Pathetic Fallacy

For those who are well versed in English, you should have come across the notion of “pathetic fallacy.” For the others, I will attempt to explain. Pathetic fallacy is a literary device where the weather is indicative of the mood or plot of a work. It’s the attribution of human emotions or characteristics to inanimate objects or to nature. So, an author could use a storm to indicate disorder inside someone’s mind. A popular use of this is rain connecting with sadness. Anyhow, I was walking home from the Embassy this evening, and it occurred to me that the weather tonight could be related to the “plot”, so to speak, of my life.

Allow me to elaborate; this evening had a very clear sky, yet there was a thick, low-lying fog that greyed out everything. Now I couldn’t help but see some sort of connection to me: my life is obscured by temptation and sin so that I cannot see my goal, Heaven (conveniently, the stars) clearly. But with enough strain, and when looking in the right direction, I could see a very bright star. In fact, there were many stars that I could make out. This seems only fitting because the topic tonight included much talk about sin; sins of humanity, sins of Christianity, and sins of the individual.

Brandon, the pastor at Embassy, challenged us to admit as sinners and to stop our lives as sinners. I am not going to deny that I am a sinner; I have been for my entire life as I know it. I don’t like it, and I want to be free from it. Blaming it on human nature isn’t an excuse, though. Nor should I be looking for an excuse. There is no reason for me to point the finger at someone else; the whole concept of sin is that it is our own free choice to disobey God. And it was my choice, as sad as I am to say it. As St. Paul said in his letter to the Romans: “For even though the desire to do good is in me, I am not able to do it. I don’t do the good I want to do; instead, I do the evil that I do not want to do.” Romans 7.

But there is yet another choice: to choose between staying in this fog or to look up to Heaven. The whole purpose of Christianity, as Brandon said, is not about pointing fingers at each other, but pointing to God. I pray that I, and everyone else, keeps their heads high and orients their lives to Him. He knows what’s best. 🙂

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