the horror

"For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not. For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want... Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death?" (Rom 7:18, 19, 24)

I hate this sin at work within me. It started as a faint cough, then it began to wrack my whole body. Its defilement crept into this sarx, my flesh, and once it gained a foothold it never stopped its exponential onslaught. No longer can I remember the days of light, of walking quietly in the garden. All has faded to black in my depraved mind.

Only a shadow of a long-lost love remains. I can almost remember goodness, beauty, and truth. But alas, as a daydream plunges into a tragic nightmare it vanishes, as reality clutches me in her icy grip. I think back to that fated day when this hated lust began. He had offered so much, it seemed. To become like God. To possess the entire world and all its kingdoms in their splendor. To know the world in its entirety, both true and false, good and evil. All these had been promised. In a sense, they had come true. Only, to be like God was never enough when I knew I would never be. The kingdoms of the world no longer amused me. And it was only by falling outside of the good that I knew it; it is only in becoming evil that I comprehend what I lack.

"How then can we be saved? All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away" (Isa 64:5-6).

Every morning I fall out of his bed, hacking and broken, feeling nothing but tired and dirty. His stench clings to my flesh as I scrape this spot of damnation. "Out, out..." I cry, my voice trailing into a hollow whisper. Twelve years this bleeding has wracked my frail frame from the inside, and now the disease has broken out upon my surface, a black leprosy oozing for all to see. All who once called me their friend gape and mock, laughing at my wretched state. Collapsing on this ash heap, I scrape myself with broken pottery. Slowly I crawl into a dark whole to await another night to hide this shame and indulge in another.

Outside the insults have abated. The hating horde has been lured by another weak victim. A muffled sob of relief escapes as I turn back to scratching these raw wounds. Stopping suddenly, my curiosity is peaked. Who could this outcast be who would engage such a cruel crowd more than one as defiled as I? Crawling towards the throng, I see One who is more rejected than myself. It is beyond me to see why. He is rejected and despised by men, and yet I can see no flaw. Indeed, there is no beauty to attract me to Him, and yet He is whole. There are no pox-marks from continuous sores, and no scourge-welts from deeds done in secret. Unlike the rest of us, the oozing puss of decay has not punctured His skin, nor has the disease of death marred his robust body.

Then I understand. They hate Him because He is whole, while they are cursed with self-inflicted emptiness. They hate Him because He loves them, His enemies. They hate Him because He is what they never will be and have chosen not to be. They hate Him because He is the King's own Son, the son of a King they'll never be.

At first my disgust rises in me just as it has in then. I pick up a jagged stone to throw, to join with the rest of my doomed cell-mates. But then, beyond all hope, a small flame flickers. What if this man would love me as I dare to dream? It is ludicrous. But then, there is nothing left to lose. Inching closer, the crowd fades away. My pulse quickens. A garden, its haunting beauty echoing a time long a go. Closer, closer. He doesn't see me. If I only touch His cloak... I am there. My shaking, broken hand feebly closes on the strong white wool. As He turns, a power unlike I have ever known grips my body. "Today you will be with me..." His eyes pierce mine with sublime love and infinite sadness.

What have I done?
 
Tearing my eyes from His, they turn to a horror too unexpected to understand. I can only watch as the writhing decay of my graying arm eats away at the thick cloth. It has reached His flesh. A shriek of despair leaps from my lips to fill the air with a maddening echo. The disease has enveloped His beautiful body, tearing it apart and shredding his back. I reach for Him, only to find the flesh crumbling as rapidly as if it were my own. We fall. Darkness is upon us. In the flickering light of hellish flames, as we plummet through innumerable dimensions, I hear Him gasp for His Father.

"Eloi, Eloi, Lama Sabachthani?"

Crushed on the floor of an endless void, we drop perpetually through time and space, the nothingness of me only surpassed by His insurmountable emptiness. His death is my destruction, consuming my filthy flesh in the fires of an eternal furnace. The universe collapses upon itself, as Satan himself and all his miserable army are drowned beneath the blood-red sea of a love beyond any understanding or comprehension. The curtain of existence has been torn in two. The line dividing good and evil has been plunged into the same terrible flame that wrought the beginning of time and forged the foundation of the world. Suspended in history as a portal into the eternal, the collision of darkness and light implodes as full consummation in the horror of the death of God.

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from saving me,
so far from the words of my groaning?
O my God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer,
by night, and am not silent...

But I am a worm and not a man,
scorned by men and despised by the people.
All who see me mock me;
they hurl insults, shaking their heads:
"He trusts in the Lord;
let the Lord rescue him.
Let him deliver him,
since he delights in him."

(Ps 22:1-2, 6-8)