Tag Archives: discouragement

A Familiar Edifice Amidst the Rubble

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From a normally comfortable, relatively safe, anesthetized life in middle or upper class America, I think the cross frequently strikes us as odd or even bizarre–at best, an incredibly dramatic demonstration of God’s love and self-sacrifice (perhaps a little over the top); at worst, a grotesque and unnecessary death that sets a role model for us to follow in nonviolent resistance and fidelity to faith. In the West, we don’t like to think about a God of wrath, a God of justice. We prefer a God of forgiveness, but we don’t really stop to think what He’s forgiving us from. God’s forgiveness couldn’t actually require that–could it? Surely, God can forgive freely without a penalty for sin and the cross was purely a result of men’s decision, not also a meting out of divine judgment. How could God do that to His only Son? How could God be that angry? From my, marshmallow soft corner of the world, things seem to run fairly smoothly most of the time. We’re all basically good people, right? We don’t really harbor evil in our hearts. We just make mistakes, have off days, crack under pressure, etc., etc. It is easy to forget how evil sin is, how deep it goes, how destructive it is. Until weeks like this, that is.

When you cannot turn on the television or the computer or the radio without being gut-smacked with staggering statistics of inequity, violence, and prejudice experienced by African American communities throughout your nation; with footage of innocent police officers being shot down in the street while protecting those drawing attention to these inequities; with mass murders all over the world via terrorist attacks with suicide vests and large vehicles plowing into crowds; of entire countries being wiped out by civil war and thousands upon thousands of refugees whose homes have been literally decimated fleeing for safety with nowhere to go … suddenly it becomes a lot harder to downplay the gravity or the size of the problem, or to reduce sin to “mistakes” or the blatant evil in humanity to just an off day or result of societal pressures. When it becomes impossible to run away or avert your eyes from the true nature of the problem, the simple solutions don’t seem that simple anymore.”Free” forgiveness doesn’t seem so free when you’re confronted with the cost of what’s been done to the victims. There must be some sort of justice, some sort of judgment, some sort of atonement. But, that seems to lead to some scary places.

I remember reading a passage from The Reason for God in which Tim Keller quotes a scholar from Croatia who lived through horrific violence in the Balkans and wrote that the ability to refrain from retaliation is only possible if you believe that there is a just God who will execute judgment for sin. He writes, “If God were not angry at injustice and deception and did not make a final end to violence–that God would not be worthy of worship….My thesis is that the practice of nonviolence requires a belief in divine vengeance will be unpopular with many…in the West…it takes the quiet of a suburban home for the birth of the thesis that human nonviolence [can result from a belief in] God’s refusal to judge. In a sun-scorched land, soaked in the blood of the innocent, it will invariably die…” (qtd. on p.76-77). We need a God of justice, a God who will judge, who will execute judgment for the horrific atrocities committed. And I do believe in a final judgment, but that still leaves me with two dilemmas: 1. If I am completely honest with myself, way down deep under my marshmallow facade, I can find evil lurking in my own heart and I know that I cannot expect judgment for others without also incurring it myself, and 2. While it is comforting to know that God will eventually punish all sin and execute judgment, it does not always seem that we can see Him acting immediately in the here and now, today. Does God see what is happening now? In this place? How do we try to move forward while waiting for final judgment to come?

I find myself scanning the horizon for any sign of hope. As I survey the devastation, I find a familiar edifice standing amidst the rubble: the cross. It does not seem so out of place or extreme or bizarre now, amidst this landscape of bloodshed and violence and oppression. In fact, it seems strangely relevant and accessible–even to my suburban, Western sensibilities. And I find that while I do not know what God is doing at this exact moment in any particular situation in my country or in the world, the cross is a permanent, prominent, undeniable answer that He is here; He is involved; He is active.

Today I am thankful for the cross: the proof that God is neither ignorant of nor indifferent or immune to the suffering and injustice in the world, wrought by the evil in men’s hearts. Today I am thankful for the resurrection: the proof that God is also not impotent in the face of such evil, and that even in the face of such evil and devastation, His justice and wrath are tempered with a desire for a solution better than mere annihilation of the human race. And I am thankful that because of the cross and the resurrection, there is hope for us.

Thank You, Father, for being a God who is BOTH just and merciful. Thank You for being a God of wrath and justice–that we can rest in Your justice and leave vengeance in Your hands when evil goes unpunished in the immediate by our society or our government. Thank you for Your justice that enables us to let go of the dual burdens of needing to exact revenge ourselves or of being crushed by despair over there being seemingly no accountability for evil in the world. Thank You for being a God of mercy and love–that we can face the horrors of the atrocities committed by our own society, our own race, and even our own hearts without the need to justify, deny, hide, or excuse them because You already know them all and have made forgiveness possible through the sacrifice of Your Son on the cross. Thank You for sending Him to us, and for accepting His sacrifice on our behalf and raising Him from the dead.

Thank You, Jesus, for absorbing the guilt and penalty of our evil and God’s just wrath upon the cross,  and for living a perfect life that fulfilled the law we had broken. Thank You for taking on human flesh and literally becoming one with us while we were Your enemies, even though You knew we would reject You and kill You–simultaneously creating both the ultimate climax of our sinfulness and the fulfillment of God’s wrath in response. Thank You for exchanging Your perfect righteousness with our perfect rebellion. Thank You for relieving us of the impossible burdens of the need to be above reproach and of being crushed by our guilt. Thank You for giving us the freedom to confess our sins without fear of condemnation and to repent, and for allowing us to hide ourselves in You and clothe ourselves with Your righteousness. Thank You for interceding continually with the Father for those of us who do.

Thank You, Spirit, for continuing to do the miraculous works of resurrection and new creation in our hearts–granting us the gifts of repentance and faith, turning enemies into brothers and allies, replacing fear and resentment with love and forgiveness, teaching us to place our wrath on the cross as well. Thank You for giving us something better than fair condemnation, vindication, etc.: thank You for giving us new life, healing, wholeness; for taking our enemies and our conflicts and giving us brothers and reconciliation instead.

Thank You for the ways I have seen You do this in my own life, and in my own community. Please, God, do this for my region, for my country, for my world. Please bring repentance, healing, forgiveness, and unity to all of us. Let us meet as equals at the foot of the cross and rise again as one body unified in Christ; let us outdo one another in confession and repentance and forgiveness. Give us the cross, Jesus. Give us Yourself.

Amen.

A Lesson in Futility

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Five years ago, I began a journey towards becoming a counselor, which is still a work in progress. On that journey, God has provided many opportunities both professionally and personally to enter into relationships with people who are focused on their immediate desires or pleasure and convinced that their futures will be fine. It never ceases to amaze me how people surrounded by concrete examples of the end result of similar choices to their own can be thoroughly convinced that they themselves are the exception to the rule. Every narrow miss serves not as a dose of reality and a chance to change course but instead as another slipshod evidence that they are invincible–no amount of reason, or logic, or moral appeal can convince them otherwise. It is infuriating.

These are exactly the kind of people that I spent most of my life avoiding, trying not to get close enough to need to know them, or love them. Why? Because I thought it would hurt…a lot. As it turns out, it does. Ironically, these are exactly the sort of people one winds up spending a lot of time getting involved with as a counselor. Well, I suppose that is not ironic in itself. What is ironic is that I somehow did not realize this when I began to pursue counseling. When I first felt the Holy Spirit tugging on my heart toward certain acquaintances, I resisted. Fervently. “Pursue that person,” He would whisper to my heart. “I’ll smile, and be nice, and make friendly small talk. That’s good enough,” my heart would say. “Love that person,” He would say. “I’m listening to their problems and not making any judgmental comments. I’m giving them little trinkets and cheering up their day. Isn’t that good enough?” my heart would answer. “Is that how I love you?” He finally asked. Hmm.

And so began the struggle. God keeps putting broken people in my life to love, and I keep trying to love them. At first, I tried confronting their self-destructive choices. Then, I tried ignoring their choices and just listening to their struggles. Then, I tried sharing my own struggles and choices as some sort of inspirational role model. At some point, I gave up on strategy and just started having honest conversations with people, letting the Holy Spirit lead–sometimes taking the lead myself, and then having to enlist His help to fix the resulting mess. What are the results? Well, I have had more conversations about the gospel in the past several years than probably the rest of my life combined–especially with unbelievers. I have become truly amazed about how God loved me as an unrepentant sinner, and how He continues to love me as His child who still chooses to sin. I had little appreciation for how hard that is, or how much it costs before I started trying to do it myself–and, obviously, it costs me not even a fraction of what it cost Him. My heart’s capacity for love and forgiveness and humility has grown, and shrunk up when wounded, and then expanded again. But you know what? So far, not one, single person from this journey has changed his or her path. Honestly. I mean, I have put in tears, and prayers, and hugs, and hours upon hours of listening, and money and time, and…all sorts of stuff, and they still haven’t changed! What’s more, most of them haven’t even kept in touch. They say all these things about what a great friend or counselor I am, etc., etc., and then they just wander out of my life.

“Seriously, God?!” I have demanded on more than one occasion. “What the heck was the point of all that? I have been carrying this person on my heart and mind, bench pressing them on a daily basis, for months. And–nothing? Seriously?! I thought I was supposed to model Your love to them. I thought I was supposed to be a living testimony of the gospel. I thought You put them on my heart because You wanted to save them. I thought You wanted to use me to save them.” Okay, at some point in the process with each relationship, I get a little mixed up and think that I am the one whose love has the power to change their hearts and heal their brokenness, which I admit is a little delusional. But, when the Holy Spirit points that out to me–again, I confess it. I just kind of hoped that by now I would have seen God work through me with some sort of visible result.

Counseling–whether in the office or in friendships–can often feel like a monumental and exhausting effort of futility. It feels like I spend a lot of time reaching out to catch people and watching them slip through my fingers. Over, and over, and over. It is frustrating because I feel powerless to prevent their downfall. This is particularly heartbreaking when the person slipping through my fingers is a mere youth, making choices with consequences well beyond his or her years. I don’t pull any punches. I tell them that I love them unconditionally, whatever choices they make, but I don’t sugar coat the choices they are making or the consequences they will eventually incur. I shoot straight from the hip, but I also express hope for them, and a belief that there is another path for them to choose. Most of the time, I think they just see me as this friendly ally who still believes in right and wrong (Isn’t that cute?). “Gee, I must be pretty special because she takes so much time on me.” And   s   l   i   p, there they go: right through my fingers. Sigh. I don’t fee like I’m doing them any actual good.

“Why don’t you feel like you’re doing them any good?” God asks me. “Because, they’re still falling. I can’t catch them. And I can’t convince them to be caught instead of continuing to fall. I’m just grasping at them on the way down, and missing every time,” I answer.

“And you don’t think that’s helping?” God pursues.                           “How is that helping?” I finally ask. “They’re still choosing to plummet.”

“True, but they can feel your fingers on the way down,” God answers. I can tell this is going to be one of those object lessons that He gives me by providing an analogy that I didn’t come up with myself, but I’m still doubtful. “Okay…so they can feel my touch on the way down. How is that helping in any significant way?”

For the sake of length, I’ll skip the dialogue and summarize. Here’s what God taught me tonight: I cannot control whether someone chooses to fall or not. I cannot catch them if they don’t want to be caught. That is not my role. However, that does not mean that God is not using me. How is reaching out and having someone slip through my fingers still helpful to them?

1. Sometimes, when you are in free fall, you forget that you are falling. Brushing against my hand on the way down may serve to remind them that they are falling, and that is an important realization. 2. A human touch is sometimes needed to remind us that we are human and that we are connected to the people around us. Maybe being grasped at and slipping through my fingers will remind someone that they are human or that their fate matters to someone besides themselves. 3. Maybe the offered hand that they reject will remind them that there is another choice available to them besides the path they are currently on, and will help them to realize that they are making a choice to keep falling–and that could be the first step toward making a different choice. 4. If I continue to take the opportunities God provides me to reach out to them, not excusing or ignoring their bad choices and telling them that I love them in spite of their choices, they may have an easier time understanding that God does not ignore or excuse our sin, but loves us in spite of our sin–so much so that He offers to take the penalty of our sin upon Himself and give us a new life.

I can’t stop my friends or my clients from falling. I can’t make the choice for them. I can’t give them a new heart or the gift of repentance. That is not my role. I cannot follow them on their way down, or after they walk away. I probably will not be there when they hit rock bottom. That is not my job, and I have to accept that. God, on the other hand, will be there when they hit rock bottom. He will be there all the way down, as far as they go. He can give them the gift of repentance, and a new heart. That is His role. I need to let God perform His role and be content to perform mine. I believe that there is a reason He places me in the path of those I come in contact with, and I trust that His purpose will be fulfilled even if I am not there to see it. I hope that as I lean on God and do my best to fumblingly exhibit His love, He will plant seeds that will bear fruit later on. Reaching out to someone who slips through my fingers is not futile. It just isn’t my fingers that will finally lift them up.