Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! [Luke 13:34 (NRSV).]
Christians are mocked for "feeling guilty about being human." Thanks for that. I am human. And I am guilty.
Some things about me shame me. Some are things I do or have done; some are things I don’t do or haven’t done. I'm unhappy with some of my thoughts. Sometimes I find an attitude that I don’t know about until something happens that makes it rise to my awareness. It’s like kicking over a rock and finding a creepy, scaley thing.
Not that I want to play King of the Hill, grappling with all challengers to be Most Lowly. I know there's good in me. But this essay focusses on the blessing of knowing the other parts. Since mine is the only life I've lived, I use own my life for illustration.
Shame isn't popular, nor guilt. But if a thrifty hunter uses all parts of a deer, why should heaven waste any part of our common human experience?
2. Faith Jenga.
Faith is a game of Jenga. That’s the game with a small tower of stacked blocks of wood. The object is not to be the last one to pull out a piece of wood before the tower collapses. Stay with me. I’ll tie this in.
Some Christians won’t pull out a single block. Every part of the Bible, and every story in it, is historic and accurate in all its parts. Fine.
Other Christians pull out so many blocks that it’s a marvel that their faith-tower stands at all. OK.
I’m somewhere in between. But when the Bible says that God rewards those who seek him, I believe that. That's part of my Jenga faith-tower.
3. Gaining the image of God.
Maybe it’s a cliché to say that God is not found on a mountain top, but in our hearts. So seeking God is the journey to grow into the image of God.
In a way, it’s like a pilot overhearing nuances in the conversation of another pilot and knowing from those signs of shared knowledge that they share an occupation. Those signs might go over the heads of people who don't fly. Likewise, as we grow into the likeness of Christ, we recognize Jesus, and he recognizes us.
Not that we become perfect in this world. And not that we can advance without God’s grace. That’s true of believer and non-believer alike.
And not that gaining God’s image is all internal and detached from what we do. It isn’t. What we do, how we treat people, how we serve them, is the essence of godliness.
But part of becoming more perfect is wanting to. And that’s where I began this essay, looking inside and feeling shame. I read an online newspaper, and I had a negative reaction to a person I read about because of his high merit and his race. My reaction shamed me. I feel shame as I write this. I did not know that that was in me, but God did. Now I know, and I can start to purge it, with God’s help, with all possible speed.
Humility has value.
4. Rebellion.
The point is, I suppose, that God blesses us by showing us what he sees but we don’t. He gives us eyes to look inward.
Not long ago, I wrote an essay (Sowing with Tears) in which I associated youthful disobedience to God with the collapse of my life. To use the Jenga metaphor in a different way, I pulled out too many elements of faithfulness, and the tower came down.
That’s a plausible explanation but maybe not the right one, and certainly not the only one.
5. No catastrophe wasted.
It may be that God gave me directions, not because he expected me to do what he said or seemed to say, but so as not to waste the catastrophe that I was headed into. I had an unrealistically high opinion of myself (weirdly fused with fear and un-confidence). If I had not refused to do what I thought I should do, I would not have realized that I was like Jerusalem in the quotation at the beginning of this piece. God wanted to protect me from what he knew was coming. My arrogance kept me from getting under his wing. I did not board the ark as the clouds gathered.
My un-rightness was known to God. God, in his mercy, made it known to me. But it took everything going to hell for me to realize it.
After everything went to hell, for years I lived with the belief that salvation was lost to me. My prior unconscious sense that heaven was inevitable was stripped away like a grizzly strips bark from a tree. My pre-catastrophe confidence in the inevitability of heaven defied much of scripture. Now, I do not bet against the mercy of God, but I do not take it for granted, I hope. And I think that puts me in a better place than I was before.
6. Yes, but.
But scripture supports a possibility apart from my life's collapse as the discipline of the Lord or a teachable moment. That's the possibility expressed by the book of Job, Psalm 44, and John 9:1-7 (esp., “'Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, 'Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.'" (NRSV).)
Sometimes, stuff just happens.
As to my history, I think the truth lies in the first two possibilities. There was a supernatural part to the collapse of my life. Much of my interpretation of the experience came from that part of it. In the years afterward, I've tried to put those parts into piles labeled "From God", "From Evil", and "From Illness". My understanding is imperfect. The sorting continues.
Maybe as time goes by the sorting becomes less important, and I'm left with the blessing of humility in greater measure than I had before. I'm left with a gladness for the belated restoration of hope. Both of those are, to me, a kind of rebirth.
7. Prayer (Psalm 139:1-6 (NRSV).)
O Lord, you have searched me and known me.
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from far away.
You search out my path and my lying down,
and are acquainted with all my ways.
Even before a word is on my tongue,
O Lord, you know it completely.
You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is so high that I cannot attain it.
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