This Wasn't Your Idea

The other day I read Job 10. It had a throwback to my last post: "Your hands shaped me and made me... Remember that you molded me like clay" (verses 8-9). And other parts of this chapter tied into my Taize experience in another way.

The entire book of Job has a fair amount of "why am I alive" passages, but these are from chapter 10: "Why then did you bring me out of the womb? I wish I had died before any eye ever saw me. If only I had never come into being, or had been carried straight from the womb to the grave!" (18-19)

At the risk of sounding extremely melodramatic, in my life I have asked/said similar things to God. This February through conversations about the concept of having children, I've come to realize that probably at least 51% of me thinks not existing must be better than existing (which I am aware is unprovable and perhaps senseless). I bet this is related to the fact that as I age and (hopefully) mature spiritually, I am not less sad than I was when I was younger/farther from God. Often the opposite seems true.

I discovered what I took as a response to this at Taize, when one of the girls in my house --I don't know which one-- translated and wrote out lyrics to a song. Even though we were all in silence all week, the girls in the house communicated daily, often through eye contact. Though only two of us (out of about ten) were native English speakers, English was used whenever language was necessary. So the words on the notes we left for each other on the big table were sometimes translated from other languages, in this case, German. (Meaning I am not sure of ever tracking down the originals of what I'm about to share).

The song's title was something like "Don't forget this." It was pretty cheesy. The kind of thing that makes you smile dopily and want to hide your face so people don't see your dopey smile. I'll spare you that (mostly because I can't remember specifics). The gist, the line that stuck with me, was something like, "Never forget that living and breathing were not your idea." That could be taken in a depressing way, but it made me feel free. I don't have to find a reason for my existence. If I don't seem to be getting consistently happier during this season of life, maybe happiness isn't the main goal. I'm responsible for my actions and reactions, but I am not responsible to figure everything out, or to take credit (or blame) for my personality or family situation or anything that happens to me.

A related poem, a prayer, showed up on the table a few days later. I copied down the three lines that I loved best:

I am because of you
in front of you
and for you.

So, sure, it wasn't my idea, but it was someone else's, and I live out the life I received by gift in his full view and I'm responsible to him for how I choose to do this. I should perhaps not expect that God will answer me why I was born, but I can know that it was on purpose.

These words also gave me insight into forgiveness. Lately I've been struggling more than usual with unforgiveness. It can be hard to forgive because if I do, the person may not understand how much they hurt me. It can even be easier to forgive deeper cuts, because the offending person must understand how awful it was for me. But if someone does something that seriously bothers me but ultimately doesn't ruin my life, then I am tempted to use unforgiveness as a way to show my frustration, which the person could otherwise miss altogether. Honestly, though, they still miss it almost altogether. I am not quite terrible enough to chase people down and make sure they understand I am angry.

I understand the faulty logic of unforgiveness. I know that withholding forgiveness mostly just hurts the person who is already hurt, or keeps their wound fresh indefinitely. But the simplest reason is that Jesus asks me to forgive everything, big or small. To forgive not seven times, but seventy times seven. And he asks this for my own benefit: the Bible implies that by extending grace and forgiving debts we open our hearts to more fully receive grace and have our own debts forgiven.

From my human viewpoint, there are times forgiveness seems like a bad idea. God is so gracious to the undeserving, I tend to doubt that he would truly exact justice from those who have hurt me, particularly as they are usually believers. God is, I often remind myself, as much on their side as he is on mine. But Jesus doesn't set conditions on forgiveness. If I ran the show, I might do it differently. But if I accept that this whole living thing wasn't my idea, I can conceptualize that maybe I should just play by the rules of the person whose idea it was.

If forgiveness looks stupid, and life looks sad, I don't have to take credit for setting up and maintaining the set of systems under which that is possible. My sphere of influence is much smaller than that, and my responsibilities are exactly the right size for me, no larger and no smaller. None of this was my idea (hallelujah).

What we are praying for when we pray for the gospel to spread

Last night the pastor at my church here was telling the story of his conversion. He said God meant nothing to his family during his childhood. None of the family believed or cared to follow God's ways. But when he was a teenager, first his sister and then his mother began going to church. He decided to investigate what this was all about, and he began to read the Bible. Not out of love for God, but out of curiosity. Then he said because of his reading the gospel message he began to be thirsty. That was not surprising to me.

Then he said he began to feel dirty. I wasn't sure I had translated correctly. He said he began to feel alone, and to feel very ugly. He said that before his encounter with the gospel as portrayed in the Bible he had been a very prideful person, content in his achievements and his intelligence and the pride of his family for these things about him. I knew that what he was saying made sense, but at first it struck me as very strange. And I realized that many people who don't know God simply don't feel a need for Him. And I realized, again, that the way to God dips into a valley before it climbs to heaven. We aren't taken from glory to glory until we've come face to face with the end of ourselves.

This has been a question I've had lately: how to pray for non-believers, when all they really need is God. At my church in America, sometimes they go and pray for people who don't know God, right in front of them. They ask what they need and pray for that. That's probably fine or they wouldn't be doing it, but I said "they" because I've not yet understood how that is supposed to work. It seems to be ignoring the most glaring and basic need in the person's life to pray for them and leave out the part about their heart encountering God, and yet it seems dishonest to leave that part out if you're planning to do it later so that they don't feel weird.

The truth is, when you find a person who is in need of God (aka everyone who doesn't walk with Him yet), what they need first to even be able to approach Him is a deep sense of unease with the way things are going. This might be why some of us describe encountering God as "having your life turned upside down" or "getting rocked" or even (okay, this is just me, in some dramatic moments) "having your life ruined." Because once you see the truth, going back isn't an option. There are no easy roads left to you once your ignorance has been stripped away. You have to do things that break your fleshly little heart, and yet not to do them is to turn your back on the one you love.

All this has been a surprise to me. It's dawned on me very, very slowly. And it's for this that I believe it's not up to us to make the gospel sound appealing to people. I once told a friend it's not like we listen for problems in someone's life and prescribe God to them like a medicine. He's not a product we're selling. We can't even exaggerate how great He is, but we can misrepresent Him sometimes if we try to make (or God forbid, succeed at making) the Christian life look cool. It's just not cool, okay? It's way better than the alternative, but it's not easier, and to tell someone it is can mess them up for a long time as they try to reconcile this paradox. It's not that we convince people into the kingdom; God chooses people, and calls them, and that's His divine initiative. And we can partner with His work by praying that the people we love will come to know Him.

But let's make no mistake about what we're asking. When I ask for someone's salvation, a person far from God who is pretty happy with their life, I am asking that they will be completely broken. That they will begin to feel dirty, and thirsty, and alone. Even ugly. Not that they will stay feeling that way forever with no comfort, but that they will get to that place and not be able to pretend it away anymore.

All through church I kept having more thoughts about this, and I thought, "maybe it's not so bad to pray for a little unhappiness in this life, seeing that it's so fleeting, and painful anyway, and that it could lead to eternal life. It's just like those metaphors about a doctor who gives a painful but life-saving shot, or who relocates a limb, or those people who have to push harder on the trap to free an animal or whatever."

And I also realized that prayers to get closer to God, which we might toss up so casually, knowing they are always a good bet, never the wrong thing to pray, might as well just be prayers for more sadness and more emptiness, so that God can comfort and fill us. It's impossible for Him to fill what is not empty.

I guess if there's anything good about this, at least for me, it is that whenever I am very, very sad (it happens) I am a vessel that can contain more of God's comfort, or when I am empty or alone, I can invite God to fellowship with me in a way that someone who is totally content just wouldn't be able to.

⁸ Even if I caused you sorrow by my letter, I do not regret it. Though I did regret it—I see that my letter hurt you, but only for a little while— ⁹ yet now I am happy, not because you were made sorry, but because your sorrow led you to repentance. For you became sorrowful as God intended and so were not harmed in any way by us. ¹⁰ Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death. ¹¹ See what this godly sorrow has produced in you: what earnestness, what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, what alarm, what longing, what concern, what readiness to see justice done. At every point you have proved yourselves to be innocent in this matter. --2 Corinthians 7:8-11

P.S. This idea, paraphrased, "Don't Just Pray For Someone's Happiness, You Fool (Because It Might Interfere With God's Work In Their Life)" was originally given to me about a year ago by good ol Oswald Chambers, and I've been working it through ever since, and continue to realize more about it all the time.

The Look on His Face

When I have emotional pain, I'm always convinced that it's worse than physical pain. But then I get the flu, and I am like, there is no possible way that anything is worse than this. Probably the worst part is that it's degrading. You're helpless in every way, and also it's just plain gross.

Anyway, I had the flu yesterday. I also prayed a lot. About that, mostly, but other things too. And the thing is, sometimes I've heard it can be a good thing when you're praying to imagine God's face. This seems like a good enough idea to me. Of course He's smiling when you pray to Him, because He accepts even our smallest offerings, and loves us so, just as if you were in love with someone, you would be happy with any way that they reach out to you, even if it's not the exact thing you wanted to hear.

Normally, that makes sense, and I like accepting that His face is smiling at me. But when I am helplessly suffering, I just can't imagine the look on His face. Frankly, I wouldn't want Him to be smiling. That would be ignoring the horrible pain I am in, a pain to which death seems preferable. I would be so pissed if one of my friends or family members was just smiling at me in that situation. But God is a happy person, they say. And for Him to be crying would make it seem like He was helpless, too, helpless to save me. Which I know He is not. Whatever face He has, He's never desperately wringing His hands and fretting.

I just can't picture Him.

Deep Grief

Reading Joel, I came across the passage, "Mourn like a virgin in sackcloth grieving for the betrothed of her youth" (1:8). All the recent news of weddings/engagements of so, so many people from Wheaton made me appreciate this metaphor even more than usual. People are so excited about their futures together, about planning and the love that they already have now and want to have more of in the coming years of their lives. They probably feel certain that this is the person God hand picked for them to spend the rest of their life with. The verse is like, what if due to some tragedy, instead of a wedding there was a funeral? The anguish would be made a million times worse by the happy anticipation it replaces.

But then I thought, well if you never ended up marrying the person at all, would that be a relief at all? Would it be a little worse to lose your actual spouse, and/or the parent of your children? And that line of thinking made me remember sitting in a car with a few people and discussing whether it would be worse to accidentally kill your child or your lover. I think the answer to that one is pretty obvious: they are both terrible so it doesn't matter.

What all those things have in common, though, is that they represent among the darkest possible of human experience. Especially because it's so unexpected and thus seemingly so meaningless or accidental. Everyone has pain, but this type of loss seems pretty clearly worse than the other kinds.

So I have looked for a silver lining. I obviously would still never wish this stuff on anyone, just to be clear. But I think maybe the benefit to losing everything and hitting rock bottom is the freedom. I once read, [paraphrase] "Once I was dead, I didn't care about my wallet. I gave it away to the first person I saw."

If your entire perception of reality was flipped on its head, you would be free of all the stupid stuff that keeps the rest from doing what they really love. A person who had been through that kind of deep grief would literally be forced to find a reason to keep living and to keep loving. I don't know if the average person will ever find that reason. Often we kind of only do what we have to, to get by. I think it's fully possible (though sad) that someone could float through their whole life without really being free of vague fears that keep them from living the fullest life possible. Deep down, I really do think the only way to truly fail at life is not to try (to clarify, that "failed" attempts would be a form of success by putting the focus on the word "attempts"), but we let dumb things stop us, like pride or fear (which tends to be related to pride, too).

"The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be only the beginning." -Ivy Baker Priest

I think this is where the idea of dying to self comes from.. Dead people are not worried about whether they look cool anymore.

Again, I repeat, I haven't had such an extreme experience, and I would never say someone ought to, but since they do happen, they can be dealt with in a way that brings more life and more joy and more freedom.

Also from Joel: "I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten" [the Lord replied to them]. (2:25a).