you gotta go there to come back

Had an interesting talk recently with this friend I ran into on the streets on my way to work. Apparently at some point she just up and decided to get serious with God, and she completely changed her life over. Stopped doing the things she used to do, you know, like rave, changed her music, now reads the Bible for fun et al. I dono if this makes me come across as psycho, but I've always been envious of people like that. You know, people who've been to the other side. People who had an (for lack of a better word) illustrious childhood. I've always felt in my mind that those people make better Christians than, say, someone who's always been brought up with Christian values. Someone like me. Because those people know the difference. They have a direct frame of reference between how their life is now and how it was then, and they can tell exactly what it is that was missing before they really got saved.

You know the way astronomers are always telling us how the earth goes round once every day and revolves round the sun once every year, but we never feel as though it's moving. The reason is it's been moving ever since we were born, so we don't know any different. It's like when you've been in the dark for a long time and then you suddenly came into the light, I think you're better placed to see how the light changes your life than someone who's always been in said light. For us, guys like that, it must partly be a case of familiarity breeding contempt, that we can never seem to have the fire that new converts have [well, at least I don't think I do]. Things that to me have become routine tasks like prayer and meditation, still hold that magic touch to these [new] people. They still do it because they want to do it, not coz they're used to, or coz they think they should. It's not a chore to them. So I think results to them come easier than they do to the rest of us - they still have that purity of mind.

When photographers want to make an object stand out better when composing a scene, one of the things they do is turn up the contrast. I think that's what I'm [and others like me are] lacking: contrast. I don't really know what it's like to not be who I've always been. I can't really point to the void the Holy Spirit fills in my life once I accept him, coz I've never been consciously aware of it. This other friend put it very philosophically: those who are forgiven much tend to love more [which is actually in the Bible]. I don't feel as though I've been forgiven that much, because other than the original sin I can't point to any other major misdemeanors [nevermind that there's no big or small sin]. I was born when my parents weren't saved, but they converted when I was four, so I've never known any other life.

I don't even know what kind of wishful thinking this is - basically it's like I want to have lived on the dark side so that when I met Christ I could see what's changed. I guess it would be much easier for me to just pray that He reveals His presence in my life every now and again in not-every-day ways. Just so I know He's still there and all this good stuff isn't happening to me just because. And so I can identify clearly where in my life He fits. Maybe then it will be much easier for me to put Him first, which is where He should be. And it'll be easier for me to maintain the moral high ground I've theoretically built over the years. This speaker at church last Sunday said that was the only difference between us and the rest of the world - everything else you achieve you can do so in a worldly fashion, but the morality, that one you need God for, and that's what will set us apart. Being salt to the earth is not easy, and it's even harder when you don't know how to describe the feeling. I'm supposed to be the salt of the earth, so ya, I guess I'm asking for a deeper understanding.

END