Tenchi
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Psalm 139:23-24
23 Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts!
24 And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!
23 Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts!
24 And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!
Perhaps in no other way are we so pathological, so self-destructive, than in our self-deceptions, in the stories we tell ourselves, and justifications we make, in order to enable our selfishness and sin.
“My husband is a miserable, childish idiot,” the frustrated wife declares. “I have to constantly pick up after him, think for him, and endure his continual complaining. And so,” she concludes, “I have good cause, even the right, to despise him, and snap at him angrily, and issue ultimatums, manipulating him into doing what I want.” It all makes perfectly good sense to her – especially when, every day, her husband gives her fresh cause to think as she does. Can’t he see that he ought to be more like her? If he would just do things her way, everything would be fine.
On his side, this woman’s husband thinks his wife a miserable shrew, an ugly, barking creature, domineering and impatient. “I have every right to hate her,” he reasons. “She treats me like a child, disrespecting me, arguing against everything I say, and bossing me around.” In light of these things, he is certain that he has the best of grounds upon which to stand in his resentment of, and frustration with, his nasty spouse. And daily, she offers new offense to him, strengthening his bitterness. If she would just be more like him, they’d get along perfectly! Why can’t she see this?
And so, when they aren’t pointedly ignoring each other, this husband and wife are compounding their hurts, with planks of vicious words and bitter actions, building up the barriers between them, settling deeper and deeper into a relationship of awful unhappiness and pain, wondering how they got into such an excruciating mess and wishing desperately to get out.
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Twenty-something Edward loves to bash out marathon sessions on his PS5, sitting alone in his one-room apartment, curtains drawn, lights off, totally absorbed in the hyper-stimulating sights and sounds of his favorite video game. He’s stopped wondering if being alone so much is bad for him; he’s stopped thinking about how fiercely he desires to game and what it might mean; he’s stopped considering what other more productive and life-building things there might be to do. Mostly, the sound and fury of gaming keeps Edward from such introspection, but when he has to take a bathroom break, or grab something to eat from the fridge, he does so as quickly as he can, his mind fixed on what he’ll do next in the game.
But, life intrudes, eventually, and when it does, Edward tells himself things about his gaming obsession like, “Who cares if I love to game? No one misses me. No one needs me.” Edward knows this isn’t true; his parents love him dearly and often urge him to leave off his PS5 and interact with them. But Edward feels they’re too much like NPCs, flat, boring and repetitive, nowhere near as exciting as shooting aliens, or killing dragons. When he’s filling gas tanks at the gas station where he works, Edward sees the dreariness of the world, the tediousness of it, the lack of color, and sound, and stimulation that he encounters in-game, and reasons that the game world is better, more enriching, healthier for his brain, because it blasts him constantly with highly-stimulating input.
Although outside of gaming, Edward’s life has constricted to the bare necessities, has emptied of friends, and though he has ceased to care about a career, or marriage, or growing intellectually and experientially, he denies that it matters, telling himself that life is, above all, about being happy. And nothing makes him happier than gaming for sixteen hours straight.
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Kimberley loves her boyfriend, Alton. She knows it’s real love because she has given herself sexually to him. Many times, in fact. Often, it seems to Kimberley, sex is all Alton is interested in when they’re together. But the amazing intimacy they share when having sex and the pleasure of the act has bound Kimberley tightly to Alton and she is sure he must be likewise bound to her – though, he doesn’t say so unless Kimberley presses him to…
Kimberley knows, deep down, that she is doing something wrong when she has sex with Alton. She has worked up a countering series of arguments, though, to suppress this sense of wrongness, which is always especially strong after she and Alton have been intimate: Love is the ultimate good, isn’t it? She and Alton love each other with a towering passion, with wild intensity, so there’s nothing wrong in what they are doing sexually. Sex is totally natural, too, and what is natural can’t, by definition, be wrong. Not doing what is natural is unnatural, isn’t it? And the unnatural is always unhealthy. Why, then, should Kimberley restrain her natural sexual desires when she’s with Alton, whom she loves? Besides, everybody’s doing it. Even kids just new to puberty are sexually-active. Like her Sex-Ed teacher tells them: Sex is normal.
Of course, a part of Kimberley is dully-aware that she’s being facile in her reasoning, that she’s not testing, or even inspecting, the truth of these arguments with any real care, or seriousness. Caught up in the sweeping torrent of youthful lust and the searing flames of a first romance, Kimberley has no interest in discovering that her pangs of conscience (now very weak and faint) were right. Though Kimberley knows kids her age who have been utterly crushed by love-lost and driven to suicide; or who’ve grown hard and cynical about sex instead, treating it as a purely physical act akin to going to the toilet, devoid of beauty or meaning, using others as mere tools for sexual pleasure; or who’ve gotten pregnant and killed – oops, aborted - their baby; or who’ve been infected by gross diseases; she is confident none of these things will happen to her. The profound love she and Alton share will be proof against any and all such possibilities.
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Mario is convinced that Shirley Johnson, the Sunday morning worship leader, is a complete fake. Her fancy outfits, and dignified manner, and constant smile are the veneer of a hypocrite. Nobody is ever as nice, and joyful, and spiritual as they are at church on Sunday morning. Mario sure isn’t and he’s certain what’s true of him is more or less true of everyone else. So, it really rankles him when Shirley Johnson puts on spiritual airs, speaking so enthusiastically of Christ, singing so happily about God, when she’s on stage. Mario sees right through her fakery.
It doesn’t matter that Shirley Johnson always greets him pleasantly, listening intently to his responses and talking with him about what he’s said. Sure, she looks like she cares but that’s what hypocrites do, right? Nothing is real with her; it’s all just a put-on.
Of course, Mario doesn’t actually know what the rest of Shirley Johnson’s life is like. But as his own life reveals, God is just an idea, a distant, shadowy figure threatening everybody and ruining their fun. There’s no way, then, that Shirley Johnson actually loves God. What’s to love? No, Shirley Johnson is just as miserable, just as much a mask-wearer, on Sunday morning as Mario. It makes him sick.
Occasionally, Mario will feel that maybe he’s being unfair to Shirley Johnson, that he’s too sure about her deep hypocrisy. To think she’s actually joyful in God all the time, though, that she’s just as nice, just as God-centered, on Monday as she is on Sunday, makes Mario deeply uncomfortable. Who is Shirley Johnson to make others feel condemned, to feel inferior to her, in their experience of God? That’s just what hypocrites do.
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Continued below.
