I've been confronted with the question of the rights and wrongs of divorce, as well as those of remarrying. I'm too tired (and hopped up on codeine) to go through everything, but the majority of the argument against remarriage (as fronted by many conservative Protestant Christian denominations) derives from Matthew 5 (NIV):
31 “It has been said, ‘Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce.’ 32 But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, causes her to become an adulteress, and anyone who marries the divorced woman commits adultery.
"See?" they say. "You cannot remarry!"
Except Jesus never says that. He does not say divorce is forbidden, nor does He say that remarrying is forbidden. He says that there is sin involved, i.e., that it does not measure up to God's yardstick. But if we Christians were to take Jesus' words as literally true, as new declarations of Law, from the rest of that passage... well, we would be a SAD bunch. Observe:
29 If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. 30 And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.
I don't see too many eyeless, handless Christians walking around. Either their right eyes are perfect or they are ignoring Jesus' clear command to gouge out their sinful eyes. Or maybe it's just that a literal reading, a reading that assumes Jesus is handing down Law, is just a poor reading?
Further and specific to remarrying, consider the one who lustfully looks at a woman:
28 But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
So we are all adulterers then. Now what? Well, now we repent and accept God's grace, wiping our slate clean of ALL sin. After repentance, God does not treat the adulterer any differently than He treats the one who has never committed adultery. All have equal access to God's grace, and all have their sins completely wiped away and "remembered no more".
So why should a divorced person be any different? If God hates divorce, and I get a divorce, I have done something to grieve God. But if I repent, am I a divorced man in God's eyes, unable to pursue a new covenant with a new mate? Or does God treat me as the one who has repented of adultery - as one who has never committed adultery/gotten divorced?
"Ah, but the murderer, though he might be forgiven by God, enters prison as a natural consequence of his actions." That's true, but what natural consequence of divorce forbids remarrying? There is none; the only time remarrying is forbidden to a repentant Christian is when legalism reads a command into God's Word where there is clearly none. That is a most UNnatural consequence, and one which I reject wholly.
Psalm 25:7 Remember not the sins of my youth
and my rebellious ways;
according to your love remember me,
for you are good, O LORD .
If God isn't going to remember the sins of my youth, why do Christians feel compelled to do so?
(Yes, that's the abbreviated version, edited to run in the time alloted.)
I have a toothache.
This is no ordinary toothache. My lower-right wisdom tooth is wreaking all sorts of havoc on the right side of my head. For one, it, being in the back, has received much less attention from the ol' toothbrush than my other teeth. As a result, it has developed a fairly severe cavity. I'm fairly certain that if the thin facade of a tooth surface were filed away, one might find a note reading "IOU One Tooth Innards. Yours, Oreo cookies" and not much else. (See, I have this thing about eating Oreos before bed. It occasionally late at night and I forget to brush my teeth afterwards. While it doesn't entirely account for the decrepit state of my tooth, it's sort of a metaphor for the whole process.)
Beyond the cavity, however, the wisdom tooth is quite large and quite insistent on having its space, to the detriment of the rest of my teeth and my lower jaw. As it muscles its way into my mouth, it continues to crowd my other teeth and butt itself against the bend in my lower jaw. While the cavity affects my ability to use that right side for even moderately cold foods, the overcrowding causes my ear to explode with pain, as if I had an ear infection. It causes my neck to strain and become sore. My jaw clicks and locks with every opening and closing, as my muscles are so tense with the constant pain. I'm taking 600mg of ibuprofen every 4 hours (about 1.5 to 3x the normal dosage) - sometimes it touches the pain, sometimes it doesn't.
Boo hoo Peter, right? No, I urge you not to cry for me, gentle readers. The thing is that I've had this tooth thing going on for a while now. Every couple or four months, I go through this excruciating pain for a week or ten days, only to have it disappear as suddenly as it appears. Every time I swear I will take care of it, that no pain like this should go untreated. At the same time, I am TERRIFIED of the dentist, and this is likely one of the more terrifying procedures. So somehow, over the past couple of years that this has been happening, I haven't gotten this taken care of.
What a metaphor for life's decisions! So often I put off the difficult decisions, choosing the long-term (but infrequent) pain over the short-term pain of just making a decision and sticking with it. If I had bitten the bullet and taken care of this problematic tooth when it first started hurting, I would not be in pain right now. How many tough decisions do I avoid, knowing that the pain will be here only for a while before leaving long enough for me to forget the pain all over again? How long did I struggle unnecessarily with my addiction, preferring the relatively infrequent pain and embarrassment of succumbing over the unknown, exquisite, yet brief pain of resolving to kick my addiction?
To put off these types of decision only pushes out the healing time. My jaw, teeth, and gums cannot heal from the oral surgery I require until I actually choose to have the surgery! Neither can my heart heal from my own failings until I admit them and allow God to perform the heart surgery I require.
I'm calling the dentist in the morning. It's time to get this pain over now and over forever.
I'm not good at waiting.
I'm good at looking back after the waiting is done - after all, it's been nearly 15 months since everything blew up in my marriage the first time, and almost 5 months since it blew up again and for the final time. I can look at those numbers, especially the 15 months, and remember everything that has happened in that time: so many mornings of the single parent dance in getting kids to school and taking care of my inbox; actually getting used to sleeping alone; filling out form after form to finalize the dissolution of our marriage. Looking back, I've been waiting for things to stabilize for a long, long time; but during those 15 months I often wondered if it would ever end.
Waiting for something is easy after the waiting is done. Frequently, one has no control over whether or not one's going to actually wait for something - if one wants it, one just has to wait, no negotiation. So the waiting itself might be easy, if you consider "inevitable" and "easy" to be remotely synonymous.
But that doesn't help at the beginning of the wait. If I'm waiting 6+ months, say until late September/early October, for something I desire passionately right now... well, all of a sudden those 180+ days seem like an eternity. It's like putting up the Christmas tree in late June and populating it with the fantastic presents you might expect... IN DECEMBER. Who can curb such curiosity, such longing for that time?!
And yet some things in life are simply worth waiting for. And sometimes six months seems like a drop in the bucket after getting (limping) along for 2.5x that time without my helpmate. Why wait six months after waiting so long? Only because that's the way it has to be - and "has to be" is simply something to which I've become accustomed. But that's a blessing in disguise - where waiting is necessary, I am comfortable with doing what is "necessary".
Besides, what bearing does six months have on eternity? Let me act according to what is eternal and right within that eternal timeframe, not the temporal, not the next six months.
I may prefer otherwise, but I can wait.
Sorry, but I'm just cutting and pasting again...
So somehow, through turning 30, attending a Maroon 5 concert, and becoming an uncle, I've failed to post. As you can tell, it's not for lack of things to talk about, but rather time in which to talk about them. So I'll try to work it all in here, sometime after 1AM on a school night...I'm an uncle! Taiel James Ramirez was born around 5:45PM on March 9; he was 6 lb. 15 oz. and 21 inches. Mom and baby are doing very well, and are home after a slightly extended hospital stay. I've had the privilege of holding my nephew, and he promptly fell asleep in my arms. It's still an adjustment to think of having a nephew that I will one day ruin with junk food and Monty Python. But it's a good thing.
I turned 30 last Thursday (March 10). I had a very pleasant birthday, getting to see Taiel and my sister, and having the joy of taking Vanessa out to Chilean food down in LA. No fanfare, no annoying singing waiters... just pastel de choclo, Chilean sea bass, pan fresco con aji, and a little Gato Blanco. At this point in my life, a nearly perfect birthday.
Finally, we went to see Maroon 5 at the Universal Amphitheatre on Friday (March 11). Vanessa and I met a couple from church, and got seated just before Phantom Planet came on to open for them. I won't speak of "other people" who weren't as happy with them (since she will almost CERTAINLY speak for herself!), but I kinda liked Phantom Planet. But when Maroon 5 came on, it was a noticeable difference in quality.
Every musician played his butt off, each with his own flair. Singer playing guitar, guitarist playing lead or rhythm, pianist playing guitar, drummer singing, singer drumming. The flexibility within the band was astounding. The set was also astounding, as it included all 12 songs from Songs About Jane, two new songs, and two covers ("Seven Nation Army" by the White Stripes, and "Highway to Hell" by AC/DC). The covers were sung by the band drummer, who had given up the drumming responsibilities for the main show due to injury. But he sure didn't have a problem strapping on a guitar and taking vocal duties for those two songs, all while Adam (lead singer) played a surprisingly mean drums. Other highlights were opening with "Shiver", Adam singing the first verse of "This Love" a capella (with only the crowd as a (capable) backup), the crazy energy of "Harder to Breathe", the tenderness of "Sunday Morning". The whole show was a highlight; I will definitely be attempting to secure tickets for their May show in Anaheim.
Yes, I just wrote more than twice as much about Maroon 5 as I did my birthday and nephew combined. Don't read too much into that...
I went on another of my Amazon music benders today. At the end of it all, I was $76.48 poorer ("Your purse feels lighter." - still one of the best early computer gaming lines, right along with, "You are in a twisty maze of passages, all alike.") but five CDs and two DVDs richer.
So that's what I did. I'm busy trying to justify it all in my own mind as an early celebration of my birthday (especially since the CDs and DVDs coming from different used sellers won't arrive until late next week at the earliest...) Does that work for you?
Brief update, trying to get my once-per-week post quota fulfilled:
We saw Evita at the Pantages Theater on Wednesday night. It was both better and worse than I thought it would be. It was worse in that the first 20 minutes or so is completely discordant and chaotic; both Vanessa and I confessed to internally begging for a stinking melody among the clashing. But as the play went on, it became clear that the chaos was totally appropriate for the beginning of the play, when Argentina is thrown into a fit at news of Evita's death.
But in general, it was far, far better than I thought it would be. I hadn't seen the movie or the production prior to Wednesday; heck, I was only marginally aware of the storyline. (And we arrived JUST as they were dimming the lights (stupid 101) so we didn't get a chance to read the playbill ahead of time.) So some of the history was a bit confusing, especially as Che Guevara, a contemporary of Evita though they never met, was the narrator and antagonist throughout Evita's life. As described elsewhere, he was the Greek chorus, the voice of the Argentine revolution in this case.
The songs were extremely interesting - a lot of the chaos in the first scene carried through the musical, even though passages of beautiful melody occasionally snuck through. "Don't Cry For Me Argentina" and "Buenos Aires", the two songs of which I was somewhat aware, were reasonably good. But the lesser-known (to me) songs were the real gems: "I'd Be Surprisingly Good For You" was a sweet, seductive duet (though Eva, appropriately, did most of the singing); "Art of the Possible" was clever in many regards; and the "Waltz for Eva and Che" was intense and deadly. Those were just a few that caught my fancy; I've spent a few minutes locating the best recording to purchase, as the music was really compelling once I allowed it to sink in.
The company was wonderful. In addition to Vanessa, my parents were there, as were my VERY pregnant sister (all dolled up with her big ol' pregnant rocket belly distorting her dress "ever so slightly") and brother-in-law. We hit Denny's (of course) afterwards and had a great time goofing on each other, recounting old and embarrassing stories (mostly about me, given Vanessa's presence), and annoying the wait staff. (Thanks Dad. :-P)
Good times were had by all, and we'll definitely be doing it again. "The King and I" plays in April, and is a well-received musical; maybe we'll go see that one. Or maybe I'll just whisk away to London to finally see Phantom live. Until then... seven days until Maroon 5... :-D