I've been in a thick fog lately - struggling to think clearly but sinking further down with every flailing attempt to re-surface. I hate my weak self; I hate to admit what, deep down, I know myself to be; I hate to be shown the dark spots of selfishness that eat away at everything I do; above all, I hate to have my weakness and bewilderment exposed. Yet the God I love is dedicated to shedding his light on the very things I long to bury and forget. When he begins his work in me, I reach for him in desperation. Blinded by my refusal of the light that exposes me, I grope in the darkness for my God, and he hides himself in a thick cloud.
Slowly, I am coming to realize that there is a pattern to God's withdrawing from me. He hides himself when I refuse to admit some aspect of his character. "God, come and comfort me, but don't shine your light on my weakness. Don't let me be ashamed - " this was my prayer, were I to admit it. Even as I began to see and confess it, I rationalized my thinking - aren't there multiple verses in the Bible that tell us if we trust in God we won't be ashamed? (“…and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame.” Romans 9:33) But, ah, I read my own hopes into those words. It is in trusting in him that I'm to be kept from shame - not in trusting myself! Indeed, the more I trust in my own ways when I know them to be different from God's, the more shame I have.
I'm still a bit lost. I hardly know where to begin dealing with the flotsam that has surfaced in my turmoil of soul. I don't know how to stop being the person I sense that I am in the carefully hidden recesses of my self. Again, I realize that whether or not he does help me, I need God to help me. He is the One who can make me whole and my life complete. Lest anyone say that I worship him because he speaks kindly and softly to me, helps my favorite basketball team win, saves me the best parking spaces at the mall - let me tell out of my misery who is that high and Holy one who withdraws when I reach out for him in desperation...
He is Light. He is Love. He is Truth.
As I become willing to accept the consequences of knowing Love and Light and Truth, my blindness is departing, and I begin to see - not the kindly father/comforting teddybear/soft-hearted auntie-God-all-in-one I was reaching for, but the Living God, the Most High, in whom mercy and truth are met together. I cried for comfort, but he is too good to give me a thing so small. Instead he offers healing through pain. I'm too weak to reach for it, but I choose it, and he will give it.
Wednesday, 31 October 2007
Wednesday, 24 October 2007
He Is Not Far...
The following piece keeps popping up everywhere I go lately, so I thought I'd share:
Acts 17:21-33
All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas. Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: "Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you.
"The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live.
God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us.
'For in him we live and move and have our being.' As some of your own poets have said, 'We are his offspring.'
"Therefore since we are God's offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by man's design and skill. In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead." When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered, but others said, "We want to hear you again on this subject." At that, Paul left the Council. A few men became followers of Paul and believed. Among them was Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus, also a woman named Damaris, and a number of others.
Acts 17:21-33
All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas. Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: "Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you.
"The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live.
God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us.
'For in him we live and move and have our being.' As some of your own poets have said, 'We are his offspring.'
"Therefore since we are God's offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by man's design and skill. In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead." When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered, but others said, "We want to hear you again on this subject." At that, Paul left the Council. A few men became followers of Paul and believed. Among them was Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus, also a woman named Damaris, and a number of others.
Saturday, 20 October 2007
A Strange and Costly Beauty
This video offers one of the best demonstrations I've witnessed of the strange beauty that is sometimes born of ugly, terrorizing pain; that rises in sweet triumph over the destructive power that has brought it to light. Too easily we are convinced, from the vantage point of our safe and comfortable but airless and visionless lives, that happiness is the highest good and pain the greatest evil in the universe. Not so, says this video. Eliot and his parents have experienced a thing of goodness that you and I, with our all-important comfort, may never experience. They have drunk deeply of Love, and having lost all, are neither empty nor bereft.
We ought to be careful how we judge things. Most of us have tasted so little of the goodness that is sometime revealed amid the destructive forces clearly at work in our world. It flames out now and again with a deep beauty that shines its light upon our narrowminded assumptions and quells our childishly arrogant sums of things.
Thursday, 18 October 2007
What I Could Not Say - Oswald Chambers on "Sin"
We Christians love to think of ourselves as brave "soldiers of the cross" - until we mess up big-time. It's then that we realize that God hasn't called us soldiers - he's called us sheep. Stubborn and easily distracted, but sought after and loved by the Good Shepherd, we are asked not to fight, not to defend - but to follow. I've been discouraged lately, in discussing a number of things (including sin and its heredity), by my inability to explain what I know and understand in a way that is not completely incomprehensible to another. Why am I so unable to bridge the gap of thought when I do understand both perspectives? Why must I play so handily into the "narrow-minded Christian" stereotype?
Then that darling of a sister of mine, who sees things so differently from me, came out of the blue with an explanation by Oswald Chambers that is everything I wanted to say, only with pith and restraint. It satisfies my longing to bridge perspective with rational communication. I've included it below. It no longer matters whether or not anyone else sees what I see, because Chambers, at least, understands and has explained, and has done it well. Oh, I know that God will not be sorted and explained by mere words, because he is not known by the intellect alone. But how lovely to have my intellect satisfied, too - and in far less wordy an attempt than mine!
When I am filled with my own inadequacy, God reminds me that I am not all that important, after all, and I am comforted. What does it matter how I appear? In my very best talents and abilities, the flaws begin to show themselves, and I go running again with sweet, rushing relief, to the Christ - who alone is flawless.
The Nature of Degeneration (from "My Utmost for His Highest", by Oswald Chambers)
" Just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned . . ."
—Romans 5:12
The Bible does not say that God punished the human race for one man’s sin, but that the nature of sin, namely, my claim to my right to myself, entered into the human race through one man. But it also says that another Man took upon Himself the sin of the human race and put it away— an infinitely more profound revelation (see Hebrews 9:26 ). The nature of sin is not immorality and wrongdoing, but the nature of self-realization which leads us to say, "I am my own god." This nature may exhibit itself in proper morality or in improper immorality, but it always has a common basis— my claim to my right to myself. When our Lord faced either people with all the forces of evil in them, or people who were clean-living, moral, and upright, He paid no attention to the moral degradation of one, nor any attention to the moral attainment of the other. He looked at something we do not see, namely, the nature of man (see John 2:25 ).
Sin is something I am born with and cannot touch— only God touches sin through redemption. It is through the Cross of Christ that God redeemed the entire human race from the possibility of damnation through the heredity of sin. God nowhere holds a person responsible for having the heredity of sin, and does not condemn anyone because of it. Condemnation comes when I realize that Jesus Christ came to deliver me from this heredity of sin, and yet I refuse to let Him do so. From that moment I begin to get the seal of damnation. "This is the condemnation [and the critical moment], that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light . . . " ( John 3:19 ).
Then that darling of a sister of mine, who sees things so differently from me, came out of the blue with an explanation by Oswald Chambers that is everything I wanted to say, only with pith and restraint. It satisfies my longing to bridge perspective with rational communication. I've included it below. It no longer matters whether or not anyone else sees what I see, because Chambers, at least, understands and has explained, and has done it well. Oh, I know that God will not be sorted and explained by mere words, because he is not known by the intellect alone. But how lovely to have my intellect satisfied, too - and in far less wordy an attempt than mine!
When I am filled with my own inadequacy, God reminds me that I am not all that important, after all, and I am comforted. What does it matter how I appear? In my very best talents and abilities, the flaws begin to show themselves, and I go running again with sweet, rushing relief, to the Christ - who alone is flawless.
The Nature of Degeneration (from "My Utmost for His Highest", by Oswald Chambers)
" Just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned . . ."
—Romans 5:12
The Bible does not say that God punished the human race for one man’s sin, but that the nature of sin, namely, my claim to my right to myself, entered into the human race through one man. But it also says that another Man took upon Himself the sin of the human race and put it away— an infinitely more profound revelation (see Hebrews 9:26 ). The nature of sin is not immorality and wrongdoing, but the nature of self-realization which leads us to say, "I am my own god." This nature may exhibit itself in proper morality or in improper immorality, but it always has a common basis— my claim to my right to myself. When our Lord faced either people with all the forces of evil in them, or people who were clean-living, moral, and upright, He paid no attention to the moral degradation of one, nor any attention to the moral attainment of the other. He looked at something we do not see, namely, the nature of man (see John 2:25 ).
Sin is something I am born with and cannot touch— only God touches sin through redemption. It is through the Cross of Christ that God redeemed the entire human race from the possibility of damnation through the heredity of sin. God nowhere holds a person responsible for having the heredity of sin, and does not condemn anyone because of it. Condemnation comes when I realize that Jesus Christ came to deliver me from this heredity of sin, and yet I refuse to let Him do so. From that moment I begin to get the seal of damnation. "This is the condemnation [and the critical moment], that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light . . . " ( John 3:19 ).
Thursday, 11 October 2007
Guest Post: How Far Will We Go?
*Editor's note: Today's post is the story of my fellow blogger, Karen K, whose knowledge of God has cost her more than most of us could imagine paying - yet she testifies (with more depth and reality than most of us can) that He is worth any price. Check out her blog, aptly named Pursue God.
How Far Will We Go?
The defining moments of life lie in our response to God when the unexpected comes. Sooner than later we face a rude awakening: Christians are not exempt from pain. Life will treat us unfairly—and God will allow it. How we grapple with our faith at these pivotal turns sets the direction of our lives. Do we persist in pursuing God? Or, in our disillusionment, do we abandon him? These questions pressed hard on my own mind for many years. It began in 1992. That’s when I looked into life’s mirror and was startled to see the unexpected. That’s the year I knew I was gay.
My same-sex attractions barreled into consciousness during Bible college, stripping away years of denial and wrenching my presuppositions of God from their secure sockets. The Church never told me a good Christian girl who sang in church choir, went on mission trips, and served in youth leadership could be gay. Weren’t homosexuals outside the Church—a subgroup of activists with an “evil agenda”? Didn’t Romans 1 teach homosexuality is caused by hatred toward God? How could I be gay?
The unexpected challenged everything I believed about God and Christianity. For ten years I wrestled with, What does this mean for me? Was I born this way? Is homosexuality truly wrong, or was it my fundamentalist upbringing that convinced me it is? I studied Scripture. I got involved in lesbian relationships. I went to ex-gay support groups. I read pro-gay theology. These were difficult years marked with crying, pleading, trying, exhaustion, failure, painful losses and suicidal thoughts. My healing never came.
American Christian culture teaches us God will fix all our problems. We just have to pray hard enough, seek him earnestly, and surrender more readily. After all, Christianity is about the “abundant life.” All God wants is for us to be happy, right? The truth is God can be unnervingly patient in the midst of our storms. He let me sweat it out. Just as he may let you wrestle with your pain. Our response to such treatment is often anger—at least for me. I thought God was callous, a cruel jokester playing a cosmic game. I didn’t understand; his silence was moving me past superficial comforts to find deeper wells.
Ultimately, I came to a deep spiritual peace in choosing not to be in homosexual relationships. Not because of my fundamentalist upbringing. Not because of family or peer pressure. Not because I was afraid God would hit me over the head or send me to hell, but because the Spirit testifies in me that homosexuality is not what he wants for human relationships. This life is short; my destiny is not about finding a lover or a life partner, as good as those things are. It’s not your life purpose either. Our destiny in life as followers of Jesus is to proclaim and live out, on a daily basis, the Kingdom of God until He comes.
Scripture says the Kingdom of God is where righteousness dwells. Righteousness is a word that is often misunderstood. We tend to associate it with legalism, perfectionism and trying to measure up. But, the Bible associates righteousness with joy, life, beauty, healing and all that is good and pleasing in the eyes of God. It is especially related to shalom—which means holistic well-being. Psalm 85:10 says, “Righteousness and shalom have kissed each other.” The ways of God and well-being are intimately conjoined. To value righteousness is to value our own well-being and the well-being of others.
I still have same-sex attractions. I might have to live a life of single celibacy. All my problems haven’t gone away and all of your problems, whatever they may be, might not go away either. Jesus said in this world we will have trouble. The question is: Will we follow him anyway? How far will we go in our pursuit of God? Will we give up when pain and loss slap us across the face? Will we falter when loneliness taunts us? Will we throw aside faith when God shatters our presuppositions of him? Or, will we cling to him even when he is silent?
Let me tell you something; Jesus is the priceless pearl worth losing everything for. Don’t throw away your destiny for that which fades in a matter of days or years. Don’t hold onto bitterness and anger because life didn’t turn out the way you expected. The picture is grander than what meets the eye. God can be trusted. When the unexpected knocks you flat, get back up and keep walking. I am walking with you.
How Far Will We Go?
The defining moments of life lie in our response to God when the unexpected comes. Sooner than later we face a rude awakening: Christians are not exempt from pain. Life will treat us unfairly—and God will allow it. How we grapple with our faith at these pivotal turns sets the direction of our lives. Do we persist in pursuing God? Or, in our disillusionment, do we abandon him? These questions pressed hard on my own mind for many years. It began in 1992. That’s when I looked into life’s mirror and was startled to see the unexpected. That’s the year I knew I was gay.
My same-sex attractions barreled into consciousness during Bible college, stripping away years of denial and wrenching my presuppositions of God from their secure sockets. The Church never told me a good Christian girl who sang in church choir, went on mission trips, and served in youth leadership could be gay. Weren’t homosexuals outside the Church—a subgroup of activists with an “evil agenda”? Didn’t Romans 1 teach homosexuality is caused by hatred toward God? How could I be gay?
The unexpected challenged everything I believed about God and Christianity. For ten years I wrestled with, What does this mean for me? Was I born this way? Is homosexuality truly wrong, or was it my fundamentalist upbringing that convinced me it is? I studied Scripture. I got involved in lesbian relationships. I went to ex-gay support groups. I read pro-gay theology. These were difficult years marked with crying, pleading, trying, exhaustion, failure, painful losses and suicidal thoughts. My healing never came.
American Christian culture teaches us God will fix all our problems. We just have to pray hard enough, seek him earnestly, and surrender more readily. After all, Christianity is about the “abundant life.” All God wants is for us to be happy, right? The truth is God can be unnervingly patient in the midst of our storms. He let me sweat it out. Just as he may let you wrestle with your pain. Our response to such treatment is often anger—at least for me. I thought God was callous, a cruel jokester playing a cosmic game. I didn’t understand; his silence was moving me past superficial comforts to find deeper wells.
Ultimately, I came to a deep spiritual peace in choosing not to be in homosexual relationships. Not because of my fundamentalist upbringing. Not because of family or peer pressure. Not because I was afraid God would hit me over the head or send me to hell, but because the Spirit testifies in me that homosexuality is not what he wants for human relationships. This life is short; my destiny is not about finding a lover or a life partner, as good as those things are. It’s not your life purpose either. Our destiny in life as followers of Jesus is to proclaim and live out, on a daily basis, the Kingdom of God until He comes.
Scripture says the Kingdom of God is where righteousness dwells. Righteousness is a word that is often misunderstood. We tend to associate it with legalism, perfectionism and trying to measure up. But, the Bible associates righteousness with joy, life, beauty, healing and all that is good and pleasing in the eyes of God. It is especially related to shalom—which means holistic well-being. Psalm 85:10 says, “Righteousness and shalom have kissed each other.” The ways of God and well-being are intimately conjoined. To value righteousness is to value our own well-being and the well-being of others.
I still have same-sex attractions. I might have to live a life of single celibacy. All my problems haven’t gone away and all of your problems, whatever they may be, might not go away either. Jesus said in this world we will have trouble. The question is: Will we follow him anyway? How far will we go in our pursuit of God? Will we give up when pain and loss slap us across the face? Will we falter when loneliness taunts us? Will we throw aside faith when God shatters our presuppositions of him? Or, will we cling to him even when he is silent?
Let me tell you something; Jesus is the priceless pearl worth losing everything for. Don’t throw away your destiny for that which fades in a matter of days or years. Don’t hold onto bitterness and anger because life didn’t turn out the way you expected. The picture is grander than what meets the eye. God can be trusted. When the unexpected knocks you flat, get back up and keep walking. I am walking with you.
Monday, 1 October 2007
Is God Better Than Sex?
Slapdash raised this question with her "Sex Entry". Don't think I am being facetious. It's a question for my generation. We have been led to believe by all that surrounds us that sex is the greatest rush of all. Is it?
As a single 32-year-old who knows and is known by the God of the universe, this is a question I have had to look at seriously. This goes past philosophy and moralizing. It's a question I answer daily, not with my words, but with my choices, with my life.
Let me say it in every language I know, with every breath, with every ounce of my being: God is enough. He is the loveliest and deepest and dearest that I know. He is better than sex.
"We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased." (C.S. Lewis)
**Check out this blog of a Christian with same-sex attractions for a much more eloquent look at this issue.
Thursday, 13 September 2007
Give Me Jesus
In the morning, when I rise
In the morning, when I rise
In the morning, when I rise, give me Jesus
Give me Jesus,
Give me Jesus,
You can have all this world,
But give me Jesus
When I am alone
When I am alone
When I am alone, give me Jesus
Give me Jesus,
Give me Jesus,
You can have all this world,
But give me Jesus
When I come to die
When I come to die
When I come to die, give me Jesus
Give me Jesus,
Give me Jesus,
You can have all this world,
You can have all this world,
You can have all this world,
But give me Jesus
(song by Fernando Ortega)
Some months ago HeIsSailing described his own feeling of queasiness at the love for Jesus that is so ubiquitously present in Christian circles. Since then, I often considered the way in which I have come to love the Lord Jesus. This is my response to his question, "why do you love Jesus?"
I didn't always love Jesus. Even after I came to be thankful to him for what he did for me, I didn't feel that I loved him. It was easier for me to think of loving a spirit-God than a human-God. I felt a kind of awe at the holiness of God, and I could imagine him loving me as a Father would - but Jesus? - He was too close for comfort in some ways, and in other ways I felt that I could never know him as I might his Father.
I too felt ill at all the gush-y-ness that seemed to flow out of other Christians at the mention of his name. I just couldn’t feel it. I felt grateful to the Christ who came from heaven and shared the human experience. I could respect Jesus, the historical person who dealt with people so compassionately. Maybe my deepest feeling was reverence for the God the Son, who became the Messiah. But there was no emotion welling up in my heart, no love as we commonly know it for the man Christ Jesus. I couldn’t understand where other people were coming from. It all seemed so fake and so nauseating to me.
Suddenly, I came to a crisis in my life. I guess, thinking back, it wasn’t all that sudden, but I was thrown on almost every level with a force that took my breath away. I spent a whole year searching for the God I had sensed and trusted as a child and poured my heart out to as a teenager. I didn’t care what his name was – God or Jesus or something else – I was desperate for someone to answer me. I felt utterly abandoned and alone. I prayed, but the words rose slowly and woodenly from my heart, only to hit the ceiling and come tumbling back again. I read the Bible, but it was just words. I walked outside almost every day and looked up at the sky. I had only one prayer – “If you can hear me, I can’t hear you; please talk to me, touch me, let me feel that you are there.” I knew there was a God; I just wasn’t sure how much it was possible to know him or how much I mattered in his great scheme. I feared him, but I didn’t love him. I didn’t even feel I knew him. I ached for more than a great and vast Creator; I needed something personal, something warm and deep and near. I wanted to be touched by the kind of God who would create a tree, a dog, a soul. At the same time, I was aware of a vast cavern within myself that made me want to hide from God – a deep ugly blot that made all the good I tried to do flimsy and fake. I knew that if there was a God, then my sins were forgiven, but I was filled with self-loathing and I felt utterly alone.
After a year of groping about in the dimness of my weary self, I was reading my Bible – rather hopelessly – when I heard the “still, small voice” once again. Suddenly the words on the page were no longer just words, clanging senselessly against the metal wall in my head. They had meaning. They were spoken to me. I was reading in Psalms 16:11 – “Thou wilt show me the path of life: in thy presence is fullness of joy.”
There were no flashes of light, no angels singing; but from that moment, I had hope that the God of the universe knew me, and that it was possible to know him, really. I don’t know how or when exactly I came to the realization that he was Jesus. All along, I had known the great Ruler of heaven. I had reverenced his holiness, I had even felt his fatherly kindness from afar. But he had shut himself off from me so that I could realize what I was missing – the personal God.
Jesus is (still is!) a human, in addition to being God. He knows what it’s like in my life. He is touched by my weaknesses. He has been here. I can love him as I love another human being, because that’s who he is. But you can’t love someone you don’t know. When I came to a place of longing for Jesus (even though I didn’t know it was him I longed for!) that was when I came to know him. He crept in softly, and lit a flame, and sat beside me. By the time I was aware that he was there, I knew he was the one I had needed all along.
When I am overwhelmed by the loneliness of humankind; when I feel the howl of a vast wilderness waste in my soul, Jesus comes near. He lights a fire and I am warmed from the inside. He listens, and he understands. He is a sweet relief from the cold, grasping darkness that grips me suddenly, inside and out, because he is light, “and in him is no darkness at all.” (1 John 1:5) He is love, personified. While the presence of the almighty God fills me with awe and wonder, and a strange longing for something deep and old, Jesus gives the warm comfort of a dear friend. I know God in the ocean, the stars, and pour out my soul and bow before him; but Jesus is here with me.
More recently, I have come to appreciate the Jesus presented in C.S. Lewis’ Narnia series as Aslan. He has a wildness, an animal-ness that is very like the Jesus I know.
I still don’t like the gushiness that is poured out on the weak-mouthed, white-skinned, blue-eyed Jesus of mass-mediated Christianity, forever holding out his hands to be touched. But I love the God who knows what it is like to be hungry and lonely and catch a cold and have dirty feet. I love the God-man who is utterly free –and offers me his freedom! - from the dark selfishness that rises up and threatens to choke me. I love Jesus, at last.
When the bottom drops out of my world, give me Jesus. He is enough. Only he is enough.
In the morning, when I rise
In the morning, when I rise, give me Jesus
Give me Jesus,
Give me Jesus,
You can have all this world,
But give me Jesus
When I am alone
When I am alone
When I am alone, give me Jesus
Give me Jesus,
Give me Jesus,
You can have all this world,
But give me Jesus
When I come to die
When I come to die
When I come to die, give me Jesus
Give me Jesus,
Give me Jesus,
You can have all this world,
You can have all this world,
You can have all this world,
But give me Jesus
(song by Fernando Ortega)
Some months ago HeIsSailing described his own feeling of queasiness at the love for Jesus that is so ubiquitously present in Christian circles. Since then, I often considered the way in which I have come to love the Lord Jesus. This is my response to his question, "why do you love Jesus?"
I didn't always love Jesus. Even after I came to be thankful to him for what he did for me, I didn't feel that I loved him. It was easier for me to think of loving a spirit-God than a human-God. I felt a kind of awe at the holiness of God, and I could imagine him loving me as a Father would - but Jesus? - He was too close for comfort in some ways, and in other ways I felt that I could never know him as I might his Father.
I too felt ill at all the gush-y-ness that seemed to flow out of other Christians at the mention of his name. I just couldn’t feel it. I felt grateful to the Christ who came from heaven and shared the human experience. I could respect Jesus, the historical person who dealt with people so compassionately. Maybe my deepest feeling was reverence for the God the Son, who became the Messiah. But there was no emotion welling up in my heart, no love as we commonly know it for the man Christ Jesus. I couldn’t understand where other people were coming from. It all seemed so fake and so nauseating to me.
Suddenly, I came to a crisis in my life. I guess, thinking back, it wasn’t all that sudden, but I was thrown on almost every level with a force that took my breath away. I spent a whole year searching for the God I had sensed and trusted as a child and poured my heart out to as a teenager. I didn’t care what his name was – God or Jesus or something else – I was desperate for someone to answer me. I felt utterly abandoned and alone. I prayed, but the words rose slowly and woodenly from my heart, only to hit the ceiling and come tumbling back again. I read the Bible, but it was just words. I walked outside almost every day and looked up at the sky. I had only one prayer – “If you can hear me, I can’t hear you; please talk to me, touch me, let me feel that you are there.” I knew there was a God; I just wasn’t sure how much it was possible to know him or how much I mattered in his great scheme. I feared him, but I didn’t love him. I didn’t even feel I knew him. I ached for more than a great and vast Creator; I needed something personal, something warm and deep and near. I wanted to be touched by the kind of God who would create a tree, a dog, a soul. At the same time, I was aware of a vast cavern within myself that made me want to hide from God – a deep ugly blot that made all the good I tried to do flimsy and fake. I knew that if there was a God, then my sins were forgiven, but I was filled with self-loathing and I felt utterly alone.
After a year of groping about in the dimness of my weary self, I was reading my Bible – rather hopelessly – when I heard the “still, small voice” once again. Suddenly the words on the page were no longer just words, clanging senselessly against the metal wall in my head. They had meaning. They were spoken to me. I was reading in Psalms 16:11 – “Thou wilt show me the path of life: in thy presence is fullness of joy.”
There were no flashes of light, no angels singing; but from that moment, I had hope that the God of the universe knew me, and that it was possible to know him, really. I don’t know how or when exactly I came to the realization that he was Jesus. All along, I had known the great Ruler of heaven. I had reverenced his holiness, I had even felt his fatherly kindness from afar. But he had shut himself off from me so that I could realize what I was missing – the personal God.
Jesus is (still is!) a human, in addition to being God. He knows what it’s like in my life. He is touched by my weaknesses. He has been here. I can love him as I love another human being, because that’s who he is. But you can’t love someone you don’t know. When I came to a place of longing for Jesus (even though I didn’t know it was him I longed for!) that was when I came to know him. He crept in softly, and lit a flame, and sat beside me. By the time I was aware that he was there, I knew he was the one I had needed all along.
When I am overwhelmed by the loneliness of humankind; when I feel the howl of a vast wilderness waste in my soul, Jesus comes near. He lights a fire and I am warmed from the inside. He listens, and he understands. He is a sweet relief from the cold, grasping darkness that grips me suddenly, inside and out, because he is light, “and in him is no darkness at all.” (1 John 1:5) He is love, personified. While the presence of the almighty God fills me with awe and wonder, and a strange longing for something deep and old, Jesus gives the warm comfort of a dear friend. I know God in the ocean, the stars, and pour out my soul and bow before him; but Jesus is here with me.
More recently, I have come to appreciate the Jesus presented in C.S. Lewis’ Narnia series as Aslan. He has a wildness, an animal-ness that is very like the Jesus I know.
I still don’t like the gushiness that is poured out on the weak-mouthed, white-skinned, blue-eyed Jesus of mass-mediated Christianity, forever holding out his hands to be touched. But I love the God who knows what it is like to be hungry and lonely and catch a cold and have dirty feet. I love the God-man who is utterly free –and offers me his freedom! - from the dark selfishness that rises up and threatens to choke me. I love Jesus, at last.
When the bottom drops out of my world, give me Jesus. He is enough. Only he is enough.
Friday, 24 August 2007
Warning: This Post is Based on My Subjective Experience and May Be Rambling and Boring!
This post is in response to another question asked by that relentless question-asker, Slapdash. I'll warn you before you go skipping blithely onward, that it's rambling and more vague than I like to be. Moreover, it concerns my own experience of things, which may in this case be quite beside-the-point for most of you. Nevertheless, I must attempt, though my powers of self-analysis be strained to the breaking-point. Please keep in mind that my purpose here is not to convince but to explain.
Slapdash's question:
**Can you define what you mean by “know” and describe what you think the door [to knowing God] is? (Slapdash)
I'm not sure that I can communicate this, but I will die in the attempt. By knowing, I mean being sure with sense, mind and spirit.
Of course, we may not truly know a person through the senses, but the evidence our senses are able to gather about a person must either match the other knowledge we have of that person, or the mind must be able to postulate a reason why the sensory evidence does not match.
In order for the mind to know, reason (in as much as we possess it) must be satisfied. I don't say that reason must understand fully, but certainly it must not be ignored; its questions must not be brushed away. If I know my sister, I don't necessarily understand all that she is, nor do I necessarily have a good grasp of the biochemical processes that function in her body and brain. Rather, my understanding of who she is and that she is, is accounted for by reason and does not oppose my logical powers.
The testimony of my senses attests to her existence as an individual. Though I have had greater sensory evidence of her existence than I have had of yours, Slapdash, reason allows for both of you.
But knowing that someone exists and understanding what kind of a person exists is not knowing a person. Knowing a person involves shared experience; feedback; an exchange of views and perspectives; ultimately, a changed understanding because my understanding has been acted upon by the force of another's. When my understanding alters on its own, the alteration is clean and complete. We like to illustrate this in our culture as a light turning on. While this kind of realization may, in a more complex way, happen in conversation with another person, it is usually through a rather more complicated process that I am "convinced" or brought to an understanding and/or espousal of another person's point of view.
I am rationally convinced that I know God based on two theoretical evidences which are convincing to me as an individual. The first is that he offers arguments and opens my understanding to other things that neither appeal to me nor appear in any way to be an extension or progression of my own views. The second is that I am coming to understand who he is and why. The fact that I know WHAT before I know WHY signifies non-progression and offers me evidence that this sort of knowledge is not my own imagination or wishful thinking.
These evidences have been reflected in experience for me by God's fulfillment of the promises he has made to me. There have been times when I haven't understood what he was doing. There have been times when I've believed he wasn't fulfilling his promises. In the end, he has fulfilled every one. In doing so, he has brought me to understand on a rational level the reasons he had for allowing me to misunderstand him or for appearing to fail me. He has also, in different ways and different times, given me satisfying answers to every question I have asked him, with the exception of one. (The exception is a question I asked him recently, and it has been partially answered but not completely.)
As I put into practice the things that God teaches me, I am coming to trust him as well as my knowledge of him. I see evidence that the things he has asked me to do which seemed ridiculous to me have results that are not ridiculous at all.
Finally, I may compare my understanding of God with all of my other hopes or imaginations. While all else that I dream up on my own claims that I am brilliant and under-appreciated, God alone reveals my foolishness, even to me, and attests to the destructiveness of my pride.
I cannot say much on a rational level about the knowledge I have on a spiritual level, but I will try to describe the results. When I am overwhelmed and weakened, there is a strength and a comfort within me that I am aware is not of me. This grows as I share experience with, and come to know God. I am also aware of a growing freedom from myself - from my own wants and wishes and feelings. My self does not dull nor grow less, but my freedom grows greater, and I have a heightened ability to will what I do not want or feel. I have increased joy in things despite the hurt or difficulty they bring me, as I come to know God.
What is the door through which we may know God? The Bible says that door is Jesus Christ. He is the beginning of knowing God as a person because he puts us in a position to approach God and to allow God's Spirit to enter us.
"I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved..." (John 10:9)
Then how is Jesus to be known?
Through exercise of the will. He calls himself the Truth. Thus all who honestly will to know the Truth will to know him.
You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. (Jeremiah 29:13)
Please don't assume that my meandering attempt here is the real answer to this question. The truth is, I am trying to share what is really a very individual experience. My sister, who shares my knowledge of God despite our vastly different personalities, priorities, and approaches to knowledge, would describe it differently. And yet the God we know is the very same person.
Slapdash's question:
**Can you define what you mean by “know” and describe what you think the door [to knowing God] is? (Slapdash)
I'm not sure that I can communicate this, but I will die in the attempt. By knowing, I mean being sure with sense, mind and spirit.
Of course, we may not truly know a person through the senses, but the evidence our senses are able to gather about a person must either match the other knowledge we have of that person, or the mind must be able to postulate a reason why the sensory evidence does not match.
In order for the mind to know, reason (in as much as we possess it) must be satisfied. I don't say that reason must understand fully, but certainly it must not be ignored; its questions must not be brushed away. If I know my sister, I don't necessarily understand all that she is, nor do I necessarily have a good grasp of the biochemical processes that function in her body and brain. Rather, my understanding of who she is and that she is, is accounted for by reason and does not oppose my logical powers.
The testimony of my senses attests to her existence as an individual. Though I have had greater sensory evidence of her existence than I have had of yours, Slapdash, reason allows for both of you.
But knowing that someone exists and understanding what kind of a person exists is not knowing a person. Knowing a person involves shared experience; feedback; an exchange of views and perspectives; ultimately, a changed understanding because my understanding has been acted upon by the force of another's. When my understanding alters on its own, the alteration is clean and complete. We like to illustrate this in our culture as a light turning on. While this kind of realization may, in a more complex way, happen in conversation with another person, it is usually through a rather more complicated process that I am "convinced" or brought to an understanding and/or espousal of another person's point of view.
I am rationally convinced that I know God based on two theoretical evidences which are convincing to me as an individual. The first is that he offers arguments and opens my understanding to other things that neither appeal to me nor appear in any way to be an extension or progression of my own views. The second is that I am coming to understand who he is and why. The fact that I know WHAT before I know WHY signifies non-progression and offers me evidence that this sort of knowledge is not my own imagination or wishful thinking.
These evidences have been reflected in experience for me by God's fulfillment of the promises he has made to me. There have been times when I haven't understood what he was doing. There have been times when I've believed he wasn't fulfilling his promises. In the end, he has fulfilled every one. In doing so, he has brought me to understand on a rational level the reasons he had for allowing me to misunderstand him or for appearing to fail me. He has also, in different ways and different times, given me satisfying answers to every question I have asked him, with the exception of one. (The exception is a question I asked him recently, and it has been partially answered but not completely.)
As I put into practice the things that God teaches me, I am coming to trust him as well as my knowledge of him. I see evidence that the things he has asked me to do which seemed ridiculous to me have results that are not ridiculous at all.
Finally, I may compare my understanding of God with all of my other hopes or imaginations. While all else that I dream up on my own claims that I am brilliant and under-appreciated, God alone reveals my foolishness, even to me, and attests to the destructiveness of my pride.
I cannot say much on a rational level about the knowledge I have on a spiritual level, but I will try to describe the results. When I am overwhelmed and weakened, there is a strength and a comfort within me that I am aware is not of me. This grows as I share experience with, and come to know God. I am also aware of a growing freedom from myself - from my own wants and wishes and feelings. My self does not dull nor grow less, but my freedom grows greater, and I have a heightened ability to will what I do not want or feel. I have increased joy in things despite the hurt or difficulty they bring me, as I come to know God.
What is the door through which we may know God? The Bible says that door is Jesus Christ. He is the beginning of knowing God as a person because he puts us in a position to approach God and to allow God's Spirit to enter us.
"I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved..." (John 10:9)
Then how is Jesus to be known?
Through exercise of the will. He calls himself the Truth. Thus all who honestly will to know the Truth will to know him.
You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. (Jeremiah 29:13)
Please don't assume that my meandering attempt here is the real answer to this question. The truth is, I am trying to share what is really a very individual experience. My sister, who shares my knowledge of God despite our vastly different personalities, priorities, and approaches to knowledge, would describe it differently. And yet the God we know is the very same person.
Wednesday, 8 August 2007
God in a Bottle
We 21st century urbanites harbour grave doubts about tap water, fruit picked from the roadside, and animals that come complete with toenails. We like our beverages in plastic bottles; apples with little stickers specifying their variety and lot number; and animals that have been appropriately groomed, leashed, and otherwise rendered harmless. We like things that have been well measured and counted and regulated; treated and stamped and packaged; filed and trimmed and sanitized. What lies beyond our control, or the control of the vast network of machines we have created to expand and maintain the reaches of our great domain, is plainly not to be trusted.
On top of all that, we want convenience. We no longer have to knead bread dough, or wait for it to rise. We just pop by the corner store on the way home. We figure we can pick up an understanding of world events with just as little effort from half an hour spent watching the 5 o'clock news.
And this is one of our main issues with God.
We'd be happy with a lap dog, one who'd sit when we said sit, and wag his tail nicely at passers-by. If only he'd do things as we want them done, we'd happily drop our tithes into the box on Sundays, and offer to bring potato salad to church functions. If only he'd offer digitally recorded, downloadable seminars in 15-minute segments covering the major aspects of his character, we'd see that our friends were well-informed. We'd even donate to help send the VHS versions to Africa and Indonesia. At the very least, he ought to be quite evident to someone who sits through an hour-long sermon every Sunday.
After all, how can we be expected to trust a God who won't perform miracles when we ask for them, refuses to submit himself to any sort of inspection, fails to mount a marketing campaign, and is liable to up and let us die of some painful disease in the end of it all, in spite of all our belief in him?
I've often heard, from someone admiring the exuberance and freedom of a child, the beauty of a sunset, or the joy of a couple deeply in love - "if only I could bottle that..."
We'd love to have God in a bottle - a personal genie who could prove us right and amaze our friends, heal our relatives, keep the neighbour's cat from digging in our garden; a well-behaved God who would always do what we think best; a friendly grandfather-type who'd be grateful for our forgiveness of his eccentricities and who'd do his best to keep difficulty from our door. We could give him an updated look when he lost brand appeal, and label him "new and improved"...
Some things can't be bottled.
On top of all that, we want convenience. We no longer have to knead bread dough, or wait for it to rise. We just pop by the corner store on the way home. We figure we can pick up an understanding of world events with just as little effort from half an hour spent watching the 5 o'clock news.
And this is one of our main issues with God.
We'd be happy with a lap dog, one who'd sit when we said sit, and wag his tail nicely at passers-by. If only he'd do things as we want them done, we'd happily drop our tithes into the box on Sundays, and offer to bring potato salad to church functions. If only he'd offer digitally recorded, downloadable seminars in 15-minute segments covering the major aspects of his character, we'd see that our friends were well-informed. We'd even donate to help send the VHS versions to Africa and Indonesia. At the very least, he ought to be quite evident to someone who sits through an hour-long sermon every Sunday.
After all, how can we be expected to trust a God who won't perform miracles when we ask for them, refuses to submit himself to any sort of inspection, fails to mount a marketing campaign, and is liable to up and let us die of some painful disease in the end of it all, in spite of all our belief in him?
I've often heard, from someone admiring the exuberance and freedom of a child, the beauty of a sunset, or the joy of a couple deeply in love - "if only I could bottle that..."
We'd love to have God in a bottle - a personal genie who could prove us right and amaze our friends, heal our relatives, keep the neighbour's cat from digging in our garden; a well-behaved God who would always do what we think best; a friendly grandfather-type who'd be grateful for our forgiveness of his eccentricities and who'd do his best to keep difficulty from our door. We could give him an updated look when he lost brand appeal, and label him "new and improved"...
Some things can't be bottled.
Monday, 16 July 2007
Search for the Invisible God
"...how faint the whisper we hear of him! Who then can understand the thunder of his power?" (Job 26:14)
If God really wanted to be found, why didn't he draw a better map? Why does he hide in clouds and parables? Why does he speak to us in his "still, small voice" when Isaiah and Job assure us he can "thunder", while Ezekiel and John describe the sound of his voice as "rushing waters"? Why doesn't he just lay it out all plainly? Do we have a hope of hearing his gentle whisper amid the cacaphony of an Information Society?
It is unfortunate htat our "fast food culture" extends its reach to ideas. Never has such an array of information been available to us. On the other hand, never has there been so much to sort through, to analyse before we come to a reasoned decision. A veritable buffet of data, complete with various perspectives and opinions, is open to us at any hour of the day. What can the postmodern citizen do except throw up her hands in despair and resort to the random or to personal whims? Even those of us who call ourselves "seekers" like our ideas pre-chewed and presented to us with bullets, via Powerpoint if possible. The possibilities are simply too overwhelming. In fact, one who says he "knows" anything must be considered a near fool, since it would be impossible to draw conclusions from more data than could ever be analysed.
We have an invisible God who refuses to conform to the parameters of any measurable data set, and on top of it all, speaks in a bare whisper. Are we to be blamed if we don't believe in him?
How does one recognize God? The Jewish people of Jesus' day puzzled over this question. They were waiting anxiously for a messiah who would deliver them from their oppressors. Instead, along came a carpenter from Nazareth (of all places!) who spent time with the wrong people; forgave a woman plainly caught breaking God's law; and spoke of God as his father.
'Then they asked him, "Where is your father?" "You do not know me or my Father," Jesus replied. "If you knew me, you would know my Father also." (John 8:19)
Those who looked for the messiah, basing what they looked for on what they knew of God, recognized his Son. Those who looked for the messiah as they hoped he would be were blinded by their expectations.
The disciples, too, were confused at Jesus' approach. "Why do you speak to the people in parables?" they asked.
Jesus explained that God's secrets are not heard by the ear nor known in the intellect alone.
For this people's heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them.' (Matthew 13:15)
The problem wasn't their ears or their eyes or their I.Q., it was their HEART. They were looking for the wrong things. They had become hard. They didn't long for what God was, therefore they couldn't appreciate it though Yahweh himself came and lived among them. Is this our problem?
Oh, I'm not advocating letting go of ears or intellect. God gave them both to be used. But be careful of what your heart longs for. It blinded the scribes, despite their education. It blinded the priests, despite their religious experience.
If you long to know God, you can't begin with a leap into what you don't know (even if you like to call it "faith").
Don't search for a supernatural being (for there are many such beings).
Search for what YOU know of Light, Love, Truth, wherever and however you have gained knowledge of those three. Surely those who looked for such things in Jesus' day recognized him when they saw him, while the scribes and studied theologians argued among themselves about whether or not it was lawful for Jesus to be healing on the Sabbath!
Please don't think I'm saying everyone who doesn't know God this second has a "heart problem" (we all have sin!). Sometimes God hides himself from us when we become too satisfied with too little of him. Sometimes he empties out our little store of "God moments", scattering them in the dust of doubt, in order to give us a deep and abiding experience of him.
Oh, give up on the "God" you have constructed in your mind! Call yourself an atheist or an agnostic if you must. But seek Love with your last blink, your last synapse, your last breath!
If God really wanted to be found, why didn't he draw a better map? Why does he hide in clouds and parables? Why does he speak to us in his "still, small voice" when Isaiah and Job assure us he can "thunder", while Ezekiel and John describe the sound of his voice as "rushing waters"? Why doesn't he just lay it out all plainly? Do we have a hope of hearing his gentle whisper amid the cacaphony of an Information Society?
It is unfortunate htat our "fast food culture" extends its reach to ideas. Never has such an array of information been available to us. On the other hand, never has there been so much to sort through, to analyse before we come to a reasoned decision. A veritable buffet of data, complete with various perspectives and opinions, is open to us at any hour of the day. What can the postmodern citizen do except throw up her hands in despair and resort to the random or to personal whims? Even those of us who call ourselves "seekers" like our ideas pre-chewed and presented to us with bullets, via Powerpoint if possible. The possibilities are simply too overwhelming. In fact, one who says he "knows" anything must be considered a near fool, since it would be impossible to draw conclusions from more data than could ever be analysed.
We have an invisible God who refuses to conform to the parameters of any measurable data set, and on top of it all, speaks in a bare whisper. Are we to be blamed if we don't believe in him?
How does one recognize God? The Jewish people of Jesus' day puzzled over this question. They were waiting anxiously for a messiah who would deliver them from their oppressors. Instead, along came a carpenter from Nazareth (of all places!) who spent time with the wrong people; forgave a woman plainly caught breaking God's law; and spoke of God as his father.
'Then they asked him, "Where is your father?" "You do not know me or my Father," Jesus replied. "If you knew me, you would know my Father also." (John 8:19)
Those who looked for the messiah, basing what they looked for on what they knew of God, recognized his Son. Those who looked for the messiah as they hoped he would be were blinded by their expectations.
The disciples, too, were confused at Jesus' approach. "Why do you speak to the people in parables?" they asked.
Jesus explained that God's secrets are not heard by the ear nor known in the intellect alone.
For this people's heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them.' (Matthew 13:15)
The problem wasn't their ears or their eyes or their I.Q., it was their HEART. They were looking for the wrong things. They had become hard. They didn't long for what God was, therefore they couldn't appreciate it though Yahweh himself came and lived among them. Is this our problem?
Oh, I'm not advocating letting go of ears or intellect. God gave them both to be used. But be careful of what your heart longs for. It blinded the scribes, despite their education. It blinded the priests, despite their religious experience.
If you long to know God, you can't begin with a leap into what you don't know (even if you like to call it "faith").
Don't search for a supernatural being (for there are many such beings).
Search for what YOU know of Light, Love, Truth, wherever and however you have gained knowledge of those three. Surely those who looked for such things in Jesus' day recognized him when they saw him, while the scribes and studied theologians argued among themselves about whether or not it was lawful for Jesus to be healing on the Sabbath!
Please don't think I'm saying everyone who doesn't know God this second has a "heart problem" (we all have sin!). Sometimes God hides himself from us when we become too satisfied with too little of him. Sometimes he empties out our little store of "God moments", scattering them in the dust of doubt, in order to give us a deep and abiding experience of him.
Oh, give up on the "God" you have constructed in your mind! Call yourself an atheist or an agnostic if you must. But seek Love with your last blink, your last synapse, your last breath!
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