Conversations with my Internal Nihilist, or A Mandate for Continued Existence

“Really, stop crying. You’ve got a lot to look forward to, you know: a normal human life on earth, mortgage repayments, the nine to five, a persistent nagging sense of spiritual emptiness. Save the tears for later, boyo.”

Doctor Who S6 E12, ‘Closing Time’ (2011)

Her:      Morning.

Me:      What are you doing here?

Her:      Well, I took a look at your schedule for the past little while, as I do, you know, and it seems you and I haven’t hung out in a little while. You’ve been spending far too much time enjoying the sensations of the present moment and far too little looking at the bleak, blank meaninglessness underneath them. So here I am to fix that. How about an hour or two of staring into the void?

 

Creates some sort of impression of voidishness, even if it can hardly be called an actual void. Thanks to Stuart Miles at freedigitalphotos.net.

Me:      Actually, you’re all right. I have other things to be getting on with.

Her:      Yeah, but do you, though? I mean, you might have other tasks that you’ve set for yourself, but is there really any point to any of them? Is completing them really going to do any good in the world, you being what you are? And, perhaps more to the point, are you really going to be able to concentrate on any of them now that I’ve started this conversation?

Me:      You just had to ask that last question, didn’t you? Fine, then, let’s go void-staring.

Her:      Yay!

Me:      But this time my readers are coming too. Any of them who fancy the trip, I mean.

Her:      Ooh, are you sure you want to do that? You know the kinds of places our conversations tend to go; I wouldn’t want to bring guests into that part of the house. Aren’t you concerned that people might start to worry about you?

Me:      Hardly. Everyone knows that I’m just about the most mentally stable person one could ever hope to meet. In fact, I’m so relentlessly fine and crisis-less that it’s actually kind of hilarious. So I’ll just slot in a little disclaimer here to the effect that when I go void-staring with you, our conversations are extremely theoretical and removed. They don’t carry any impetus towards practical action, or hold me hostage without my consent, or even have any prime influence on how I think, because I already know that I don’t find your way of looking at things compelling; all I’m doing by having the conversation is sweeping the paths that lead to that conclusion. It’s like those physics questions where the exam paper has already given you the correct answer, and all you have to do is set out the series of calculations by which you reach it. Show your working, and so prove with double certainty that the answer is right.

Her:      I wouldn’t be so cocky if I were you. The void is looking really existentially empty today. Take a look.

Me:      Oh boy. I hate this bit.

Her:      You see? All these things you claim you ought to be getting on with – what’s really the point of any of it? What does any of it achieve that’s actually worth something? Do you suppose the world would be any the worse if you were to vanish from it right now? or better yet, if you were never to have been born at all, and every deed of your sinful little life were to be unravelled from existence? Would that not be a mercy on the rest of creation, that it would be spared having to put up with all your wicked selfishness?

Me:      Apparently God the supremely merciful didn’t think so.

Her:      I’m not surprised you brought him up. But do you truly dare to imagine that he’s glorified in you, chief of sinners you, in your constant failure, your constantly loving the world more than him or neighbour? Do you dare to imagine that you ever do anything that isn’t irretrievably tainted by the evil impulses of your flesh? You’ve caught glimpses of your own heart, just glimpses, and were you not left breathless that something so vile, so bestially self-seeking, should ever have been allowed to exist in the first place? And what excuse have you, particularly given that you live in wealth and comfort and privilege and are probably literally the most fortunate person alive, what excuse have you for living as if without the proper gratitude to him who is your Lord and your Creator and the Redeemer of your soul from Gehenna?¹

Me:      I have no excuse; I plead –

Her:      You plead the blood of Christ, I suppose? What a terribly handy get-out-of-jail-free card. Your spirit sits sinless in the heavenlies and cringes at every way in which you in the flesh fail to honour Christ as Lord, and won’t it be simply marvellous when the perishable is done away with and that spiritual version of you is all that remains, and doesn’t the very thought fill you with a profound and desperate longing – but a longing is all it is, because that’s not yours yet, is it? In fact, it’s blooming hard to begin to get your mind round the notion that it will ever be yours, seeing as it sits so far from anything you’ve ever actually experienced. And in the meantime, while your every thought and word and deed is still steeped in sin, what good are you to anyone? What benefit do you offer anyone? What loss would it be to anyone – or not rather a gain! – if you were simply to stop existing?

Me:      So now you’re, what, trying to get me to seek validation from people, but with the precondition that nothing anyone could say will convince you that I’m actually worth something? What is this, some sort of variant on impostor syndrome that swaps academic achievement for social and moral?² That’s rather a dangerous line of argument for you to take, given that I pretty much showed impostor syndrome the door probably a couple of years ago now.

Her:      It’s no use pretending you’re still all cool and unruffled. I saw my words hit their mark.

Me:      Maybe so, but a hit doesn’t necessarily entail damage.

Her:      Oh, shut up, as if I’m buying that. I know I get under your skin. I’ve had you crying before, haven’t I? I’ve had you on your knees asking your precious Saviour with tentative earnestness why he lets you carry on living when nothing you do is ever truly good.

Me:      Hey, everyone has bad days. It’s just that those bad days lead to a slightly different set of questions if you know Jesus than if you don’t.

Her:      And one of those questions is, wouldn’t the world be better off without you pootling about in it being all sinful and stuff?

Me:      Dude, this conversation has been way too dark for way too long. Frankly, I am super bored. I’ve a good mind to just start ignoring you and get on with my day.

Her:      I won’t really go away until you answer the question, though.

Me:      Fine, then. I’ll answer the question. To kick off, you’ve presumably spotted that I am in fact currently still alive, and, given that God’s sovereign and all, that must mean he wants me alive. And since he is supremely wise and has engineered all of creation for the display of his glory, that must mean that me continuing to be alive, even, yes, continuing to be alive in flesh and sinfulness and imperfection, somehow glorifies him.

Her:      Your logic there might be sound, but it’s awfully thin to stand on.

Me:      I haven’t finished showing my working yet. Let’s entertain the opposite scenario. Suppose God were to bring about our full spiritual resurrection the moment we were born again, zap us bodily up to his presence in heaven the split second we turned from our idols and placed our trust in Christ. I mean, there wouldn’t be very much trusting Christ to witness before faith turned into sight, would there? How would God demonstrate his faithfulness to persist with us in patience our whole lives long? How would he demonstrate his justice in rewarding those who persevere in faith through suffering? How would he demonstrate the extent of his grace, sufficient for every stumble, if there was never any chance to stumble at all? and conversely, how would he demonstrate the extent of his power to radically sanctify people still living in the depths of enemy territory so that they stumble less and less often? How could he make even the worst things work together for the good of his people if, the moment they become his people, there are no more worst things any more? How could he grant his Church the privilege of building herself up in love if she’s never built together in the first place? How could his mercies be new every morning if there are no more mornings for them to be new in?

 

New every morning. Someone got up early to take this one.

Her:      Are you done yet?

Me:      Please. I could do this all day.

Her:      I thought you had other things to be getting on with. Speaking of which, where exactly do those mundane little tasks fit into this grand, inspiring picture you’re painting? The only point you’re able to ascribe to anything is the glorification of God, so anything you spend your time on that isn’t directly geared towards that is still totally worthless. And given how rubbish you are at obeying your professed Master, I can still make a very compelling case that you’re doing more harm than good.

Me:      You’re not listening. God is so mind-blowingly brilliant that he glorifies himself in my rebellion as much as in my obedience, in my defeats as much as in my triumphs. I mean, I’d very much rather be obedient, because God is mind-blowingly brilliant and all his ways are perfect and his instruction is the very measure of all that’s good and right, but God’ll have his glory either way. If I do rightly, he’s glorified because he’s the one who makes me capable of that; if I do wrongly, he’s glorified because his love and grace and mercy in carrying out the deserved punishment for all my wrongdoing on Jesus in my stead, so that I might be forgiven it, go light-years beyond any stretch of the human imagination.

Her:      You’re trying to claim that every single thing you ever do glorifies God?

Me:      Mate, I glorify God merely by existing. I glorify him merely by existing as his redeemed and adopted child, and that’ll be the case whatever I do, because, newsflash, I made literally no contribution whatsoever to its being brought about: it’s a gift of grace, so that no one might boast.³ In fact, you know what you are, at the end of the day?

Her:      Pray enlighten me.

Me:      You’re just another claim that salvation is by works, dressed up a bit differently to usual. You justify the notion that the world would get alone just fine without me, thank you very much, by suggesting that my good works are insufficient to earn me the right to exist. Well, duh! My good works are insufficient to earn me literally anything! Is that supposed to be some kind of news or something? My right to exist is not earnt. Rather, my responsibility to exist is freely and graciously given.

Her:      Responsibility?

Me:      So you are listening. Yes, responsibility, or duty, or if a right, then in the sense of a privilege. If God has caused me to exist for the sake of his glory, then for the sake of his glory, it’s my duty and my privilege to continue to exist.

Her:      Even if everything you’re doing feels pointless. Even if you’re convinced you’re doing more harm than good with every breath you take.

Me:      Hey, if the fact that I was dead in my sins didn’t stop God from glorifying himself through me, why should anything else threaten to? I have to say, you’re really clutching at straws now.

Her:      All right, fine, I give in. You are too blooming good at winning these arguments.

Me:      I’m just lucky you’re as pathetic as you are, really. You go down without too much of a fight. Sure, you’ve had me crying and asking God stupid questions, but you forget that crying and asking God stupid questions is something I tend to do fairly regularly and without a great deal of prompting. It’s all just part of showing my working.

Her:      Wow. I matter so little to you.

Me:      It’s true, you do. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that everything you do is pointless, and the world would be a better place if you were to vanish from it. But funnily enough, God has brought glory for himself even out of our little trip to the void, in my being moved to doxologise even if in nothing else. How’s that for mind-blowingly brilliant?

Footnotes

¹ I’ve decided that the word ‘hell’ is confusing and am therefore trying not to use it. I’ll probably blog about that issue at some point, but for the moment, suffice it to say that Gehenna refers to everlasting fiery post-death punishment to which those who don’t obey God are sentenced. Or feel free to form your own conclusion from how the term is used: https://www.stepbible.org/?q=version=ESV|version=SBLG|strong=G1067&options=VHNUG.

² Impostor syndrome is another thing I’m vaguely intending to blog about at some point, but again, for the moment, here’s the Wikipedia page to give you an introduction if you’re not familiar with the term: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome.

³ There are a whole lot of scriptural allusions in this post, but this is probably the most explicit, from Ephesians 2: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ephesians+2&version=ESVUK. I’ll leave you to hunt the rest down for yourself.

Thoughts After Attending a BTS Concert

“I want to dance like Gene Kelly,

Dress like Elton John,

Give those kids who get me

A star to wish upon.

Tell the world I’m ready

To write their favourite song,

So folks who never met me

Will miss me when I’m gone.”

Felix Hagan and the Family, ‘Gene Kelly’, Attention Seeker (2017)

So some friends and I went to see BTS at Wembley Stadium last weekend. If you haven’t heard of BTS,¹ well, I’m not altogether surprised, because they’ve only recently broken into the western music charts in a big way; for years, Korean pop music was a rather strange and niche thing to be interested in, and now all of a sudden K-pop bands are selling out stadia in Europe and America. BTS is the most famous one, a seven-person boy band who have broken all sorts of records for going where no K-pop band has gone before.² My housemates and I discovered them nearly three years ago now; our friendship was kind of consolidated by weekly sessions of laughing our way through the K-pop chart together.³ I say laughing – well, we do laugh, at the nonsensical English and dodgy popular culture references and easily misheard lyrics and general weirdness that K-pop is so often strewn with, but we genuinely love it too. Liking something both ironically and non-ironically at once is somehow not difficult at all. We laugh, but also we’re moved by the music, also we marvel at the skill and hard work that goes into those dance videos, also we look up English translations of the lyrics and find that they resonate with us. And BTS is the best, on all counts.

 

Yes, they had a giant bouncy castle on stage for one of the songs. Yes, it was amazing even from up in the cheap seats.

So we formed a pact that if BTS ever came to the UK, we’d go and see them. The pact was formed at a time when it seemed as if they never would, or at least not for years and years, but then suddenly K-pop blew up in the west and it turned out they were going to be playing in London. To our great distress, we failed to acqire tickets for that first gig, but then we succeeded the second time round. And so last weekend’s concert felt like the culmination of something that had begun in our lounge when we first moved in together. It was a brilliant time, it really was.

And everybody else in the stadium seemed to think so too, judging by their hyperactively enthusiastic responses to absolutely everything that happened. I should add that your stereotypical BTS fan is a lovestruck teenage girl, and it’s a stereotype with very good grounds too. A BBC review put it like this:

They sang at the top of their voices, even during the Korean sections, and started Mexican waves with their “Army bombs” – Bluetooth connected light sticks that created cascades of colour across the stadium. Oh, and they screamed. They screamed at the dancing. They screamed at the fireworks. They screamed when Jin held up a rose. They screamed at RM grabbing his crotch. They screamed at every, single smouldering look to the camera. Even V’s pet dog Yeontan got a scream of approval when he popped up in a video interlude. Never has the phrase “Wembley, make some noise,” been more redundant.⁴

I could push that jazz even further, to be honest. They screamed whenever any of the band members so much as turned round. They screamed before the concert began when some stagehand made his way across the platform to check something. They screamed at absolutely everything BTS said, which actually made it blooming difficult to hear and understand any of it, especially when it was in Korean and only translated afterwards. And my oh my, you should have heard the screams when Jungkook casually executed a dance move in such a way that his shirt lifted to reveal a momentary glimpse of bare skin. (I say casually; the way the camera zoomed in at this stage confirmed exactly how rehearsed the thing was, not that you couldn’t have guessed already.)

My friends and I laughed at that too. That’s how you know you’ve made it, we said to one another, when a stadium filled with thousands of people will scream at the top of their lungs upon sighting the briefest glimpse of your midriff. It’s all very weird, isn’t it, the way someone can be so fiercely beloved by thousands of foreigners he’s never actually met. It’s so weirdly one-sided; he doesn’t know them, but they feel as if they know him.

 

This one gives you a decent impression of the size of the crowd. I don’t like taking lots of pictures at concerts because it gets in the way of enjoying the moment, but I thought it was worth getting a few.

There was another point in the concert, after BTS had disappeared backstage for a quick break, when the audience was encouraged by words projected onto the big stageside screens to the surprise them when they re-emerged by launching into the chorus of their song ‘Young Forever’ (lyrics were helpfully provided for those of us not committed enough to have learnt them by heart in advance). It appeared to be a genuine surprise; several of the band members broke down in tears. And my friends and I pondered that: what must it be like, we said to one another, when a stadium filled with thousands of people sings a song you composed back at you? What must it be like for the things you pour your heart and soul into creating to be so widely known and dearly loved?

Is that how you know you’ve made it? When you’re admired and adored by ginormous crowds? When they devote themselves to knowing you and your work in a way you’ll never be able to reciprocate? When the things you pour your heart and soul into creating have captured the hearts and souls of randomers all over the world? Indeed, isn’t that kind of what we hope to achieve when we create things – to give the kids who get us a star to wish upon, as it were?⁵ To reach out into the chaos and make our statement about how we see the world so that anyone with whom that statement resonates might know that she’s not alone, that she’s understood?

But of course, she shouldn’t be looking merely to other human beings to tell her that, should she?

I don’t mean to disparage the feeling of valuing art produced by other humans and resonating with the statements you understand it to make, but it’s obvious how easily that jazz turns into an idol. In discourse about K-pop, ‘idol’ is actually used as a synonym for ‘singer’, which is perhaps more telling than it necessarily intends to be. Whether we’re creating art or consuming it, we’re all trying to reach across the divide and find souls like our own, who are moved by what we are, who value the same things and tell the same stories – and there’s nothing wrong with that, but if it’s there that we fundamentally hope to be understood, then we’re placing godlike expectations on things other than God.

God was the one who made your weird little brain. He understands how you think and what moves you. He wrote the whole of your personality. He discerns your thoughts from afar and is acquainted with all your ways. He knew everything you were going to be before you were anything at all. He gets you. And it’s kind of very one-sided, because this knowledge of his is lofty, too high for you to attain to, his thoughts too many to number, but all the while no secret of your inmost heart is hidden from him.⁶ Worship an idol, even one that resonates with you profoundly, and you’ll know it far better than it ever knows you; worship God and you’ll find that he knows you completely, even as you strive to know him in his vast, unknowable infinity better and better.

How do you know you’ve made it? Not when you’re known and loved by a stadium filled with thousands of people you’ve never met who adore the things you create, but when you’re known and loved by a singular infinite God who adores the things he creates. He gets you; he knows and loves you, and what’s more, he calls you to know and love him. Now there’s something worth pouring your heart and soul into.

Footnotes

¹ Then you might like to check out a few of their excellent music videos to give you a flavour: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5hrGMysD_Gv_KbOrsvLNWUSSjyBLGGZa. Try starting with ‘Fire’; that was the first one I saw and I was pretty much sold from there.

² Look, a nice list: https://kpop.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_records_set_and_broken_by_BTS.

³ We like the Kville one, https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHWfAuT1j7bTLXTIBcY_l6w, although it’s got irritatingly lengthy of late.

⁴ Here’s the full review: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-48487862.

⁵ Not K-pop or remotely like it, but the way Felix Hagan and the Family phrased that really resonated with what I wanted to say today. They’re a great band, check them out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHAWibZmUnU.

⁶ I’m sure you recognise my riffing on Psalm 139 there: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=ps+139&version=ESVUK.

Prayer and the Undress of the Soul

Fiona:    You know we’re always happy to see you, Donkey.

Shrek:    But Fiona and I are married now. We need a little time, you know, to be together … just with each other … alone.

Donkey: Say no more! You don’t have to worry about a thing. I will always be here to make sure nobody bothers you.

Shrek:    Donkey.

Donkey: Yes, roomie?

Shrek:    You’re bothering me.

Shrek 2 (2004)

 

Look at this terribly sweet and innocent Victorian kiddo kneeling to pray at her (or his? I have no idea) bedside. I think there’s a good deal to be said for kneeling to pray at one’s bedside.

I mean, I was only in the prayer room in the first place because I felt a bit weird about praying in my room while my roommate was in there as well. Not that I would have prayed aloud in front of her or anything, much as I value praying aloud for the focus and clarity it so often enables;¹ but I don’t know, it just doesn’t feel like something one should do with others present. And since the building in which our room is situated is, happily, equipped with a prayer room, it seemed sensible to offer said prayer room an opportunity to fulfil its intended purpose.

But something about it did strike me as funny when one of the other conference delegates staying in the house, presumably harbouring similar intentions to my own, began to open the door and, upon sighting me kneeling there headscarved and probably only about as far through as ‘your kingdom come’, immediately blurted an embarassed apology and shut it again as quickly as possible – pretty much exactly as I might have expected him to react if he’d walked in on me in a state of undress.

I’m not at all censuring or ridiculing that reaction; I would have done the same in his shoes, and more to the point, as I said, I was only in the prayer room in the first place because I wanted some privacy, so it was hardly any affront to me for that privacy to be maintained. Still, it did get me thinking: why is prayer this private thing that we don’t want to do in the presence of others, nor impose our presence upon others as they do it? Is my reluctance on these fronts a legitimate attitude stemming from what God has revealed and commanded, or just another foothold the world has in me, another way in which, to my shame, I am ashamed of the gospel?

Well, we can kick of by saying that we are actually commanded to pray in private: “when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret”. Plus, Jesus was always going off by himself to pray – like, he didn’t just pop down the corridor to the prayer room; he literally climbed mountains in order to get some alone-time with his Father, and all right, fine, mountains have other significances, but I think the point stands. So praying in private – and, by extension, letting our fellow-believers pray in private – is definitely something we should be doing. But why? The context of the command to pray in secret may help us here: in the previous verse, Jesus denounces those who pray in public places in order that people might see them undertaking this pious activity and think well of them. They’re hypocrites, he says; don’t be like them.²

The thing is, other people might well be fooled into thinking we’re terribly good and pious if we put together pretty-sounding prayers in their hearing, but God isn’t buying it for a moment. He knows our going out and coming in, our sitting and rising, and before a word of prayer so much as reaches our lips, he already knows it completely; he searches all hearts and understands all minds; he looks not on the outward appearance but on the inner self. He sees every way in which our conduct fails to match up with the way we present ourselves. He shines piercing light into every nook and cranny of who we are. There’s nothing we can hide behind or cover ourselves with to avoid his perception; before him, the soul is, necessarily, in a state of undress.³

Praying in front of other people inevitably lends itself to performance, to trying to win glory from a human audience – like, you know how everyone in the prayer circle is always kind of competing for the most enthusiastic set of ‘amen’s? Lord have mercy on us – but there can be no such hypocrisy when one is alone with God. One is wholly exposed in all one’s corruption, and has no choice but to be brutally honest about it. And this, I think, accounts to some degree for why praying in private is of such critical importance: only when alone with God do we truly come face to face with what we’re like – and only if we continue to see what we’re like, how sinful and weak we are, will we continue to seek forgiveness for our sinfulness and to depend on our Redeemer in our weakness.

But it’s better than that. Remember how when the first man and woman ate the fruit and became suddenly aware of their nakedness – that their fleshly nature was a source of shame before God – their initial reaction was to cover themselves, and to hide from him? It’s obvious enough from what I said above that that was never going to work, but God did more than see through the attempted covering to their true nature; he shed the blood of a sacrifice and he clothed them.⁴ On one level it’s true that we’re all in a state of undress before God, but he doesn’t merely perceive our shame and leave us in it: he sheds the blood of a sacrifice, the precious and perfect blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, and he clothes us. We are not ashamed before him; we wear Christ’s righteousness as a covering, and not a covering like the fig-leaves of our hypocritical performances, but a clean and sure and effective covering. This, rather than our shame and undress, is what God chooses to see when he looks at us.⁵

 

Like, some credit at least to the first humans’ sewing skills, because I have no idea how you make this jazz into a plausible outfit.

And so, as our undress before God is real, so is our clothedness. And so, as it is vital to pray out of the sight and hearing of others, so it is vital to pray together with them, hypocrites as we shall doubtless prove ourselves when we do. God our Father sees us as the very righteousness of his own Son and equips us to grow into that identity – gradually to care less about whether our prayers are enthusiastically ‘amen’ed by our brothers and sisters, and more about whether they are building them up in the faith. Plus, we’re to confess our sins to one another, that is, to reveal to one another the undress and the shame of our souls. After all, we’re all one body – one great temple of the Holy Spirit, even as we’re each individually a temple of him too (still blows my tiny mind that God who governs the universe should have made his home in me) – and one body shares one state of undress, as it were. If we’re all already covered by the blood of Jesus, there’s no need to seek further, necessarily inferior means to cover ourselves from one another’s eyes. Whatever our sin and shame may be, we are committed to forgive and bear with one another as God forgives and bears with each of us.⁶

So what does this all mean for my instinctive insistence on privacy in order to pray? Well, it’s definitely right that I should be seeking to spend time alone with God, and I’m sure there are plenty of good reasons for that beyond the issues of hypocrisy that I dealt with above, not least because Jesus prayed alone a lot despite the fact that he was never hypocritical in front of others. But at the same time, my motivation for privacy in prayer should never be shame, because God has covered my shame and my undress in clothing me with the blood of Jesus. If God my Creator and Judge has perceived the fulness of my sinfulness and chosen to break its power over me once and for all, then the possibility of my brothers and sisters perceiving certain aspects of my sinfulness can surely hold no great dread for me. Obviously all things are to be done for edification – no mere honesty for honesty’s sake – but sanctification should certainly move me towards greater openness with others about what I’m really like, or in other words, away from hypocrisy.

Before God we are undressed, and yet clothed; prayer is an intensely private thing, and yet just as vitally a corporate one; our sins are covered forever and ever, and yet we are to expose them in the sight of God and his Church. What a strange time this age of grace is, strewn everywhere with ostensible contradictions as we sojourn in the present world as citizens of the next. But for now we keep praying, whether alone or assembled, that we would conduct ourselves as good ambassadors of Christ, and that he would hurry back soon to claim his throne: your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven.

Footnotes

¹ Thanks to Andy Croft at Soul Survivor for that pro tip. Genuinely revolutionised my prayer life. Try it if you haven’t.

² That’s Matthew 6, of course, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=matt+6&version=ESVUK; flip forward to chapter 14 for an example of Jesus going up a mountain by himself to pray.

³ Bits of scripture I’m riffing on in this paragraph include Psalm 39, 1 Chronicles 28:9 and Jeremiah 17:10, 1 Samuel 16:7 (cf. 2 Corinthians 5:12, by the way), and John 3. Have the Psalm, because it’s  insanely awesome and I love it: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=ps+139&version=ESVUK.

⁴ Like, you already knew it was Genesis 3, but here’s a link anyway: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=gen+3&version=ESVUK.

⁵ Certain bits of Revelation 3 are pretty relevant here: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Revelation+3&version=ESVUK.

⁶ Just so you know I’m not pulling this stuff out of the air, I’ll cite James 5:16, the middle section of 1 Corinthians 12, 1 Corinthians 6:19, 1 Peter 2:5, and Colossians 3:13, but I hope it’s apparent that what I’m saying comes out of a broader picture of scripture than can be indicated by plucking out a few specific verses.