NEWS FROM WORLD: "Quit Ye Like Men"

"Milly Burt had come to see me in the afternoon... She was really, I thought, very pretty and also very nice. You couldn't dislike Milly Burt even if you wanted to, and I for one, didn't want to...

'Oh, Captain Norreys... I blame myself dreadfully.'

'Here we go,' I thought.

'I should stop thinking about it,' I advised.

'But how can I?' Her large pathetic brown eyes opened wide.

'By the excercise of self-control and will power,' I said.

Milly looked highly skeptical and slightly disapproving.

'I don't feel I ought to take it lightly. Not when it's been all my fault.'

'My dear girl, your brooding over it won't help...'

'No-o-o-o, of course not... But I shall never forgive myself...'

We argued on familiar lines... I liked Milly Burt, but I found her quite infuriating.

'For God's sake,' I exclaimed, 'don't make such a song and dance about it! For Gabriel's sake if nobody else's.'

'But it's for HIS sake that I mind.'

She looked bewildered and obstinate.
'...I want to make up for what I've done.'

'Probably you can't...'

Milly Burt looked scared.

I didn't think she could, either. Teresa, if she had happened to care for Gabriel, could have done it quite well.

Teresa's method with life is, I think, ceaseless attack.

Milly Burt's was, undoubtedly, ceaseless picturesque defeat."

I read this little "romance/suspense" book by Agatha Christie last week, which was published under a pseudonym. It was wonderful! She's so witty and observant. This little interaction between 2 characters made me pause and think. It's entirely a work of imaginative fiction, and yet Dame Christie was nothing if not an astute observer of human nature. She nails people again and again. One of her best mystery detectives, Miss Marple, lives in a small English village and always says that no matter who she meets in the big wide world, they always remind her of some character or other in her own little sleepy village. This gives her special insight into motives and capabilities and tendencies, and this is why we all love her so. She always gets her man. :)

I think Dame Agatha wasn't far from the mark. Human nature plays itself out in countless ways, but down underneath I think there is more or less certain patterns we find repeated over and over. The devil doesn't need new tricks when the old ones still work perfectly fine!

Here's one such trick: strangling self-pity appears to us as piety. The arrogance of sewing our own "fig leaves" comes to us in the guise of humility as we do our penance instead of running to God immediately with our sin, as we are told.

Here we see little Milly Burt, who exposes the silliness of this particular strain of human nature so well. I see myself in Milly. What a silly girl I am, trying to somehow make up for my sin, thinking that somehow I'm doing God a favor. In reality, all I'm doing is making it worse. Wasting energy and time. Refusing to listen. It's all with the best of intentions, but I imagine an exasperated Heavenly Father in the place of Captain Norreys, thinking, "here we go..." and responding to my hand-wringing with a firm, "Stop thinking about it." He is kind. He likes me. But yes, "the Kingdom of God comes with violence, and the violent bear it away..." "Ceaseless attack" is what is required, not my own brand of "picturesque defeat." There is nothing admirable about a soldier who lays down his weapons while his King marches ahead of him.

Like Milly, I live in a fuzzy state of "bewildered obstinance." I'm bewildered by grace, and obstinant in my determination to pay. But nothing could be clearer:

"There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." Rom. 8:1

So then --

"Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong.
Let all that you do be done in love."
I Cor. 16:13