Personage.

Have you ever thought about the phenomenon that is humanity? What are people? What are these almost 7 billion humans on this tiny planet? What are YOU?
That might seem like a strange question, especially written with the word “what.” But I ask “what” because it is a more basic question than “who.” “Who” automatically implies personage. The question I ask: what is the phenomenon of personage? Why do we not refer to animals as “who”s? Why not trees or things as “who”s?
No, the word “who” is used for people exclusively. Why is this? How is it that even language acknowledges the uniqueness of humanity? Certainly this uniqueness is not limited only to an idiom...

Still Broken.

Have you ever had a song trapped inside of you because you didn’t have the musical ability to translate it into the physical world? Well, that is my current situation. It actually happens to me a lot. You might not think so because I can play the guitar and all, but this is a piano song. A haunting, melancholy piano song. It really is the most frustrating thing to have a song trapped inside of you. What’s worse is this was a song that I really wanted to sing. You see, music is how I process things, vent my emotions and all that. Well tonight I had some emotions I wanted to hash out.

I’m sorry if this is sounding confusing. Let me explain...

I recently found out that one of my favorite Christian recording artists recently got divorced. I felt very sorry for him but being a good journalist I was terribly curious about what happened and googled it. Turns out that his ex-wife got married 6 months after the divorce. Now I really wanted to know what happened! After finding out that little bit of information I discovered his ex-wife’s blog and started snooping around. Maybe that sounds terrible and maybe it is. Honestly though, I just wanted to know what happened. What I found was that she is an extremely devoted and sincere Christian. Almost every one of her lengthy and thought out posts had something to do with God. That was certainly not what I was expecting. I guess I just presumed that she must be some Wicked Witch of the West to get a divorce and then marry someone else 6 months later. This piece of information not only confused me but it greatly disturbed me. How can two extremely devoted and sincere Christians get a divorce? How can that happen? How can two people who claim to know forgiveness and redemption just give up? I don’t understand?

This whole thing seems like the most real kind of tragedy. The type that lives and breathes and doesn’t go away after you leave the movie theater. The type that finds real people crying themselves to sleep and wishing they had done things differently. The type that can’t be fixed.

I know that this is an extremely random topic for me to write about. I am not connected to this story at all. I don’t personally know these people or the details of their situation. But I can’t help but be broken about this. It hurts me to see a brother and a sister in Christ give up; it hurts (and scares) me to know that they didn’t find Christ’s love sufficient for them. I am not passing judgement at all, I am just observing (I don't know the details or how I would react in their place). This whole thing reminds me of something my theology teacher use to say: that is that we live in the “already and the not yet,” referring to our state as believers. We have been saved but not yet completely redeemed. Sometimes I just forget how broken we still are.