Obsessions

Back in high school we were assigned to read Melville's epic story Moby Dick in English class. It turns out that I never had time to do so. I was too busy combing my hair or whatever I used to do back then. But thanks to an episode of the equally classic 90's Saturday morning cartoon, Bettlejuice, entitled Moby Richard, I was able to pass the test over the story. No problem!

Later in life, now that I have developed a slower pace and a deeper appreciation for stories without spaceships and laser guns, I have enjoyed going back and rereading those stories that I blew through in a hurry... and finally visit those I never even touched at all. It has been quite the learning experience.

"All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick. He piled upon the whale’s white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart’s shell upon it."
- Moby Dick, Herman Melville

And so our hearts do become cold and wicked. We pick an obsession and we chase it to the end. We go down with the ship, blind and oblivious to the ramifications of our madness. Often times in life I have pressed the accelerator to the floor in my own name. I have let curses spill from my lips and have have cared not for what I ran asunder on my quest.

That is not God. Christ wants us to be poured out as a sacrifice... not to plummet to a self-centered doom. It is the tale of man from Adam on down. We see it in David and his affair with Bathsheba. We see it over and over. When do we stop the hunt? When do we yield? When do we let our made-up white whales slip beneath the sea and allow vengeance to escape through our fingers like sand?

When do we trust in Him?