lies and the lying liar who blogs them

i lie on rough draft a lot. it's not so much that i distort facts as that i allow you, the reader, to draw false inferences. however, please consider this mea culpa to be limited, so far as i know, to lies about one subject: myself.

now that i think about it, pretty much everything on here is @ least tinged w/ deceit. for instance, i have a lot of links in the sidebar to theological information. the assumption one draws from that fact, i would surmise, is that i am a theological person. well, "theological" i may be, but whatever that means it is not synonymous with being "in a right relationship to god," as evangelicals are wont to say. most assuredly, i am not all that often "aligned" w/ god. i understand things about him intellectually, but far too infrequently do i experience those things. i write a lot about "right doctrine," but my doctrine doesn't appear to be keeping me near to god.

so what? well, i don't know. i write to myself today, but these words are here for all the world to see. if you do not find yourself "sideways" w/ god as you read this, then you have my permission to dismiss this all as the semi-intelligible ravings of a conscience-seared wanderer. personally, i'm trudging through a pretty dark time of late (no wonder i posted c. m. thomas' "job" back on 31 may -- now that i look @ him, the figure in the painting looks a lot like me), but there are signs that the clouds are breaking. just last night, renee' got me to admit that i really don't understand forgiveness, the very heart of the gospel, all that much, and to make such an admission required (i think) that i bend my knees ever so slightly, moving toward that place where eventually i hope to be -- in complete submission to god, experiencing true forgiveness, living as a "slave to righteousness" (whatever would that be like, to live like that?).

so that may explain why i haven't posted much lately. and this entry serves as a milemarker, of sorts, for me. it's a reminder of the night i saw that i believe lies as much as i tell them. the night that renee' read the following verses from job 22, and i understood that they applied to me, and god began to adjust my orbit around him for the first time in a long while. a long, long while.

Is not your wickedness great?
Are not your sins endless?
You demanded security from your brothers for no reason;
you stripped men of their clothing, leaving them naked.
You gave no water to the weary
and you withheld food from the hungry,
though you were a powerful man, owning land-
an honored man, living on it.
And you sent widows away empty-handed
and broke the strength of the fatherless.
That is why snares are all around you,
why sudden peril terrifies you,
why it is so dark you cannot see,
and why a flood of water covers you.
Is not God in the heights of heaven?
And see how lofty are the highest stars!
Yet you say, 'What does God know?
Does he judge through such darkness?
Thick clouds veil him, so he does not see us
as he goes about in the vaulted heavens.'
Will you keep to the old path
that evil men have trod?
They were carried off before their time,
their foundations washed away by a flood.
They said to God, 'Leave us alone!
What can the Almighty do to us?'
Yet it was he who filled their houses with good things,
so I stand aloof from the counsel of the wicked.
The righteous see their ruin and rejoice;
the innocent mock them, saying,
'Surely our foes are destroyed,
and fire devours their wealth.'
Submit to God and be at peace with him;
in this way prosperity will come to you.
Accept instruction from his mouth
and lay up his words in your heart.
If you return to the Almighty, you will be restored:
If you remove wickedness far from your tent
and assign your nuggets to the dust,
your gold of Ophir to the rocks in the ravines,
then the Almighty will be your gold,
the choicest silver for you.
Surely then you will find delight in the Almighty
and will lift up your face to God.
You will pray to him, and he will hear you,
and you will fulfill your vows.