Get a Grip

Get a Grip

It was late December one year, when the handful of us decided to go on a hike up to the waterfall in the Coulthard Basin. We had to leave early, for the snow was deep and we wanted to get back to our pickup location before nightfall. All of us brought sufficient gear and clothing for the weather, and at the steady rate we were hiking, the many layers slowly began to peel off one by one. Our pace was paying off: we stopped for lunch 3/4 of the way to our destination, giving us ample free time to do whatever we'd like when we reached the waterfall. In fact, we again underestimated our pace and reached the then buried waterfall less than half an hour later. With the sun still high overhead and the weather perfectly clear, we looked before us and considered our options. Do we make a run for the Coulthard peak today, or do we just bum around here at the last base campsite? All of us being pretty vigorous, as far as hiking goes, decided that it would be a shame to pass on an opportunity to peak a mountain in the dead of winter—I mean, just think of the toboggan ride coming down! The snow was deep and soft, untouched by any living creature so far that year & avalanche season was still another couple months away, so what the heck: why not?

Our ascent began that winter's morning, and we were making exceptional time. The fresh snow packed well into a boot-made staircase, providing a very convenient path up the mountain's slope. One by one, we tromped up past the top of the outcropping cliff, where the waterfall usually would begin its cascade in the summer months. Now, the only clue that a waterfall even existed underneath the soft, fluffy powder was the shape of the mountainside characterised by the sharp, winding ravine punctuated at this jutting lip, making a steep drop-off at least 30 feet before resuming a more gentle descent towards the Star Creek valley below. Then it began.

As our ascent continued up Coulthard's shoulder, the beautiful powder that we had previously enjoyed as a firm foothold suddenly became much shallower. To add insult to injury—almost as if the mountain didn't want climbers on it—the slight skiff of powder rested very tentatively atop a hard, slick layer of ice. The only person who was making any headway up the slope anymore was the one guy who happened to have hard-shell mountaineering boots on: his boots at least could muster up enough traction to hold onto the not-so-friendly slope. Because of his superior traction, we elected this guy to be the group's leader, cutting grooves into the slick terrain with the hope that his efforts would improve our chances of ascent as we followed in line behind him. Yeah, it didn't work so well. Our fast pace slowed to a crawl, and although we still were making some headway, the danger was increasing. Every ten or so steps that we went forward, one member of our group would experience the chilling joy of having their foothold fail, issuing a short slide down the slope, on average of ten feet. What made things worse was if the first "slider" happened to be relatively close to the front of our line—which was more often the case than not—and by the time our last group member reached the slide-point, all of the supporting snow had sluffed away, leaving nothing but a clean, glistening patch of ice which had to be climber up & over.

Conditions increasingly worsened, and now everybody but the hard-shelled boot boy was experiencing the slide. Since the slope was becoming steeper, the slide lengths were growing as well, and, to be fitting, the direction of each slide always had the sorry hiker careen towards that thirty-foot drop off, now some twenty feet below us. Not good. Our boots' traction couldn't keep us from sliding treacherously towards injury; we had no other choice but to abandon our ascent. Instead, we traversed to the south a little ways and butt-slid down the slope in a pile of powdery bliss.

A year or so later, during one of our field sessions for my outdoor leadership training, we were taught a life-saving manoeuvre to guard against out-of-control slides down snowy slopes: the self-arrest. If you find yourself careening out of control down a snowy mountainside, you had better still have your hiking stick with you. The technique involves righting yourself to face feet-first downhill, with a hiking stick strong enough to support your full weight held tightly in both hands. What must then be done quickly & properly is to toss yourself into the air and flip yourself over—feet first & gut down—while positioning your body & stick in such a way as to drive the hiking stick firmly into the mountainside at about chest-level, while ensuring that only your toes and the stick are in contact with the slope. If done correctly (assuming that there is more than 1 cm of light powder over a sheer rock-face), the resultant impaling of the stick into the mountain and dug-in toes should halt your descent, providing you with a relatively firm anchor.



Sliding down mountains—at least the dangerous type—tends to happen without warning, catching the hiker off guard. Panic and fear typically ensue accompanied thereafter with a few strings of expletives, either spoken or thought. There usually isn't a way to tell when, where or how often a slide will occur, nor is there a gauge of how much time you'll have to try to stop the descent before hitting trees, boulders or the edge of a cliff. The only thing that matters is your ability to get a grip on something to avoid the impending doom.

So, I ask the question: what do you hold on to? Life's full of surprises that will inevitably send us all careening out of control at one time or another, and it is imperative to have a firm grip on something that won't let you down. Are you walking along in other people's footprints, hoping that those footholds don't give way, sending you towards a cliff? Have you picked up some random branch along the way, hoping that it'll have enough fortitude to stop your descent without breaking under the stress? Are you hoping that the person in front of you or behind you is fast enough to grab you and equipped enough to stop you from sliding downhill without being pulled down with you? As for me, I hold onto Christ. His grip’s been proven strong for over 2,000 years and He promises not to lose even one who grabs a hold of Him. Can your grip match that? Think about it...

All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me. This is the will of Him who sent Me, that of all that He has given Me I lose nothing, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life, and I Myself will raise him up on the last day.

-Jn 6:37-40

The Solution to Pollution is Dilution

Watered down. The key to removing potency from many things in this world is to decrease its concentration. It works for acids—to shift a pH closer to neutral, you "do as you aughtta; add acid to wattah." It works in cooking: to make hot sauce for wings into mild sauce, you add a splash of the sauce to some water & mix. Heck, anyone who's ever gone to a church's social function knows all too well about dilution from one phrase: church juice. It's essentially coloured water, regardless of whatever the juice's packaging might originally have said. Dilution.

Why is concentration so important? How come a thick pile is more potent than the same amount of stuff spread thinly over a larger region? Perhaps the ratio of effecting agent to effected target has something to do with it. Perhaps may also perhaps be an understatement here.

It seems to be that the concept of concentration can be viewed much like a military battle. Which do you think has a better chance of success: 10,000 soldiers fighting 500 fronts at once, or 10,000 soldiers fighting five fronts at once? A stronger, united force seems to have greater impact on a localised region than a dispersed "unified" force.

So what the heck am I getting at, with all this rambling? Well, a couple things; yet these couple things are really one.

First part: I feel diluted these days. I feel largely useless in life, missing out on many endeavours, falling short of success in many potential areas al because of a lack of sufficient force. I think about it, and I see that my dreams are evaporating. They evaporate because my dreams require more energy, effort and resources than what I alone can muster. Many of my writing projects are put on hold. Scripts lie half-finished—or less; books barely get written. Photography and filmography gather dust in my retinue of things to do. No productions are in line for my future, alas. Spiritual similarities also abound: I feel strongly that my Christianity has become rather ineffective, due largely to a lack of sufficient access to a like-minded community. I feel choked by weeds.

How come? Why? What the heck is going on? Life, perhaps? Things often tend to get in the way, yet my priorities are my own & ultimately, the choices I make in my daily life are essentially made by me alone (albeit, God should also have a hand in that too).

I think that Satan is an environmentalist. He's been using the solution to pollution within the church for years now. Back in the day, the primary method of marginalising Christianity's impact on the world was through brute force and suppression. Cut some heads off, feed some Christians to starving lions, dip others in searing hot tar & then light the human torches on fire for garden parties in Imperial Rome... Y'know, brutal stuff. Unfortunately, the Church seems to respond backwards to violent oppression & instead of backing down, it tends to regroup & redouble its resolve.

Now, Satan being aware of this peculiarity, decided to let the church grow in power and in popular acceptance—so much so, that the Church became the de facto world (aka "European") government for something like a thousand years, and because of this, the Western world has adopted much of Christianity's values and morals: justice, peace, freedom, equality and the like. Needless to say, such concepts are very good, and from out of this universal adoption and the overwhelming extent of Christianity's presence in western culture, the Church began to adopt the mentality of being popular.

Because of Christianity's prevalence, even a generation ago, one was considered to be a "good person" if one went to church—whether or not one believed anything that the Bible taught. Heck, many of my friends' parents decided to go to church so that their kids (my friends) would be exposed to Sunday School teaching—and not because the family thought it important for the children to learn about the Bible, but because it was the "proper" thing to do with your children. Unfortunately, here starts the discussion of dilution.

The significant cultural impact that Christianity has had on western society has resulted in populating church buildings with people who really don't give a crap about Christianity at all—from the guy/girl who's "proclaiming the word of the Lord" at the front to the guy or girl in the nice clothes sitting towards the back, pretending to listen while they're actually wondering who America's next top model will be. Christianity has (or maybe even "had") become "nice," and as a result, the Church as a western whole has begun to shift from maintaining spiritual potency towards maintaining cultural popularity.

A High Risk Investment

Consider this: you have the opportunity to make an investment that would potentially change your life, lifting you up out of your current situation & placing you into a plush, prestigious lifestyle. An existence of meaning, wealth, authority and power. The payout to this investment has the potential to give you pretty much everything you've ever wanted. Of course, there's the catch. What does this investment cost?

To buy into the investment portfolio costs a near mint. Depending on who you are, it'll cost every pay check of every hour of every day that you work and on top of that, it requires that you put in time "off the clock" to ensure that the investment is maintained. Pretty expensive; pretty demanding. Yet, a few years of just grinning & bearing it would be worth the payout, I’d say--if the level of risk on the investment were pretty manageable. Then, there's the catch again.

This investment I'm talking about is one of the highest risk investments that anyone could even imagine: to date, there's only ever been one confirmed payout. We're talking hundreds of people buying in here, and only one has reported hitting the ROI--Return on Investment--threshold. He, of course, is smiling all the way to the bank & then some. Actually, we're talking about a potential investors' group of over a billion people, every one possibly cashing in on this chance of a lifetime. Sound far-fetched? It ain't. It's just a different perspective.

A high-risk investment has been placed before you. It'll cost pretty much everything you have & leave you in debt up to your ears until you reach the payout point. When you start making a return on the investment, though, you're laughing cuz you officially have it made for the rest of your life--call it "early retirement" with none of the downsides & all of the perks. It just costs two arms and two legs. It requires an all or nothing decision simply because the investment buy-in price is just that high (though, estimates peg this price to be much less than even 0.01% of the payout).

The portfolio management guarantees such high-yield returns to be a 100% possibility, and they also guarantee that the maturity time for the ROI won't leave you six-feet under before it occurs: you will profit immensely from this investment & have all the time in the world to enjoy its fruits. Guaranteed.

Because of this guarantee and the buy-in cost, it's an all-or-nothing deal. If you choose to invest, you must commit to the full investment price: any later choice to back out will result in termination of the agreement with no refunds or exchanges (though this investment does allow anyone to buy-in again, though the cost remains the same).

So what is this crazy expensive (but with even more crazy returns) investment? And where can you buy in? Who manages the portfolio? Well, it's believing that Christ is the son of God, and that he died on the cross to pay for our screw-ups while coming back to life three days later in victory over death. The payout on such a belief is not only eternal life, but eternal life living as rulers and co-heirs with Jesus over all of the universe, having been invested with the power of God Himself. Reigning forever as the third highest authority in the universe (and perhaps even beyond) seems like a pretty sweet deal.

The cost, however, is looking like a retard in this life: foregoing selfishness and some carnal pleasures. Taking the heat from people who think that God, Jesus & the whole shebang is outright foolishness. Upholding the name of Christ even to the point of death. Ultimate fidelity at any cost for the duration of your stay on this planet in this universe in that body of yours. Don't worry: you eventually get a new one. A body designed to wield the power of God much more effectively and much more easily. One not prone to falling apart of breaking: a perfect body, as it were.

It's true that there has only been one confirmed payout. That was Jesus, a couple of thousand years ago. And what if it's all a pipe dream, a big hoax, empty drivel--the opiate of the masses?

If it is, then I'm a huge effing retard. If Christ and his message to mankind was one big lie, then I have wasted my life and missed out on countless opportunities. If this around us is all there is, and if I have hoped in Christ for this life only, then, "we are of all men most to be pitied" (I Cor 15:19).

I've bought in; I'm not turning back. I've placed my bets on this investment. Laugh at me if you will. Or, would you like to be in on this awesome deal too? The choice is yours & the outcome is no one's fault but your own. So: are you in or are you out?