew 5:28.
Perhapse it is a little too easy, and in that it is so unsermountably hard. Look away, and you have obeyed the law....no great epic sacrifice needed. Look and you have brokean the law and the penalty is death, that is all that is needed. In Christ we see the unique paradox of the difficulty in the easiness of simplicity. Yet because it is so easy, we more apt to make exuses for ourselves and promise to do better on our own next time. Yet in the Bible we find that God is not a harsh dictator demanding such strenuous things from us. He simply ask that we look away, easy, just look away. And yet we cannot even do that on our own. We find ourselves helpless in this paradox of difficult ease. And yet even as we truggle to do what is easy that we might have what is overwhelmingly good, God loves us, and sent His son to die for us, a people who cannnot even do what is easy.
Yes, there are other things that we face that are hard, and God has other demands that are difficult. He demands Holiness, and that is difficult beyond description. But we have not to reject God because His standards are so high and unfair. For He has shown us through His law, that we are not even able to do what is easy, what is laughably easy. That is enough to shame us and humble us, and it should be enough to show God's love for us. In that he did not just die for some great universal cause to defeat some grand evil that we were lost in, although that is true. But He was also willing to suffer and die because men do not look away. The omnipotent Lord of the comsos, infinite creator of time and space, the holy mystery of perfection, was willing to die, becuase I cannot do something as simple and easy as look away. What love is this, that would die for someone and something, so small?
