Why caveats? This is a blog about catharsis: common life-struggles…mine, and those of other people—totally different from my own.  Unfortunately, because of shifts in societal norms, particularly about what is considered “correct” in popular culture, what I hope to communicate about my life–and life in general–could easily be misunderstood and considered “hateful” or misguided.  Or irrelevant.

            Truth be known, in some quarters that will be the outcome no matter how I preface and express what I want to say.  There is such a predisposition to projectile outrage in our world that even the most benign opinions or statements can morph into perceived racism, sexism, and hate-speech (to name a few).  This moralistic “advocacy” can grow any number of diverse “heads”, which, severed from objective reality, snap at and devour lives around them, driven by a multitude of diverse motivations.  And often without substance or basis.

            But subjectivism—emotion and opinion—has eclipsed objective reality—truth, if I dare say it—because truth cannot–actually will not–deign to peacefully coexist with its competitors.    In the post-modern marketplace of ideas, absolute truth, with all of its implications of inherent sovereignty and inflexibility, is the ultimate threat and offense to our individuality and egalitarianism.  And, perhaps most profoundly, it’s odious to our sense of self-righteousness, and, what C.S. Lewis called “the greatest sin”…our pride.

            The reason I cannot fail to offend some–though I hope and pray not to–is that I am daring to write about absolute truth as I believe and understand it.  (That last phrase may cut me a little slack with some, but very little, and of short duration, would be my guess).  “Truth”—as in “my truth” or “your truth”—is considered cool.  Absolute truth is hemlock in our post-modern world.  For truth to be acceptable, it must be relative (which is inherently a contradiction), lack basic logical consistency, have few roots which extend more than 100 years back into human history, and make absolutely no demands on beliefs, ethics, relationships or personal behavior.

            Actually, this blog’s title alone may immediately provoke displeasure in social justice warriors and progressive thinkers across a range of modern thought and disciplines.  Words can become so sensitized as to become “discourse detonators” in our polarized, partisan world.  Our writing and conversations often have more hidden landmines than many a physical battlefield.  And that’s because, instead of becoming broader in relationships and dialogue, we have become narrower in terminology and tolerance.  That is the essence of legalism (an inherently religious term), which is the engine of self-righteousness and character assassination.  Ironically, the irreligious of today have sometimes become the most hardened religionists of all.

Absolute truth is hemlock in our post-modern world.  For truth to be acceptable, it must be relative (which is inherently a contradiction), lack basic logical consistency, have few roots which extend more than 100 years back into human history, and make absolutely no demands on beliefs, ethics, relationships or personal behavior.

            Bent Man Walking on the Street Called Straight.  It seems rather innocuous and straightforward to me, but then I’m living and writing it—I’m not on the outside scrutinizing and  judging it.  That’s what religionists tend to do.  I’m writing about a fundamental relationship that I’m in, and how that relationship has renovated and enriched my life abundantly.  But not completely. And not without pain. While “curative,” the process is necessarily, as Scottish pastor, Oswald Chambers, said, “sternly surgical.” In the Scriptures, that’s known as Redemption (intentionally capitalized), a concept that is not primarily a religious construct, but a relational one.  (More about that in later blogs.)

            Redemption is ultimately what this blog is about: my particular Redemption set in a context that meets and weaves together with the Redemption of others.  We are all “bent” people.  There is–if we can see it–a street called “straight.”  We each, though bent, through Redemption, can be enabled to walk this street called straight, if we are willing.  Finally…miraculously, we are no longer called “bent” even though we fail to perfectly navigate the street.  That can never happen in religion.  That is the miracle of Redemption.  Of Relationship. 

            We are more than physical stuff and behavior.  There is a whole meta-physical (i.e., “spiritual”) world that we have access to—like that inside Narnia’s Wardrobe—if we will but enter in, by being entered into by the Redeemer.

            Let’s walk a bit together.  I’d like to tell you some of my story…and hope that it resonates somewhat with your own. –MOW