Riffin’ On the Put-On Face

“I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.”

Romans 8:18

A microcosm in a single sentiment, even if plucked entirely from its context… our unnamed narrator has a sense that the suffering of the present is fated to be done in by some “glory” which will be “revealed” by some sort of substantive move from being self-contained (“our” “sufferings”) to being grounded in the “us”. Suffering as an institution seems to coerce this from us, shattering a culturally embedded notion sown in adolescence that we are primarily self-contained (after all, we are still constructing the self in young adulthood), this fractured take on selfhood used as a vehicle to discipline ourselves, so as to refine our personal skillsets while both self-actualizing and becoming self-aware while placing ourselves in the society, where we take on a career/life trajectory and turn outward towards the community/creation in service, in tandem. Life, as it is experienced, yields Scripture, when the experience is refined by consideration. To experience life is to write your own story, and it is as important as the Bible, however we’re still talking about the Gospel like 2000 years later and we now live in an era in which every single one of us is going to try to have a 2000 year legacy because the systems are just embedding this stuff in us…tonally it’s reminiscent of the pop-up ads of the early internet, which themselves, were porn grenades (permitting 56k could actually load a pop up add, as opposed to a pop up ad window…). We are chasing the Christ, unconsciously, and rather tackily. Perhaps the stigma was what was tacky from the get go.

To Infinity, and beyond!

Go ahead and ask the inches and centimeters about me. They know….