If you’ve read any of my recent blogs you know that this season for me at New Wine is one of coming to terms with some “loose ends” in my soul. Just this past weekend a friend of mine, who happens to be a gifted therapist, offered me some help with one of those loose ends when he asked me a piercing question, “Chris, does Jesus understand your plight?” I’ll admit, I was caught a little off guard by the question. I didn’t see it coming and it certainly wasn’t on any of my mid-term exams.
Since my conversation with Guillermo I have taken that question to prayer two or three times now. Just yesterday I was feeling really pinned down, really discouraged and I eventually made it to “the closet” for some heavenly dialogue.
“Lord, do you understand my plight? I feel so pinned down by my own ‘wrongness’ and there is no where to go? I feel trapped!”
Just then I had this thought that I needed to press further with my question – I needed to press the point until I had expelled every last bit of bile and angst from my soul. I framed another question for God.
“Lord, are you the one behind this? Are you the one pinning me down?”
With each question I went deeper down into the chasm, the chasm which exposed the “badlands” of my soul but there was still yet one more question to be asked. One more question before I reached the bottom of the chasm . . .
“Lord, will you be my ‘wrongness’? Will you be my ‘rejection’?”
With that final question I knew that I had put it all on the altar and this was my “bottom line” with God. And though I didn’t see or hear heavenly “thunder and lightening”, there was an unmistakable sense that I was being heard. No sooner had I finished asking , “Lord, will you be my ‘wrongness’?” I immediately knew the answer to the question. I knew it like the Slumdog kid knew the answer to those first eight questions. The answer was so simple and yet so totally mind-blowing.
“That’s who I am for you.”
Until that moment in the closet, I knew that Jesus was the one who “takes away the sin of the world” but I did not appreciate how he does it – and how he does it for me. I have come to discover that Jesus doesn’t bear our burdens from a remote location as though he was operating some kind of ‘cosmic crane’. Jesus Christ does not deal with us in the abstract. Jesus deals with us personally and therefore, when he “takes away” our sin and our sorrow he does it by “taking it on” himself.
“Surely he has born our griefs and carried our sorrows.” Isa. 53:4
My desire in sharing this experience with you wasn’t to provide you with a “sweet devotional” but rather toopen a dialogue, “Who is Christ for us today?” Biblical scholarship is a gift to the community of faith but thankfully, you don’t need a theological degree to care about this topic or engage this thread (thank God!). You no more have to be a theologian to care about God than you need to be a botanist to enjoy flowers. So for you churched-unchurched-lapsed-devout-mystical-skeptical-biblical-W-loving-Obama adoring-politics-loathing-young-middle-age-seniors out there, jump in and extend the thread even if it’s just a short phrase.
dude i have come to understand God in a different way then the old pentencostal name and and claim it bull$*!#!!! I have come to understand a God of Mercy and Grace who understands us better then we understand ourslves or himslef. I luv socially active evangelicals that are not afriad to doubt, question or challenge the Evangelical Church on various issues.I like Derek Webb who in a song used the quote “Jesus Christ is not a while middle class republican” and that we are “WHORES!” in terms of how we prostitute the theology of God by reducing it to western amerian values
i have come to find the real jesus is the poor homeless and outcast of this nation. To assume for one minute that God is on the side of america at the expense of the outcast is not a biblcal concept. I find a tremedous freedom in that understanding
Wow. This is right where the cross intersects our existence here on earth. I have recently come to embrace a truth that is often overlooked or buried in Excuse this … Biblical ignorance. We are children of promise, the Abrahamic Promise. When Jesus ministered to the Samaritan woman whose daughter was demon possessed, she was willing to eat the crumbs from the Master’s table, she valued and understood what is there for the taking and anything from the Masters table is sufficient. For this He referred to her as a daughter of Abraham. Whoa time to take hold of what IS OURS! We ARE worthy to partake because He did carry the weight of all our failures and nailed them to the cross!
Love You – Lisa
I am glad you are coming back around brother!!! You almost sound like a christian again…
Eddie,
Good to hear from you. If what you’re saying is true, then I would be interested in knowing a couple of things: 1) What happened to your “faith” when you realized that you no longer wanted the serve the Jesus of “white middle class republicans”? 2) What does it mean to you personally that “Jesus is the poor homeless and outcast?”
hey Jeffrey aka Christopher…lol
I know Jesus gets me but sometimes i’m afraid i don’t get him. As a converted Calvinist Presbyterian, i understand that my part in the equation of, “Do i get Jesus?” when realized from a calvinst view, says that he is the one in charge… I kinda like it that way
as for my faith: i dont think anything happened to my faith expect that I found shallowness in pentecostalism and found that i was always trying to measue up to a standard that was imposed upon me. I found too much of what i heard linked to political idealogy rather than a demonstration of those truly following the mandate of Jesus. I believe we cannot find God in just one poltical party and to do so is to put God in a box and say this is the only way he functions.
in terms of the second part i have come from a middle class american family and without getting to the details, I am for various reasons and situations, no longer in that category. i now understand and identify with the plight of my brothers and sisters that Love Jesus just as much as the suburban middle class evangelical but are often outcasted from the community, anyway i have come to feel closer to God through the writing of Brennen Manning, Tony Campolo, a young evanglical living the inner city of Philadelphai name Shane Claiborne (think you would like him), Henri Nouwen,Richard Foster, Francis Schaeffer…
blessing, Ed
Hey Lis,
Yeah, that was me, begging at the Master’s table and what he offered was amazing. But the problem that I continue to have is that so much of the time the promises that I want are apparently not on “the meu.” I struggle so much with the feeling that God isn’t interested in the same things that I am and that’s the source of alot of pain for me. I’ve been asking for “more certainty” and I have been begging for “career path” for years but he doesn’t seem interested. He definitely has his own agenda. It may have someting to do with what Chappa-man wrote above.
Thanks for jumping in.
I think he is concerned with our plight but perhaps different then we believe or would like .
Chirst our “wrongness”… What an insight, Chris. You sure nail it on the head. I thank you for your honesty and willingness to share such a profound experience. I think more than just being a devotional moment it is a “real” moment. I think that many times we compartmentalize Christ’s existence and his prophetic bearing on our lives because of how we so often disassociate him from the world “outside” of the so called religious areas of our lives (e.g. Church, seminary, fellowship groups). Not only that, we even relegate Christ and his relevance to those “devotional/spiritual” moments in our lives and feel like the non-spiritual moments of our lives don’t matter to Him. Yes, I agree with you. Christ is not only the cosmic Christ but the one who is ever present and ever attentive.. He is the one who “taketh away our sins” and carries our burdens even when we are not aware.
I pray that I may be more aware and trusting of this Christ who is “my” Shepherd…
Joe
Joe,
One nail on the head deserves another. Joe, you definitely got me – you have expressed the essence of what I was trying to communicate. I’m persuaded that the radical nature of the incarnation “the Eternal One is born”, “the Holy One in the likeness of sinful flesh”, “the death of the Giver of life” is intended to heal us of our “bi-polar” condition. The bi-polar condition that I’m referring to is the way we long for “union with Christ” but we can’t seem to get out the front door of our Kantian mind (the mental aparatus of modern man which insists on being the “clearing-house” of reality).
As you said, we naturally disasosciate Christ from “the real” and “the actual” in our efforts to maintain our Kantian systems of “knowledge” – where the “knower” remains essentially unaffected by the “known one.” But isn’t Jesus Christ the one who bridges or “heals” these impossible dichotomies we have created: the “secular and sacred”, “spiritual and physical” and the “transendent and immanent?” And isn’t this “modern mind” something that has it’s origins in our reprobate condition as those who have chosen the “tree of knowledge of good and evil” over the “tree of life”?
Will someone please attempt to demonstrate what we are beginning to suspect, that this “knowledge”, which has created our endless series of dichotomies, continues to keep us alien from “Life?” Will someone please show how Jesus Christ frees us from the Matrix-like nightmare where we are literally being “thunked” by our Cartesian minds – “the thinking things.” Is there no repentance in the church and the academy? Can Jesus Christ save us from the abstract and the impersonal? Who is Christ for us today? I think you’ll agree, there is still much work to do in recovering this dimension of the gospel. Thanks for weighing in.
Hey Chris Ol’ buddy,
Welcome to the po-mo world! Rationality and reason have been debunked by the post-modern world where things do not simply have to “make sense” but to also to demonstrate “sense experience”. There has to be an actualization of the experience beyond reason.
I think when Jesus Christ hang on that cross one fateful Friday afternoon, He did not simply do so to pay for our sins, as the only acceptable atoning sacrifice, but to let us know in vivid and graphic suffering things, “What else will you have and go through that I will not and cannot identify with?” When Paul wrote of Christ as the first-born among many brothers in whose image we are conformed, I see both the Victim and the Victor, the Suffering Servant (Isa 53) and the Supernal Savior (Col. 2:15)… and the personal implications of this for me in the here-and-now, in the already-not yet, in my own personal realities of “my-flesh-and-my-heart-faileth” (Ps. 73:26) are tremendous.
You mean to say that this God in whom the universe was created and through whom all things consists feels my bruised knees and scraped elbows when i come runnng and fall down? that He feels the pain I feel when friends reject me because i can never be their equal?…You mean He feels with me and for me the shame when i keep doing things I am supposed to do and neglect to do things I am supposed to? Or the simpler thing of, “I could not get a girl to the HS prom because i am too bloody ugly”? You mean, He is alongside me as i feel the guilt- and the tiredness- of not being able to measure up to what is expected of me at home, in school, at work and among my peers and parishioners in the ministry?
Well, i guess you’re right on… it will need more than mere rational thought, more than mere reason, more than theological platitudes and nice-sounding rhetoric for me to understand why this Father would give His only Son to model for me the “slings and arrows” of identifying with His kingdom and His righteousness. I wanna feel and experience that- beyond intellectual assent and all the yada-yada-yada blah-bla-blah of this toilsome, gruesome world, alas! Paul said that, “I wanna know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in His suffering.”
Aye, there’s the rub… in my sufferings, I will know Him more.
I guess, He is not simply bringing it on home, He is bringing me home with Him as we travel where “the Son of Man does not have a stone to lay His head on.”
Maybe it is time to restate Descartes’ Cogito ergo sum ( I think, therefore, I am) to “I feel Him, therefore I am.”
Bro Chris, “the journey” continues to challenge those of us who want to organize, categorize, compartmentalize, and yes even theologize everything we encounter in our lives- the good and bad, the social, political, and spiritual. I would like a clean answer to the challenges I am facing so I can file it in my brain in its proper category.
For instance, “I am going through this stuff because God is teaching me humility and preparing me for something more.” Now this sounds like a satisfactory answer I can live with. While there may be truth to some of it, the reality is that we cannot, as Eddie so astutely pointed out, put God in a box. How about, “I’m going through this stuff because I made some poor decisions and I am living with the consequences.” That could be true too. I have given up on trying to figure it all out.
Sometimes my over-analysis gets me depressed and I wonder if God is really even working in me, that He has left me hanging here while He is doing wonderful works in others around me who are more aptly qualified. But alas, my theology tells me different, and I am truly thankful for it. Truth is like a beacon of light, a lighthouse if you will, to keep us from crashing our flimsy boats into a mass of our own ideas and analysis of where we are headed.
What you said in your blog was encouraging…“Surely he has born our griefs and carried our sorrows.” Isa. 53:4. It is a reminder to me that I don’t really understand the depth of what Christ did for me. God doesn’t just deal on the “macro” level, but he deals with us on the “micro” level, actually bearing our sins, sorrows and griefs. As always Chris…Thanks for your insight and sharing your life.
Now where can I log this in my brain?
My Dear Chris…Yes, yes… I get it. I spent so long thinking he was somewhere “out there” in a remote location…or residing in some fancy building, well guarded and protected by men and organized entities that I must go through to even be considered as a qualified candidate. And that He was waiting and watching to see if I measured up. My own inner voice thought there’s no way that I am worthy. “If this God guy is so merciful and loving then why am I being punished? Why is it that I was thrown into a pit of pain and suffering from day one? Wrongness is apparently who I am. And it is hopeless”
During my 53 years, as you know, I discovered it is life itself that contains the wrongness, along with the rightness and that He meets me between the two, or I should say, outside of the confines of our logical thought processes, even outside of my human emotions. I’ve been blessed with the gift of a mere glimpse of the crucifixion where all that was left of me seemed reduced to just taking the next breath. Everything I thought I was, felt I was, feared I was, disintegrated. It was here that I discovered I was that which willed my body to take that next breath and that it was here that He met me on my cross in fullness and emptiness. Sometimes I forget to remember…to call to mind…to revisit that which I know… It seems that without experiencing the darkest of dark, we aren’t capable of of even recognizing the brightest Light!
Thank you Dearest Chris…I celebrate your raw honesty and cherish the reminder that Christ is alive and well in you and me and outside you and me along with the rest of the whole fam damily.
Bob and Shirley,
This has been one of the hardest “confessions” to date but it has also been one of the most rewarding because of friends like you and your invaluable partnership on this journey.
Bob, you and I are clearly sailing in the same “flimsy boat” but what you said about Truth keeping us from “crashing . . . into a mass of our own ideas and analysis” is as brilliant as it is poetic – I think you may have underscored a critical issue. If “truth” was simply “right information” I don’t think we still be in this boat. After all we’re pretty smart guys and our wives and friends are no dummies. So why are we still in this boat?
As Shirley rightly points out, Jesus Christ is apparently not playing by our “rules.” Jesus prefers to meet us in the tension between what we call “right and wrong” and beyond our categories of “good and evil.” He meets us in the “messy middle” of our lives in order to rescues us from these categories – categories that we assumed he was the author of. He does this because he know something we don’t. He knows that our categories and our “lenses” for interpreting truth are really just “flimsy boats” and he doesn’t want to see us shipwreck our lives on the rocks of judgment and condemnation. The “rocks” that threaten to destroy our “boats” are the judgments: I called it “wrongness”, Shirley called it “I am not worthy” and you described your struggle trying to make sense of things but finding no easy answers; nothing you could “file . . .in your brain.”
Do you remember the movie, A Beautiful Mind? The main character was a brilliant mathmetician who was suffering from schizophrenia. He was eventually hospitalized and he appealed to his wife and doctor saying, “Give me time. This a problem but that’s what I do – I solve problems.” The doctor replied, “John, you can’t ‘solve’ this problem because the problem IS your mind.”
I suspect that this may be the latest frontier of our salvation story. Jesus Christ is once again saving us from ourselves that is from our “flimsy boats” that we have been sailing in all these years. As you said, “‘the journey’ continues to challenge those of us who want to organize, categorize, compartmentalize, and yes even theologize everything we encounter in our lives . . .I would like a clean answer to the challenges I am facing so I can file it in my brain in its proper category.”
My point is that Jesus Christ does not appear to be willing to save us the way that we would like. He may no longer give us “answers” that fits in our familiar the old familiar categories of our brains. When we were in our twenties and our thirties we thought these boats were sea worthy and they were but for that matter, the Titanic was an amazing vessel until it was reduced to “flimsy boat.” We must consider the real possibility that the problem IS our categories, systems, even our “brains” and that Jesus Christ isn’t interested in saving these “boats.” Is he calling us to abandon our “flimsy boats” and step out onto the raging sea with Him? Jesus wouldn’t do that would he?
Bravo!
Wonderful thoughts you all!! I commend you all for such insightful sharings. I am blessed just by reading all of these posts and seeing my own story within this ongoing narrative of the “flimsy boats”.
The reality of Christ is more than our minds can imagine. The fact of his ability to transcend all the “categories” and limits of our “boxes”; all the compartmentalizing, theologizing, rationalizing, or whatever’izing; the fact that his is present even when I doubt my own presence; the fact that he saves us even in ways beyond the limits of “our brains” and the depths of our struggles (external or internal); the fact that he is the “Redeemer” who lives even when life is reduced to nothingness; the fact that he remains the unchanged one who brings stability into our emotional and spiritual schizophrenia; the fact that he, who is both life and resurreciton, would weep for Lazarus in the face of death; the fact that he is awake in the midst of my most terrifying nightmares; the fact that he is the Truth when all my life seems to be a lie; the fact that he chose death for ‘the dying’ when he himself was Life; the fact that he became that which is mine… “Sin” … to save me from it all….. is such an incomprehensible reality…
That reality brings me to my knees before the altar of “dying to self.” It beckons me to the table of communion so that I may partake of the reality of his sacrificial love. It takes me once again to bring this “flimsy boat” of mine to the cross of calvary where I can but hold the hand of the one who walketh on the water.
No doubt that Jesus isn’t playing by our rules as you said Chris, that is something worth remembering.
Ronoldo & Joe,
I just re-read both of your comments and all I can say is Hallelujah! You guys captured and expressed the beauty of our message in digital surround sound and IMAX 3D! I am truly blessed to have found brothers like yourselves here at Multnomah – brothers who are willing to risk it all, even risking at the cost of becoming the objects of scorn of those who are suspiscious of terms like wholistic gospel, cultural engagement, and theology of affections.
The two of you, more than anyone I know here, have been bit and infected by this trinitarian outline for reality and it would seem that you are ruined for the “flimsy boats” of mere religion. As the two of you have beautifully expressed above, you have chosen to risk it all, opting to leave “flimsy boats” and “taking the hand of him that walketh on water”, repenting of a life that is based on the Cartesian-reality of the “thinking thing”, opting instead to let Him and not merely your ideas of him, be the Author and Finisher of your reality, your faith, your identity!
So good to know the two of you!
C
Hello Chris Dear ol’ brother,
As i was re-reading your blog, and thanks for the reply, i was reminded by a MU alumnus who just wrote an article this week about mid-life crashes and collisions in the heart. He continued your dialogue with Jesus, i guess…
Where you left off, “surely He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows…” (Isaiah 53:4, ), the writer added, “…and with His stripes we are healed.” Isaiah 53:5.
Jesus did not come to me to tell me, ‘Physician, heal thy self.” Or, “Disciple, lick your wounds and restore yourself.” Or, “Christian, make yourself whole and move on.”
I feel Jesus said, and is saying to me, right here, right now.”Doubter (Thomas), put your finger here, see my hands. Reach out your hands and put it into my side.”
By His wounds we are made whole.
And by His stripes, we are healed.
Beyond the despising at the Cross, far beyond every bite and morsel of angst and anguish, of bitter gall and bile, my own personal Jesus, the Balm of Gilead, shows me the stripes with which I was, and am being, healed.
Ergo, Jesus gets me.
And then some. Jesus takes my weary, unwilling, too-proud-to-beg hands with the hands that were pierced for my transgressions…
i have reached the point of confusion i know there is a God because undoubtly we see him in everything around us, often that understanding becomes intellectualized and not realized. I have understood him in the suffering ot opppressed people and the disinfranchised. I am coming to understand God in a less then black and white theology and more of a greyness. Yes he is the God of the Universe but i think we try and make God into whatever image we define as a way to appease oursleves. I Love Dialogue and discussion on theology and we need to be open to various points of view, and come to value human beings that are created in his image. I feel often close to God while feeling distance and alone… a dichotomy for sure.
Shalom.. Y’all
Hey Eddie,
As for how “we try and make God into whatever image we define as a way to appease oursleves”, I think you raise a very important point. Wouldn’t you agree that ultmately there is only one “image” of God that matters?
“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.” Col 1:15
I certainly don’t offer this as, “Here’s a biblical answer – end of discussion” but rather, as an extension of your concern for an image that isn’t a product of our personal preference. I think it’s interesting that as Christians, we see Jesus as the “central figure” of our faith but this often doesn’t lead to a deeper discovery of his person. Sadly, much of our theology relegates Jesus to the role of “God’s Heavenly Tool” for fixing us. Where is the real person in that?
But if He’s more than a “Tool”, then what or who is he? I submitt that he may be as Paul likes to say, the Great “in whom One”, which for us would mean that this very dialogue is more than the mere exchanging of thoughts and ideas between fellow bloggers. The doctrine of the “In Whom One” tells us that it’s only because He is actually personally present right now at this very moment that you and I are able to even ask these questions – “Who are you?” “What is your true image?”
In other words this conversation is not happening in a spiritual vacuum; for it’s not our “beliefs” or any of our religious “opinions” that ultimately makes the difference (though they are necessary for us to work through), but Christ Himself. So the questions that we ask, we ask together, “Who are you Christ? Who are you for us today?” This I believe is the begining of repentance and the entry-point of all Christian reflection.
Thanks again Ed for extending a great thread!
Brother Chris,
Thank you for your words. I feel the same way for you guys too. I hope we can continue together in this wonderful opportunity we have of learning and growing in the knowledge of Christ through diligently studying the scriptures and being led by his spirit.
Once again, you aptly extend this discussion to interesting depths. You wisely point us to that great truth that Christ is the “in whom One”. Yes. You are absolutley right. Not that we know him or define him within our limited classifications and categories of reality, but that we are known by him and, if I can use such a term, he is the “ultimate predicate” of all reality. He predicates all things, all persons, all conceptions, and even of all experiences of “the spiritual” within his sovereign being. His reality defines our reality… and all of existence is contingent upon his existence. We do not “hold” knowledge of him in us, but we are held by his knowledge. Wow.. He really is present and Immanuel…”with us”, even as we speak of him in our insufficient ways.
It is awesome!! I am without words just to think of this all knowing, all present, Truth… the Pre-existent Logos, the cosmic Christ who is Lord of all of reality!! And to think of such a truth against the backdrop of what brother Ronald has said about him, he heals us with his stripes!! Who are you Jesus?? How could you?? You confound the wisdom of man with your “foolishness” and your “weakness” is greater than the strength of man (I Cor 1:25). Yet… as we grow and mature in the knowledge of Christ….the more we know ourselves. Praise Christ forever!!
Chris and Ronaldo, you really have a way of leading us with wise insight.
In Christ,
Joe
Hello Bro. Joe,
Such very profound musings on the Christ who gets me, “truly gets me”. And yes, the whole irony is that i, we, don’t even begin to understand the pathos and the passion of this fully human yet fully divine, Son of Man and God the Son.
I have this nagging suspicion that those who “enter into Aslan’s wardrobe” find and will find Him not a safe lion but a good one, May we, as He invites us all, one and all, to be part of the meta narrative with the mosaic of our painful lives at times, enjoyable moments at others, our pained and anguished existences and turbulent lives, fellowship with Him in His fasting and feasting, in the passion and the blood…
He gets me…by just being Himself beside me, with me, alongside me, in me and for me…
How then can i not be captivated, intoxicated, mystified by His all-consuming Love?
O Rose of Sharon, O Bright and Morning Star,O Fairest of Ten Thousand
Thank you for your love and affections…I desire you, as one so beautiful your face is all i seek…
Here i stand, i can do no other.
The (Ex)Marxist Monk
I have come to find that I have to live through my pain gradually and thus deprive it of its power over me. Yes,, we must go into the place of our pain, but only when we have gained new ground, and we will enter pain simply to experience the fullness of God in the pain and the rawness of it only to see the grace of God extended in and though it.
I come to experience so much of the fullness of God mercy through the incarnation of God and less through the efforts of my brokenness, which can never reach the fullness of the Incarnation, that organic mystery that occurred which created the avenue for my wrongness to intersect with the divine… merry Christmas to all as we, during this advent season ,await that organic mystery that occurred which we anticipate and actualize at Christmas
Eddy, Beautifully put, “my wrongness intersect(ing) with the divine” As you rightly noted, The Incarnation is the miracle of the human and divine “intersection.” But like you, for so many years I fed off a steady diet of Christian “formula”, and I never saw the “scandal” of it all – not just the scandal of the Cross but of the Incarnation. God sent his “own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh.” (Rom.8:3)!
As D. Bonhoeffer points out, this is the real scandal – not the “birth of a baby” but our holy God, in the “likeness of sinful flesh.” Wow, do we really want a God who would be so messy and careless with his own reputation? What good is a weak God to us anyway? These are the questions that are in the cue for us these days.
Eddie, I really appreciate this dialog look forward to extending it in the days ahead.
Merry Incarnation!
C
I have come to a point of what Richard Foster, the Quaker Theologian calls “the place of the forsaken”. We all came to the place where as I stated before “ the incarnation intersects with my wrongness ( or brokenness)”. The Place of the God who is hidden, we have all been, I think to the place where we have tried to pray and felt nothing, saw nothing, sensed nothing. We do everything we are told is right and feel God is hidden from us.. We feel what Henri Nouwen calls “the absence of God”. While I don’t believe this to be a true absence but rather a sense of absence, We know theologically, that God is always with us. But those theological niceties are of little help to us when we enter into the Sahara of the heart, the abandonment of God, the absence of his presence. During this time we question, we struggle, we doubt. We feel the brokenness.
The biblical metaphor of forsakenness is the desert experience. It is a image, for we do indeed feel, dry, barren, parched. In the words of the psalmist we cry out “ I call you all day, My God, but you never answer” ( Ps 22;2) and we began to wonder if there is a God to answer or have we reach the point of no return, he deafness himself to our brokenness.
Christian down through the ages have come to experience this same feeling. St. John of the Cross named it “the dark night of the soul”. But I think that to be faced with this does not mean God is displeased or that we are insensitive to the work of the Holy Spirit , or that we committed a grievous offense. Darkness can lead to understanding God better and we should embrace and take ownership of it. Each of us experiences this abandonment in our faith journeys in different and ways. Our sense of God’s absence does not come to us in any preset timetable; we cannot all map out the same journey. Through the journey of the forsaken we are learning to give to God the same freedom to met us on the path. The road and the relationship with God cannot be forced or contrived but rather must flow as we understand our brokenness and understand his Grace in the process’
I think we where trained to expect God to appear magically at our beck and call but in doing so we are not allowing ourselves to intersect with the incarnation and commune with the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. We try to make God an idol that fits our perception. But God is as Henri Nouwen states “the great iconoclast’ and is constantly breaking down our false images of who we assume he is. I can see how our very sense of his absence can lead to us to an unsuspected infusion of Grace. In the very act of hiddenness God is slowly weaning us of fashioning him in whatever image we presupposed of him. Like Aslan, The Christ figure in “The Chronicles of Narnia”, God is wild and free and comes to us at will. But he refuses to allow us to make him a idol by making him a genie in a bottle and in doing so liberates us from our false idolatrous image.
Often that place of forsakenness is birthed out of a situation where we cry out and felt that nothingness that numb feeling that maybe we are alone. But the crying out leads us to abandon ourselves and come to understand his Grace that lead to the place of restoration and redemption. As St John of the Cross stated this “purification” occur to him in that “dark night of the soul” . I have encountered that feeling. But I believe it lead to a stripping of my dependence upon exterior results, as I become less in control of my destiny and more at the mercy of God and others. If come to understand the falsity in believing the idea that as Christian we assumed all is good and reduce all to a experience rather then understand of the transcendent nature of the incarnation and how we insect with it.
I suppose I have said enough on this topic to the point of redundancy.
Eddie, Thanks for taking us into your “dark night.” I know this to be a very painful and confusing place. I do rejoice in your discovery of “God the great iconoclast” – what book is that from? God is smasing our old images of himself and offering us an image of God that I’m not sure we’re ready for, the “image of the suffering and forsaken God.” For those who suffer God is closer than we ever imagined, for he joins us in the darkness of the Cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
i suppose of info..just have come to embrace thinks and feel the sharing of experiential freeing The freedom is liberating, and grace filled yet after 2o so years of walking with Lord this last few have been a period of growth, sorry i exposed it to your blog maybe somebody felt the same path…