Standing Up in the Kitchen

You do it standing up, and you know exactly why.

Sitting down would make it a thing. A man who sits down at a table is having something. A man standing at the counter is passing through, and passing through does not count, and if it does not count it does not have to be thought about afterward.

You worked that out years ago without ever putting it in words, which is how the best defenses get built.

And what is being avoided is not the eating. It is the acknowledgment. Standing up is a technicality, and you have been using it for a long time, and you have known it was a technicality the whole time.

Let me put the plain thing first. You have not been careless with any of this. You have gone at it for years, in ways nobody has any idea about, and got up every morning and gone to work. Somebody who did not care would sit down.

So this page will not give you a rule and there is no strategy on it. Nothing here is about resisting anything or holding out.

I want to talk about what is actually being hidden and from whom, and there is a verse about somebody who cannot be kept out of that kitchen.

The technicality and what it protects

Consider what the standing accomplishes, because it is precise and it is not stupid.

It creates deniability. Not to anybody else, since nobody is watching. To yourself. If the event was never fully an event, then there is nothing on the record, and if there is nothing on the record then there is no accounting to do at the end of the week.

That is the whole architecture and it works about half the time, which is why it has lasted.

You have built a technicality rather than a habit, and no deniability has ever once been the same thing as being unseen. Hebrews 4:15 says we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a verse about a priest arrive in a kitchen at the counter.

And notice what it is really protecting. Not you from consequences, since there are none. It is protecting the version of yourself that you present, which includes to yourself, and which cannot survive being fully looked at by you.

You have been protecting a version of yourself from yourself, and no man has ever once needed to be hidden from the one who knows. The written word says the high priest is touched with the feeling of our infirmities, which is a sentence about somebody who already knows how it feels, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes being known feel like relief rather than exposure.

Touched with the feeling

The writer of Hebrews chooses his words with unusual care here.

For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. (Hebrews 4:15, King James Version)

Touched with the feeling of our infirmities. Not aware of them. Not informed about them. Touched with the feeling.

That is a claim about experience rather than about knowledge. He is not saying God has the information. He is saying the one standing in that priestly position knows what it feels like from the inside.

You have somebody who knows the feeling from the inside, and no explanation of yours has ever once been necessary. Hebrews 4 makes the priest's qualification experiential rather than informational, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that difference land on a man who has been managing an appearance.

And read what is not said. He does not say the priest is impressed, or disappointed, or waiting for an account. The verse is entirely about capacity to understand and it says nothing about assessment at all.

You are being understood rather than assessed, and there has never once been an assessment attached to that verse. The Spirit of God is the one who makes understanding felt where a man expects evaluation, and the written word says which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, said in the negative so that the point cannot be missed.

Sit down for it

Now the part I came to say, and it is the smallest possible action and it will feel like the largest.

Sit down. At the table. For it.

That is all. Not a decision about what or how much or whether. Sit down at the table like a man having something, which is what is happening, and let it be a thing that happened.

You are able to sit down for it, and no honest acknowledgment has ever once made anything worse than a technicality did. The written word says the high priest is touched with the feeling of our infirmities, which means the acknowledgment tells nobody anything new, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes sitting down possible where standing has been the arrangement for years.

And here is what the sitting actually does, because it is not a moral improvement. It ends the deniability, which is what has been keeping the whole thing in the dark, and things in the dark cannot be met. A thing acknowledged is a thing somebody else can be in the room for.

You have something that can be met now, and no thing kept technically off the record has ever once been able to be met. The Spirit of God is the one who can be in a room with a man once the room is admitted to, and Hebrews 4:15 is the written word underneath it, where the priest already knows the feeling and no assessment is mentioned anywhere.