Forgetful Jones...

[I'm reading Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris]

When I was growing up, my parents bed was positioned in a sort of funny way. If you can imagine it, the headboard was positioned so that it worked as the hypotenuse of a triangle formed by it and a corner of their bed room.

You might imagine this as an absolutely wonderful hiding place for a small child.
Children, however, don’t stay small forever.

One day, I climbed over the head board and placed my foot on the guitar (much as I had always done). Much to my chagrin, the guitar was no longer capable of withstanding the enormity of my weight and I had one crushed guitar under my foot.

For quite some time, no one knew that there was a broken guitar behind my parents’ bed – well, I knew.

It was the sort of secret that couldn’t be kept for too long. My dad never played the guitar (I never really knew where he bought this one), but he was aware of his possessions and he eventually found out.

Here’s the kicker though, I only remember two things about the guitar. I don’t remember where or why he bought it. I don’t remember what kind it was, or even what color the pick guard was (or if it even had one). I just remember my dad picking it up one day as acting as if he was playing it and how much fun it was to “make believe.” The other memory is obvious – I remember breaking our toy.

It’s always interesting to think of how selective our memories are, and to think of what we keep in our catalog of thoughts. I sort of think about this text where Christ is talking to His disciples about loving their enemies. He talks about how easy it is to love your friends and how divine it is to love your enemies.

Jesus portrays this profound idea of God’s mercy, right? He tells us that God makes the rain fall on the just and the unjust – on those who are good and on those who are awful jerks. If we are to love for and pray for our enemies [as Christ is talking about in Matthew 5:43-48] then we effectively live out an aspect of God’s character in his mercy to man.

See, the guitar had many attributes. Maybe it had metal strings, maybe it had nylon strings. Maybe it was made of poplar, or pine, or birch. But I can only remember my dad and I play with it [rather than playing it] and that I broke it.

More often than not, we don’t remember some of the wonderful characteristics of God, other than the fact that He lets us play with religion and that we broke this relationship we were supposed to have with Him. What Christ proposes here is not a sort of laissez-faire attitude towards life and sin, but seriousness in our comprehension of God’s character.

See, the life of people who tend to think of themselves as “religious,” or “spiritual,” also comes off as a bit judgmental at times. Much of this is borne [I’m convinced] by the fact that we believe that God loves our religion. It’s easy for me to forget that He loves me. It’s easy to forget that I was His enemy and that He has brought forth peace for me through Christ.

It’s easy to forget that when Christ was praying for His enemies, that He was praying for me too.

So, I don’t remember the guitar because we threw it away – it was worthless. My hope for myself is that I do not become so careless with my understanding of the different aspects of who God is. I guess you can say that it’s a hope borne out of a sort of fear.