Happiness on a Knifes's Edge

There is this power in crisis. When everything is going wrong is when I seem to think the clearest. Give me disaster and I know exactly what to do. But for god's sake dont give me the monotony of everyday in which I may find the joy of drinking in the simple routines of life. I am utterly lost in the calm after the storm, so give me the rain and give me the ominous grey of an angry sky. I suppose that I am at home in tradgedy, and I create nothing but tradgedy when I am home. Not that being home is a tradgedy for me. No, I long to be home, I was just never very good and knowing what to do once I got there because I hadn't been there in so long.

Mothers are always smarter than we sons think they are, an abismal understatment I know. It was my mother who first noticed the addiction in me, my dependancy on chaos. She spotted it from miles away, over pizza and lemonade. What is it about women and the way they see the world as it truly is, before they realize that it would be much worse without them? Then when a woman comes to that place of pride and "femminism" knowing that the world would be worse off without them, they seem to loose that second sight. (but now I am wondering off in thought)

There is a certain satisfaction that comes in feeling as though one is doing something that he or she doesnt really have to, a kind of inner praise that fuels the irony of "sacrifitial" ambition. It is the same fuel that drives us to that point of duplicity where we are oddly proud of our humility and are able to point at ourselves and smile. I suppose any fool could do what is impossible if he gets enough praise and drinks in enough admiration. But what does it take to do the generic, the easy and the unnoticed?

I remember a gentleman who knows me, and yet I cannot say that I know anything more of him other than his particular inflection of voice when he would get up infront of the church when I was a child. I remember him reading from a small reddish book of sorts, words that I dont think I will ever forget. For those words are embodied by two other men in my church that diserve their crowns, and yet I know that they will be the first to cast them aside. These are the words:

-It takes the simple strength of man to conquer adversity and rise to heroics in the midst of tradgedy and turmoil. It requires no great power to be remembered, only human ambition.

But it takes the supernatural power of the Living God to live day in and day out in the monotony and drudgery of quiet mornings that turn into quiet evennings. To live such a life as Christ, in all holiness, quiet victory and faithfulness, while knowing all the while that no on will remember, is beyond all flesh. For this, only the power, promises, and faithfulness of God will do. To live a life of death, requires the life that has conquered death. -

There is no better description of what now lays before me. There is no better description of what it means to be a husband.

There is no better description of....what it means to follow

Love and Marriage

An author once pondered the idea that perhapse marriage was not a means by which we found happines, but a grace of God in which we are made holy. This is in fact more true than I am prepared to be comfortable with. I want my happiness, and I demand my right to attain what I imagine to be the real thing. I want, in some way, a marrige that gives me a world in which I am truly belong and in which I am truly happy, not only with my surroundings, but truly happy with myself. I want a life that has lingered in the eye of my imagination for perhapse too long, almost like the feeling you get when staring out at sea. There in the endless waves, all is clear and wide. The horizon is not brokean by anything, and what lay beyond that horizon is a matter of dreaming. Somewhere out there perhapse there is a better place, a place where I can escape myself and find who I was truly meant to be. The sound of the breaking waves and the cool air on your brow bring such a beautiful longing that it could break your heart to let that longing fully take you.

I find it to be true of marriage that we all look out to the horizon of time and hope in the same way. That perhapse out there somewhere, is a marraige or dream of a marriage that would truly satisfy that longing. Perhapse the dream is real and I have missed it. I have missed the chance, the last boat, to take me away from myself and fall in love with someone who would really make me happy, and make me better. And there are some who break their ties to their first love and venture out upon the waves, and there are those who secretly live another life, as one person in one life and another person in another life. And then there are others who give up and succumb to the erosion of time and dissapointment, slowly loosing all they think they have left.

And yet there are those that come to the place where they know not what to do, and they hurt because of they know not what. There are those who stand at the shore and drink in the sight with their eyes and then turn and head for home, not knowing exactly why. Some are entrenched in stubborness and some are strapped in habbit while others are caged by fear. But there others who are stuck in all the above and yet are compelled by something else to rebel against their stubborness and fight against their habbit and push against their fears, while still walking home.

These are the walking dead. But they shall live again, and live to see the sea in their first's love silver eyes.

The High of Self Rightieousness

There is a brutal honesty that a Christian must subject his or herself to. It is a painfil exahsting process that exacts of each follower a new death everyday.

^31(AG) But if we judged^[h] ourselves truly, we would not be judged. ³²But when we are judged by the Lord,^(AH) we are disciplined^[i] so that we may not be^(AI) condemned along with the world.
(1 Corinthians 11:31-32 ESV)

²³Search me, O God, and know my heart!
   ^(A) Try me and know my thoughts!^[a]
24And see if there be any grievous way in me,
   and^(B) lead me in^(C) the way everlasting!^[b]
(Psalm 139:24 ESV)

There is paradox in the Christian. We are each called to scrutinize ourselves with a brutal sincerity, to judge ourselves truly. Yet on the other hand Christ calls us forth with these words,

^28(A) Come to^(B) me, all who labor and are^(C) heavy laden, and I will give you rest. ²⁹Take my yoke upon you, and^(D) learn from me, for I am^(E) gentle and lowly in heart, and^(F) you will find rest for your souls.
(Mathew 11:28-29 ESV)

There is a tension between the agonizing scrutiny and the gentle invitation to rest. We have all felt the weight of and the burden of those moments of where all our faults and belimishes are so clear. I would also risk to say that we have all felt that highstrung feeling in our chest when we are forced to sit back and think, "what am I doing wrong?". Then there is the sweet release of coming to that point where forgivness and compassion is poured out to us. The weight is lifted and that tension fades in a moment of sweet relief.

One does not have to look to far to find a commentator that would condemn any religion or spirituality that causes such cycles of guilt and relief in people. Why adhere to a faith that places such a burden on you, and then turns and calls that burden rest? Why live a life of constant guilt and constant scrutiny? Do we not want life to be free and happy? Do we not want our best life now? Look at the world, at all the problems and all the hungry suffering people. Why spend time on guilt when we could be spending time out there in the ruckus and swing of things?

I dare to answer that question with a drug. Self rightieousness.

What compels me to do what I know is right? I could string together a list of appropriate answers that we have all heard before, and i suppose that they would suffice. But I have to be honest, for a Christian is only worth their weight in truth. You want to know what compels me, the high of self rightieousness. I feel better about myself and I feel important when I do what I think is right. In some wrong headed way, I think it helps me escape from the person I am afraid I am, and I think that it makes up for all the things I have done in the past.

Self rightieousness and the high that it brings, truly is like a drug. Eventually the high wears off and you have to go out and do "better" and "better" things to get that feeling back again. Eventually nothing matters if it doesnt give you that feeling that somehow you have made it, that you diserve to feel good about who you are and that you diserve to expect others to respect who you are.

But what happens when that high wears off, will i still do what i know to be right, or will all my fained goodness fade away? Is that really what it means to follow Christ? I cannot accept that following Jesus is essentially a matter of my own selfishness, and I will not deny that the more I try to follow where Jesus goes, I realize that there is no real goodness of my own.

I must ask the question, will I still do what I know to be pleasing to the heart of God when there is no recognition, no high, no appreciation or greatness? Will I still follow the Lord even when doing so makes no sense, and all it brings me is rejection? Perhapse I will follow after Him if I can look forward to some glorious martyr death, but what if following jesus means nothing for me but the averege monotonous life, day in and day out with no glory, no great battles to be won and a slow march towards a common grave? I dare not say that as I am now, I would still follow Jesus into the monotony of the average midwestern life. I desperatly want to be someone!

There I have said it! I am a selfish, self rightieous hypocrit, Christian. And even now I run the risk of thinking more of my self than I should because I have, at least, admitted what I am, "unlike other people". Even now I am still stuggling to hold on to the last wisps of my own pride. Kaitlin, my dear wife, how you know this to be true.

This scrutiny is unrelenting, and the truth in its findings is undeniable. So I suppose I have nothing left to confess this wretched fact, that I am a wretched sinner. And dont get me wrong, I am not just saying "sinner" in that pious sense that some how gets around the reality of what it means to be dirty, sweaty, smelly, and in real need of a bath.

It is at this point where I am beckoned to come to Christ and to the cross and find my rest at the foot of Calvary. There I am called to die, and to step into that fountain and get the good washing I need. And when I finally come to see what I truly am, His love for me will actully mean more than billboard words, or religous jargon. His love for me will be what compels and comforts me, and His death will be my life. Any addict of a drug will tell that withdrawl can be worse than dying, and that the process of coming off a drug can be agonizing and yet sweet relief. So it is true that to come off of the drug of self rightieousness means death itself and yet in that harsh scrutiny that eluminates the addiction, we also find the voice that calls to us that we may rest. Once we come and die, we will truly live in that rest and the only weight to bare will be the weight of glory and the immesurable burden of God's untatiable love.

The Cause. The Faces. The Christ.

The Cause


We have all seen the commercials. They usually begin with the image of some sad, dark, child's face from a faraway place, as the anouncer tells us about how hungry, or scared, or thirsty that face is. The announcer, once having gripped our emotions, tells us that we can can bring hope that face with just less then two dollars a day, and then the screen is flooded with smiles and school uniforms all brought together by a pleasant melody and finally ended by the 1-800 number. Before you know it, 90 seconds have gone by and our show is back on, as we anxiously await to find out who stabbed the truck driver and who at CSI will figure it out right in the nick of time with that one hair. Maybe we are just waiting to see if maybe this episode Tom Welling will finally put on the red and blue tights, as we try to imagine how on earth he is going to pull off that cape? In any case, that one sad, dark face, will soon be forgotten, and thank heavens, I was almost feeling guilty enough to call that 1-800 number. Thank god for "The Office", and for Dwight.

The above has been my experience in my adult years. My awarness of the pain and destitution of mankind has been limited to pictures, and college student lead fundraisers. Faces have been made into causes, and causes into politics, and politics into points of tension, and points of tension into argument, argument into resentment, resentment to bitteness, and bitterness into anger, apathy, and segregation. Meanwhile, I assume that the face is still somewhere out there, and perhapse that face will grow up to be another human being trapped in the global cycle of corruption and greed, ending in another grave that will soon be forgotten. But, as I said, all this has only been my experience in my adult years. My childhood yeilds different music.


The Faces


I grew up in one of those far off destituted places. I grew up as a missionary kid in Honduras starting when I was six. In my childhood things were very different, because I grew up with those faces, not just that I grew up looking at those faces in person. I mean I actually grew up with those faces. I played in the backyard with those faces, I ate lunch with those faces while bargaining for the last tortilla, I got into fights with those faces, I picked mangos with those faces and I watched those faces grow up as I did with every birthday. I could tell you stories about those faces when they were in 3rd and 4th grade, and I could tell you what kind of homework they did, and what their teachers were like. I could tell you what their parents were like and the fights that they had with their little brothers and what girls they liked. I could show you the card board shack that they used to live in, and I could tell you who's uncle was stabbed to death in his bed just three shacks down. And I could tell you that I never saw a 1-800 number. And you know what else I could tell you?

I could tell you their names. Not just some name that came in a brochure that you put on your fridge, but the names that I learned to pronounce and spell. The names I used to call out while playing soccer, the names I used to pick for my team or the names that used to pick me for their team. Oh yes, I could tell you their names. The names that grew up to be gunned down in the street, the names that went on to be pilots, the names that when on to be civil engineers, or the names that went on to be masons. I could also tell you the names of good friends that I havent seen in years, and that I have learned not to miss and learned to forget.

You see, I could not tell you of a cause or mission. But I could tell you of faces, of people and of names. In my childhood, it was not about world hunger, or world peace, or social justice. It was about Joni, and Luis, and Alfredo, and Javier, and Sandra, and Carlitos, and Dona Rosaria. They were not in need of another ideology, another group of aid workers to come and build a well, deep down they needed more. They needed to believe that they were valuable, that they were truly human just like the Americans, that the ladder of economic segregation that weighed upon them all their lives, meant nothing. They needed food and water and medicine, but they also needed to be real, to be more than an example of poverty and objects of self rightious charity. They desperatly hungered after dignity and identity, individuality and security.

They were not causes. They were and are, mothers and fathers, brothers and friends, faces and names. They had and have ambitions and dreams, goals and plans, hopes and fears. They were not and are not objects to be used so that we may prove our goodness or godliness, or sources of reliefe for our guilt on acount of our selfish lives, and they are not stones tablets for ambitious men and women to write a legacy upon. They are people.

Dont you see that what they hunger for the most we cannot give in the form of a cause. Because we will ever be the almighty giver and they will be the poor helpless receiver of charity. No one wants to be constantly looking upwards for a morsel that will swell the head of the hand that gives it, and degrade the heart of the one who recieves. I do not belittle the aid and need of aid that is spread across this world, but no one like to feel like a charity case. Not for a moment do I think or say, or insinuate that charity is needed any less. I simply make the statment that no one wants to feel small, helpless and dependant on  the generosity of another. No one wants to be the object of a cause. Where is the dignity in the begging animal? Where is the dignity in the begging mother? Where is the dignity in reducing faces to statistics and causes?


The Christ


This is where the cause and the Christ come face to face. The Christ did not come to die for the salvation of mankind, He came to die for me. Christ came that I might know Him, that I might know God and that all mankind might be the Bride of the Son. We find that in the Bible the core of our faith is displayed in personal terms. We are adopted as sons and daughters of the Father, we are co-heirs and with Christ and loved by Him beyond all measure and we believe in Him not just His way ("I know whom I have believed"). Even humanity as a collective, or the church as a community is not put in organizational terms but in personal terms. The Church is the Bride of Christ, the beloved. We are not the kingdom of God, but the Kingdom of God is in us. Even truth is elevated to personhood. Christ is the truth and gives himself to us, for even the mysterious power and life of is raised to a relational frame, in that the spirit is also a person and He ministers and lives in us as the life of Christ in us. But it does not end there.

Even the ultimate act of God in Christ for the salvation of the world and the full revelation of all wisdom and insight, is not in some hidden principle or path, but in the cross. Where the person of Christ, the very infinate God, was violated and put to death by human hands. The cross is what it is not becuase it is a symbolic image of what love is, but because if the cross is essentially a relational thing. The cross is what is because of Christ's relationship to the father, Christs relationship to us, and the relatioship that we might have through the father through Christ.

Because we were in a relationship of emnity to the Father because of our sins, Jessus took on human form so that He might fully enter into a relationship not just with our humanity, but with each and every human, and because Christ entered into that position, we were able to lay our hands on the intangible God and crucify Him. Christ did this because He loves us and wanted us to know Him and have a relationship with the father like He Himself did. Because the Son had such a relatioship with the Father, even in Christ humanity, Christ could bear the wrath of the Father for us, and did so because even in the Father's wrath against our sin He still loved us, and thus the Father accepted the Son as the subsitute for humanity. Because of all this, the Father now draws us near in His eternal longing for us, as for the Son, and now we can have a relationship with the Father through our relationship to Christ.

It is all on personal terms, and not in a macrocosm of a cause. You see this is the Gospel that God did not reach down to satiate Himself and His need to be charitable, and He did not reduce humanity to a cause and degrade our dignity by reducing us to objects of charity that would be forever lower and helpless and seprerate. No, God stepped into our place and took on our lowliness that we might take on the inheritence of His Son. He exchanged places with us, not that we might become God, but that we would be given the dignity of God becoming man.

This is where the Gospel truly speaks to social justice, by completely obliterating the concpet. We are all the poor and destituted in God's eyes. All people are made equal and brought down to a common community in that all people are sinners and all people and lost and poor, and yet all peoples are elevated to dignity because Christ died for them all and took on their common humanity. Then even a greater wonder is made clear. Not only did God restore dignity by taking on their common humanity, but then went on to do more than just make humanity an object of His charity and reduce us to wants and needs alone. He actually looked upon us and offered to change places with us, that He would take on our poverty so that we could take on His inheritence.

Let me illustrate this so that we may see it clearly. My parents as they did their mission work did one thing that changed the dynamic of the mission. They did one thing that restored dignity and filled others with value. They lived in the slum among the poor. We did not live in the wort community, but we lived as a american missionaries in a place and in a home that was vastly inferior to many other missionaries we knew. We lived with the people and ate the food they ate. We had them in our living room watching movies and playing sega. We spent time in their homes and talked about the soccer games and the recent election. My parents stepped down into their world not just for working, but for living. We didnt live in everyway like they did, but we did in many ways, and where their were differences, the poor were always welcome to join us. Not only did my parents build wells and sponsor children and make meals, they also embraced and related to those faces as friends and neighbors. In some way, my parents took their place so that those faces might be lifted up and encouraged, loved and sustained. My family stepped into their world so that world could know something different, and for five years we stayed in that world.

My parents did not do this because of some cause, and the people we helped we never a cause to my father or mother. There was no mission to change the world. No social action to improve standards of life. There was my family dusty, sweating, and hot, and they did this becuase they had known the Christ who stepped into their world and did the same for them. This is what impelled my parents to sacrifice their lives, because Christ sacrificed His life for them.

This stepping down, this exchange of places, is how the gospel restores dignity to the poor and the destitute. Christ does not become the almighty non-profit foundation rallying social justice. Christ offers the destitute Himself and offers His life in exchange for thiers. He offers to lift them up, even as Christ is brought down.

This exchange is made known in the cross, and if the cross is not or focus even in social just or social action, then we are failing. For the hungry, Jesus offers His flesh, for the thirsty He offers springs of living water that flow from himself. If we offer bread yet do not offer Christ, if we offer medicine and yet we do not offer the great physician, if we offer a better life and yet we do not offer the way the truth and the life, we have merely postponed the grave, and not truly offered life. If we are impelled by the cause and not the Christ, if we long for change and solutions, and not long for Jesus for His own sake and offer Jesus for His ownsake, then we reduce those faces to objects or to needs and wants. We strip them of their ultimate dignity and humanity, because they are not just needs and wants and objects of charity, they are persons who were made by and made for Jesus and are loved by Him. Ignore this part of the mission and you ignore their very personhood, their very value and their very life.

Die

There are moment when all we can do is die. These moments are like storms, not in the raging or torrent, but in the simple reality that we are helpless to split the clouds, helpless to bring the sune back into the sky. We find ourselves sitting in the rain with nothing else to do and no where to go. The rain falls and the dull thuds of each drop mixes in with the cold to compose a voice that seems to capture so well what our own voices cannot speak of, that quiet pain that does not extract from us screams of agony, but weighs us down with an invisible burden. This burden being invisible, intangible and silent, thus cannot be perfectly seen and described by the carrier, lifted up and off by the strongest of human hands, or be cured by a thousand beautiful words. All that can be done, is to sit and wait in the rain, and wait for the clouds to have mercy and release their prisoner, the sky.

These are the moments that beckon us to die. To drink in the rain and embrace the growing chill. This is the hard part. When we come to the end of all that we can do, and yet every thing in our beings tell us to try, to move, to fight, to force the sun to shine by sheer will. Or our being surrenders to the greyness and we sink deep into the water, and we loose ourselves in the dull sound of each breaking drop upon the ground. Nothing..we finally find that we can do nothing close up the shower and bring the color back again. Here is where it is all so very clear, where helplesness becomes the lense through which we see the feeblness of our existence. It is here where what we truly are becomes so clear. We are lost. Wet, tired, cold, and lost. We have come to the end.

Here is the test of Love. Because right there in that place we have made it as far as we need to go, and we need not take another step further, for we have made it to the only place we are meant to find. We have made it to the foot of the cross. All that is left to do is to lay down and die. Rest your head and close your eyes and let the thud, thud, thud, of the drops take you away. Breathe your last breath and surrender. There is nothing left to do, and there is no strength left to fight.

So come and die. Because the promise is, that if you come and die, you will live again, truly live again. And in that life the rain may still be pouring, but you will finally be able to hear the symphony. You will be able to here the music in every drop, you will be able to hear the lulliby of praise in the dripping down of worship from the sky. There you will find that all you heart longs for is to join in, to take your place in that music and sing with each note of falling drops. To raise your hands and drink in the rain, now not as misery, but music. There you will finally find it, finally see it and feel it. The warmth, the light, the brightness and brilliance, the sheen and shine, of the son. And he will lift your weight and fill the silence of that burden with His very love. He will be your light. The son will be your everlasting sun.

And one day soon, the clouds will split and the sky will rend and shutter, the son will come riding in on a brilliant blaze of dawn. And then their will be new music and the rain shall be no more.

You cannot not know what life is there, you cannot see the promise made sure unless you come and die.


As the rain and the snow
   come down from heaven,
and do not return to it
   without watering the earth
and making it bud and flourish,
   so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater,
¹¹ so is my word that goes out from my mouth:
   It will not return to me empty,
but will accomplish what I desire
   and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.
¹² You will go out in joy
   and be led forth in peace;
the mountains and hills
   will burst into song before you,
and all the trees of the field
   will clap their hands.
                         (Isaiah 55:10-12)

If you cling to your life, you will lose it; but if you give up your life for me, you will find it.
                          (Mathew 10:39)

²³ Then he got into the boat and his disciples followed him. ²⁴ Suddenly a furious storm came up on the lake, so that the waves swept over the boat. But Jesus was sleeping. ²⁵ The disciples went and woke him, saying, “Lord, save us! We’re going to drown!”
 <sup>26 He replied, “You of little faith, why are you so afraid?” Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the waves, and it was completely calm.
 27 The men were amazed and asked, “What kind of man is this? Even the winds and the waves obey him!”
                                 (Mathew 8:23-27)

4</sup> They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. ⁵ There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever.
                         (Revelation 22:4-5)

³ And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ⁴ ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’^[b] or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
                         (Revelation 21:3-4)

Human Suffering and the Evicerated Christ

History speaks in a common voice with the present at times, and when this happens it can be saftely assumed that the future will cry with the same voice. There are always exceptions to the rule, but none the less, history does repeat itself. It could be said that humans are players on such a predictable stage, and are of all players the most predictable. There is a common flow in the ebing and undulation of civilizations and nations, as there is a common flow in the personal experience of every individual. If there is one undeniable reality that foists itself upon both the microcosm of the individual and the macrocosm of community, and even on to the cosmos iself, this one reality is suffering.

Whether it is suffering at the hands of others in violence, the internal turmoil of the mind and emotions, the agony of loss or rejection, the pain of disease and decrepidation, or the subtle excrutiation of loneliness and dissapointment, suffering is a reality that cannot be denied. Oh yes, it can be explained through various avenues of thought, and numbed through a myriad of methods, but none the less suffering is there, detected and undeniable. We may quarrel about defentions or origin, but when we suffer whe know it, it is not a thing to be rationally proven, to due so is not necessary, just poke the questioner in the eye and that is all the proof you will need. But let me clear the air of a false assumption of what suffering is. Suffering is not necessarily pain.

Dr. Ravi Zacharias tells the story of little girl born with a disability that inhibits her from feeling pain, or any sensation for that fact, in her physical body. Her parents are always on the gaurd for her, at every moment because this little girl could so easily burn or cut herself, or even bleed out without even knowing it. Her lack of pain is the danger that threatens her life at every corner. This is such a present danger to this child, that her parents spend time every night praying that their little girl would be able to feel pain. Her parents are actually crying out to God that their precious little girl would experience pain. If that little girl could just feel physical pain, than her suffering would be lightened. But let me take this to another extreme.

When studying psychopaths, and I mean real criminal psychopaths who have engaged in serial killing and various other behavior that would be considered un-human, scientists made the discovery that one of the things that creates such behavior is the pychopaths inhability to feel remorse or guilt. The individual here is not actually capable, for whatever reason, be it nature or nuture, to feel guilt or the emotional pain of remorse with which to measure their actions. This in turn creates a state of mind where pleasure can overwhelm the individual becuase pleasure becomes like a drug, in the sense that there is never any guilt to counter act the search for pleasure. If i can experince sexual delight without ever feeling guilt, than anything that brings me sexual satisfaction will be very attractive and there will be very little to disuade me from pursuing that end. I myself may recognize that rape is "bad" but there is nothing within me that truly feels the "badness" and if there is not intensity of remorse or pain in guilt to counteract the intensity of that sexual pleasure, then the pleasure itself becomes absolutely overwhelming like a drug that takes control. Just like a real drug, the intensity of the pleasure dulls over repetition, and soon there is a desire for better and better high, therefore when rape no longer provides the high, the psychopath moves to other actions like an adict may move towards higher doeses of a drug or stronger drugs. This individual is in desperate need of feeling emotional pain in the form of remorse and guilt, it is exactly that kind of internal turmoil that one would wich for the individual. This psychopath suffers much, and his exclusion from a healthy part of community is just one part of that suffering. If only that individual could feel intense emotional agony in guilt.

One could also consider those who study psychopaths who are criminals and the condition of their own psychology. Many criminal pathologists have experienced moments of intense suffering when they begin to realize that they actually have begun to feel nothing towards the victims. Their job requires them to adjust so much to the gruesome reality of mutilation and violence that over time a numbness sets in. For some in that kind of work, they express an imense amound of suffering that comes from feeling nothing, from being numb, from being able to look upon a mutilated victim, and feel very little and yet know that should be horrified and are not.

There are many examples that could be used, but the point is clear. Suffering may be painful, but suffering may also be caused by an utter lack of pain.

It is here where humanity's suffering must be put into perspective. Our ultimate suffering in the eyes of God begins somewhere rather unexpected. When humanity can look upon the cross and feel nothing, no pain or remorse or guilt, it is then that God declares that we are truly suffering. For you see, the little girl who has no physical sensation in her body cannot feel pain but she can also not feel her mothers kisses or her fathers arms. The psychopath cannot feel guilt or remorse, but he also cannot feel the full nature of his hummanity and the community he has with other humans because of this shared humanity, he cannot imagine another person's pain and empathise, because he has no pain. The criminal pathologist may be able to look upon an evicerated corpse without horror, but how then will he look upon his sleeping children at home, for if he opend himself up to feel for those little feet and littel toes, does he not open himself up to feel for those feet and those toes sticking out from under the white mortuary cloth?

When humanity can look upon the evicerated Christ of the cross and feel no pain or agony of guilt, then we are truly suffering in God's eyes, for then we also close ourself off from the glory and promise of the ressurection of that Christ, in which we are drawn into the love and relationship, communion and confort, and the arms and touch of God Himself. That is the perspective of God, and that is what He declares as ultimate suffering...a lack of pain and agony and remorse in our very being, at the foot of the cross.