Ever Reforming, Ever Loved

I have been terrible about posting on this thing, partly because over the past few months I have done school non-stop, and partly because I have been going through an intense season of struggle. A month ago, I started Recovery at the Village for nicotine addiction. I realized I had an addiction, and that I didn’t just really like it, after I was caught by my wife with some Snus (kind of like dip but not really). You see, whenever I would give into temptation, I would hide it, lie about it, and hope that Jen wouldn’t press me on it. The idea was to lay low and not give in for a while, and THEN confess to it. The motivation for this was due to some trust issues Jen has.

This is how insane the sin cycle truly is: I was going to confess once I, by my works, was good enough for a long enough period of time. I didn’t was to confess right away and be honest with Jen because she has trust issues, essentially making myself untrustworthy in the process. There is no gospel in that thought process, and certainly no obedience to God.

So now I am in the thick of the recovery process. Right now I have to take inventory of all my sexual misconduct (which was a HUGE problem for me in highschool/college but, by the grace of God, has been mortified substantially) explaining what I did, who it affected, and how it effected them. After that I get to deal with my anger, bitterness, and resentment towards any people, groups, or institutions that have hurt me. Yeah. It’s good stuff.

But it will be worth it once I am able to be free from the addictions and hangups that keep me from fulfilling my purpose, namely being satisfied completely with God through Christ, and relying upon Him for life and breath and everything.

Those poor Neo-Orthodox theologians. The liberals thought they were conservative -nay- fundie, and the evangelicals thought they were liberal. Barth, being the poster child of the response to rampant Classical Liberalism in Europe during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, was truly a man without a home. His views on revelation irked protestants and liberals alike, alienating him from the former by his less than inspired views on Scripture (which merely becomes the Word of God) and the latter by his utter disdain for any natural revelation (Nein!). It seems as if his views on the subject, which stem from his foundational, essentially properly basic belief in the utter transcendence of God, were elevated to an unhealthy level. Now, I’m not a Barth scholar by any stretch, and I am just now beginning to read some of his stuff (crazy dialectics abound!) but it seems as if his preoccupation with the revelation of God through the Son leaves him little time to consider the Holy Spirit as far as the third person of the trinity is involved in revelation. It’s almost as if he treats the Holy Spirit like that uncle at the reunion that everyone tries to avoid. He sees him, and acknowledges the role of the Spirit in illuminating the Word of God, but doesn’t really acknowledge him at length. Did he consider the presence of the Holy Spirit in creation as being unavailable to us because of said transcendence, like waves of light that are invisible to the human eye? Perhaps some of you who are more knowledgeable in all that is Neo-Orthodoxy could shine some light on the subject. Like I said, I am no Barthian scholar by any stretch, this is just my first impression of him and his views on revelation.