God-wrestler

I think the first time I learned and retained that "Israel" means "God-wrestler" (I've also heard: "he struggles with God") was my senior year of college. I really didn't like it. I complained to Jeremy at the train station (because I learned the weekend of improv regionals) that God and Israel are supposed to be spouses! Not wrestle each other. Yucky. I hate wrestling. (I do struggle with God sometimes, but again, that doesn't sound like a good thing.)

When I was reading Prayer by Philip Yancey he said some of the people in the Bible who were most richly rewarded were those who bargained with God and got in His face about stuff. God frequently is petitioned and shows even more mercy than He was going to. Yancey (paraphrase) writes that He likes when we ask because it can unleash more mercy on earth. Obviously I can see how this is so in the case of Abraham asking to spare those cities if fewer and fewer righteous people can be found (Genesis 18:16-33 if you forgot). Yancey asks: "Abraham stopped asking; would God have spared the cities for just one person?" Also there's that story in Luke 18:1-8 about the widow who won't stop bothering the judge until he gives her the justice she asks for. My TNIV Luke 18:1 says "Jesus told [this] parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up." And there are plenty of others in the Bible too.

Yancey also mentions his relationships with the people closest to him in life, like his brother, his wife, and his editor. About them he says "with each of these people, my intimate partners, I act in a way reminiscent of the bargaining scenes with God. I make suggestions, back off, accommodate their point of view, reach a compromise and come away changed."

Obviously I think it's possible to argue/fight/wrestle someone without love, but maybe there's significance in the fact that they can be done with love, too, and it might be a sign of love to be willing to. It can be really really hard to bring up some things with people, and most of us aren't willing to talk about tough stuff with those we don't know too well. Some aren't even willing to bring them up with friends. But like Yancey says, challenge changes us.

There was also a part I read and was disgusted by. Yancey talks about wrestling his brother in the dark when they were both little kids. And I am paraphrasing this, but he said it was a lot like making love, because you grapple back and forth, using up your energy against each other, body on body, then fall back, spent. I was like, "hello, incest!" but the image has stuck with me for months now. Perhaps because he's right that wrestling indicates a certain closeness. That's why it's far more blessed to wrestle with God than to simply be far away from Him. Sometimes literally.. Jacob receives God's blessing (after having to ask for it) when the wrestling is over in Genesis 32:26-29.

Maybe this is part of the key to the spousal relationship between Israel and God. Maybe a marriage is a promise to keep wrestling and not just peace out when hard stuff comes up, because something of deep value is gained through the back-and-forth of an honest, loving challenge. And maybe that something is the experience of turning into the strong and selfless person you were created to be in the arms of the one you love best.

Honest thoughts on Honesty, Part I

Sincerity means that the appearance and the reality are exactly the same. –Oswald Chambers Studies in the Sermon on the Mount

Honesty runs so deep in me that the value I give it is more a core part of my being than a decision I make to live it. I refuse to knowingly say things that are false. If my opinion would be unpleasant, I just don't say it, as a way of not being a total jerk all the time.

I can go on and on about how honesty is the most important thing in any relationship, and no matter how unpleasant things are you at least have to face them to move forward. I really believed this for a long time. Part of me still does. But good ol' Hugh Prather, in that book that I said is like my own journal, had some comments about honesty:

"'I must be honest.' 'I must be true to myself.' These words are almost always a preamble to a speech of abandonment or betrayal."

"'I want to let you know how I've been feeling.' But God is Love. To be what we were created to be, we don't always have to give an update on our negative emotions."

"If there's a question whether to say it, don't say it."

That first one about abandonment and betrayal, I understand completely. But I couldn't let it go at that. As I kept reflecting, I realized that the quote applies in situations that cannot be changed. There are some abandonments that are better for all parties. These, of course, are the ones between people in a non-marriage romantic relationship who do not belong together.

And those words about honesty and being true to oneself are just as likely to be a preamble for a confession of love (which of course can feel like an abandonment or betrayal as the speaker seems to be jumping ship on the just-friendship you probably both enjoyed for a while). At the end of season 2 of The Office, an episode I just rewatched, incidentally, Jim just says to Pam straight out, "I am in love with you," and everyone watching gasps (and if they're me, cries a little bit just like Jim) but knows it's a million times better that he said it. That he's a better and braver man for having admitted it to her, even though it's messy and mostly unwanted. Because the alternative is that he forever holds his peace and watches her marry a guy that is a way worse for her and spends the rest of his life wondering what the outcome would have been if he had been honest.

So I do think honesty is important for that kind of thing, if only to not be living a lie and not to create regrets that seem way harder to get over than other kinds of regrets.

Now, about the other honesty. This year for class we had to read La Princesse de Cleves, a really old French novel that has some great (if heartbreaking) passages in it. In typical French fashion, the princess is married to one man but has unbearably passionate feelings for another--she tries not to even be in the same room as him but since they're part of the same court this is often hard to pull off. She really wants to remain faithful to her husband and virtuous.

Pause. Would you tell your spouse about something like this? Like totes having the biggest crush ever on some other person?

Unpause. She tells him and it ruins his life because he is so jealous and upset that he can't get past it, and he obsesses about who it is and then sort of tricks her into telling him (she doesn't want to say) and is swallowed up by hatred when he knows. He falls ill from this distress and dies shortly after.

I'm stuck, here. I don't know whether I think honesty is best. I guess if I go by my other, non-love-triangle truth-telling standards, I think the amount of detail matters. I think you don't have to talk about how often you think of the other person and what they are wearing in those thoughts (jk), but you might be able to be like, "look, I have this awful problem and I want your help if you want us to have a good marriage... I have this temptation I need to resist and I need all the support I can get."

Okay but that was a book. For less ridiculous situations, my conclusions are super boring and along the lines of, "if it's an ongoing issue and it's something they can change, tell them in a nice voice that lets them know you still totally like/love them but you really wish they would change this one thing as a favor to you" or "if it's something they have no control over at all you might do better just to hold your peace about it and pray and seek some kind of refreshment elsewhere, like by chatting with friends who have experienced similar people problems".

Only marriage has that exclusivity thing, but I ultimately think (gulp, what would I know about this? Just guessing I spose) that marriage is more like a friendship than a dating relationship. Dating is about being sexy exciting and having a good time together and proving how neato you are. This might be the whole first week of marriage, but after that it will probably be scattered instances of this sort of thing but mostly friendship (C.S. Lewis once described marriage as plain and businesslike). Friendship is about smaller things that accumulate more over a lifetime, and about enjoying living with people even once you know they have a lot of ways they could improve.

This is long already, I'll save more thoughts for later.

My dad wants me to read stuff by Joseph Campbell. He always reads what I recommend to him (the most impressive example of this being all 7 Harry Potter books), but I rarely return the favor, probably because when I was little he gave me a book that had some really explicit sex scenes (I assume it had been many years since he read it himself and he just forgot) and I felt terribly awkward about it for a long time. Anyway, I want to read this book so I can engage with where my father is coming from as we talk about God and Jesus and stuff. He's still hoping I'll outgrow being a Christian; the other day he admitted that he'd been waiting for years but I just continued to be serious about my faith, but he hasn't given up hope yet.

This book is Transformations of Myth Through Time, "thirteen brilliant lectures from the renowned master of mythology." I just finished the first essay. He says the first, um, like, thing, in mythology is the relationship with the mother, and the second thing is the differences between men and women. Sure, why not. I'm glad the first thing is something everyone could theoretically participate in. Side note: I think people have to be more or less good on the first thing before being really good at the second. As oh-so-many relationship authors have advised, "if a man can't get that first, basic, primal relationship in order, how is he going to be able to handle something more complicated and less natural?" (Obviously this applies to women, too.)

What really caught my attention from Joseph Campbell was the following: "Actually, in a marriage, woman is the initiator. She is the one closer to nature and what it's all about. He's just coming in for the illumination." I've definitely heard a male friend say something similar, but it somehow has more weight in black and white on the printed page coming from a famous, published author. I wonder if most guys think this, though.