The life of the Spirit in the chaos of our day

“As soon as we feel at home in our own house, discover the dark corners as well as the light spots, the closed doors as well as the drafty rooms, our confusion will evaporate, our anxiety will diminish, and we will become capable of creative work.” — Henri J.M. Nouwen

“We must make the choices that enable us to fulfill the deepest capacities of our real selves.” – Thomas Merton

“As soon as we are alone, inner chaos opens up in us. This chaos can be so disturbing and so confusing that we can hardly wait to get busy again. Entering a private room and shutting the door, therefore, does not mean that we immediately shut out all our inner doubts, anxieties, fears, bad memories, unresolved conflicts, angry feelings and impulsive desires. On the contrary, when we have removed our outer distraction, we often find that our inner distraction manifest themselves to us in full force. We often use the outer distractions to shield ourselves from the interior noises. This makes the discipline of solitude all the more important.”  – Henri Nouwen

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As I travelled on the light rail this morning re-enacting my everyday commute-liturgy, I felt a familiar feeling.  My iPhone beckoned with its perpetual morning whisper: Come to me, you who are weary and heavy-ladened, and I will increase your burden. My mind clasped onto its first priority – mastering the content of a lecture I needed to give on cultural engagement for our first class for the Newbigin Seminary Project.  Behind the tension was another voice.  Don’t screw up.  You can’t screw up.  We’re getting a seminary started, and good first impressions matter. My cell phone buzzed.  A call from Sara, my wife.  She has been ill for 3 days, yet pushing through it because I couldn’t miss my weekend Newbigin event and this important class.  Another voice:  You’re a bad husband for not bailing her out. Still another voice:  She ought to suck it up and get over this illness.

A sense of constriction pervaded my body and mind.  There was absolutely no room for Jesus in this cacophony of inner voices.  Some might say, “Just read a little Scripture,” or “Do the Daily Office.”  I’ve already thought of this.  One of those inner voices has reminded me, perhaps guilted me, into thinking that if only I’d more faithfully practice this discipline, I’d be free from the inner chaos I’m feeling.

The problem – there is no space inside for the words of Scripture or the Daily Office to land.  My inner room is cluttered.  It is at this moment, as Merton says, that “we must make the choices that enable us to fulfill the deepest capacities of our real selves.” Yet, choice begins with desire…a longing for space, an inner freedom.

A deeper voice within called Spirit says, “Relax.”  I close my eyes.  No one on the train has a clue what’s happening inside.  I breathe in.  A rush of air enters my lungs, filling them with air, but not merely air.  N.T. Wright explains:

In Genesis 2:7, it is said that God breathed into human nostrils the breath of life, so that Adam became a living being.  There is a strange truth here which we do not usually grasp.  If we even think about the act of breathing, we probably regard it as a purely “natural” or “scientific” phenomenon. Genesis regards it as part of the gift, to humans, of God’s own life.  Breathing sets up a rhythm that quietly gets on with the job of enlivening and energizing us.

As my lungs expand, a spaciousness ensues.  A divine de-cluttering is underway.  I begin to feel centered, aware, in the moment, awake.

The need to attend to my responsibilities does not go away.  I am still giving a lecture.  I must still respond to my emails.  I must wrestle with my responsibility to Sara.  But…a space is growing within from which I can do these things, all of these things, with greater creativity and love.  Somehow, the space which opens invites selflessness – that rare quality which moves me to begin to pray for Sara, for the participants in the seminary course, for the blank-faced commuters around me, for the coming of the Kingdom in and through real participation in the divine life of Christ.

From this place, my work becomes a joy, not a compulsion.  I am freed to live in the present.  The voices that demanded my attention retreat to the background.  Somehow, they seem content, as well.  They seem to trust that from this new and more spacious place I might even be more productive in my work and relationships.

I step off the light rail and into the rest of my day, breathing deeply of a life that only the Spirit can give.

From the wilderness to the promised land: The recovery of Dependence and Desire

“The whole life of a good Christian is a holy desire.”  St. Augustine

“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. 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

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Stumbling through the dark wilderness, there are moments when all hope feels lost, when Egypt’s old securities beckon our weary hearts, when the promise of new life and a new land feel like a tease.

But there are moments, every so often, when light seems to break through into the darkness, when hope awakens and a desire for more returns.  We recognize that though we’ve tried to find security and satisfaction in substitute gods at every turn, real life begins as we extend our heart forward into the great unknown, re-kindling our longing for something more, however illusive it may be.  The German theologian and mystic, Meister Eckhart (1260-1328), put it this way:

The soul must long for God in order to be set aflame by God’s love; but if the soul cannot yet feel this longing, then it must long for the longing. To long for the longing is also from God.

Now, truth be told, a thousand things have happened in our lives to convince us that a desire for something more is futile.  The writer of Ecclesiastes wrote, “Meaningless, meaningless, life is like a chasing after the wind.  Everything is futile.“  He looked for life in good things – work and love, religion and relationship – but in his pursuit he sought to possess. And in attempting to possess the good things God made him to enjoy, he became enslaved by them.

Futility characterizes life in the wilderness.  Futility describes our desperate attempt to speed up the journey through the wilderness.  It never works.  But we keep trying.

But it feels like one big setup, right?  Think about it.  If this is true, God actually expects us to experience life as futile.

Exactly.

In this New Exodus series, we’ve explored the many ways in which we cope with the insecurities and difficulties of life, particularly life in between Egypt and the Promised Land.  Indeed, our heart divides and conquers, seeking control by establishing elaborate inner mechanisms to regulate and manage our worlds.  Though God leads us down a wilderness road with the intention of fostering dependence and deepened Desire for Him, we resist at all costs, seeking instead to duplicate our Egypt-born control strategies at every stage of the journey.

We do everything we can to prevent ourselves from having to confess the obvious – that we are needy and desperate little children, longing for love but finding it in all the wrong places, hungry for the real satisfaction that comes only as we relax and trust.  We resist the first gift of futility – dependence.  We resist, as well, a second gift of futility – Desire.  For it is as we wait and trust, long and desire, that God satisfies us in a way that our wilderness substitutes cannot possibly satisfy us.

The late psychiatrist and spiritual writer, Gerald May, talks about how our substitute lovers (our addictions) suck the energy of desire.  He writes:

“Psychologically, addiction uses up desire.  It is like a psychic malignancy sucking our life energy into specific obsessions and compulsions, leaving less and less energy available for other people and other pursuits.”

When we renounce a life lived out of Desire for a life of manageable security-strategies, we actually find the energy we have for love of God and others used up, expended, and ultimately wasted.  May continues, however, arguing that our psychological strategies lead to spiritual catastrophe:

“Spiritually, addiction is a deep-seated form of idolatry.  The objects of our addictions become our false gods.  These are what we worship, what we attend to, where we give our time and energy, instead of love.  Addiction, then, displaces and supplants God’s love as the source and object of our deepest true desire.  It is, as one modern spiritual writer has called it, a ‘counterfeit of religious presence.’”

Though parts of us want to manage life, securing reputation and financial stability, optimism and efficiency, the deepest core (where the Spirit resides) within longs for more.  It recognizes a deep truth – that though we’re called to live faithfully, as good stewards of our time, possessions, and relationships – this urge towards faithful responsibility must never dupe us into thinking that we’re in control of our lives.  The life and mission God calls us to is much, much bigger than us.  In his fantastic short work – The Bible and Mission – Richard Bauckham echoes this, saying, “The church is never far from the insignificance of Jesus and his band of unimpressive followers.  It is always setting out from the particular in the direction of God’s incalculable gift of everything.”

Throughout my life, I’ve noticed that the times when I feel most drained and lifeless are the times when I’m expending a lot of energy on managing my life impeccably.  In these times, I find myself addicted to security, to people’s approval, to extreme control of my schedule so that unpredictable things cannot happen, to cycles of drinking caffeine and alcohol to regulate my moods, to sexual satisfaction on my terms, to reading as much as I can to manage people’s impressions of my intelligence, and much more.  Good in and of themselves, these things become addictions and idols as they suck energy, and demand even more fuel.  When I attempt to possess and control, my life actually becomes less controllable, less manageable, less satisfying.  And I find myself back in the same place…

…on my knees.

This is the only path to the Promised Land.

…on my knees….

This is the narrow way.

…on my knees…

This is the way of Dependence and Desire.

The great saint and mystic – St. John of the Cross – used a Spanish word that characterizes this dynamic.

Nada.

Nothing.

Can’t find it here.  Can’t find it there.  Can’t put God in a box.  Can’t find hope in a bottle.

The search for the eternal buzz is futile.

Nada.

We become more free as we become more dependent, as a deeper Desire stirs for more, as our wilderness attempts at control and satisfaction only lead to more nada.

In a way too mysterious for words, this is where God shows up.

In the mystery of Dependence and Desire, God actually fills us in the way we hoped we could fulfill ourselves.

We call this Union.

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- Have you experienced moments in your life when the attempt to find satisfaction on your own terms fails?  In these times, do you attempt to regain control or to relax your grip on control a bit?

- Some time ago, I counseled a couple who took a honeymoon to the Caribbean.  They came home, and told me they felt like God was calling them to move to the Caribbean.  I told them that it was no doubt glorious, but their desire to move back was an attempt to bottle up a temporary experience of joy, and that it would ultimately betray them if they sought to possess it.  Have you had an experience like this?

Shadows and Realities: How God Wants Us Whole

By faithfulness we are collected and wound up into unity within ourselves, whereas we had been scattered abroad in multiplicity. (St. Augustine)

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I used to think that spiritual progress looked like a straight line, aiming upward and onward, reaching toward a state of perpetual contentedness.

But then, life happened.

We’ve talked about the division within ourselves, and on those parts that are not often easy to face.  We’ve talked about the big bag we carry behind us, filled with parts of ourselves that no friend, nor Savior, could ever look upon (…or so we think.)  We’d rather not look at those parts, either.  Like a dark shadow, however, they seem to follow us.  And when the light shines, these shadow parts are particularly visible, haunting us with the memories of evil thoughts and cruel intentions.  Many of us, including me, would rather live in a fantasy where this shadow does not exist, where our quiet times and noble moments out-shine the shadow.

But then, life happens…

We see ourselves playing out a scene that we vowed would never happen again – a binge and purge episode, or a night of pornographic indulgence, or a bath in corporate greed, or an episode of self-righteous contempt upon our spouse.  And we see ourselves as the divided self we are – desiring faithfulness, but living conflicted lives.

How do we achieve what St. Augustine ponders upon?  How do we experience a unity amidst the inner divisions and utter contradictions that our lives present?

It is interesting to me that St. Paul defines unity with Jesus in the context of participation in both His death and His resurrection, in suffering and in Spirit.  The shadow has a place in God’s economy.  Maturity requires a descent into the furnace of struggle.  It does not come through a naive refusal to acknowledge our darkness, but emerges through the deliberate work of self-examination.  As we peer beneath the surface, we see darkness greater than our capacity to fathom.  And we find ourselves at the place of our deepest need, yearning to dive into the fearsome chaos waters in order to emerge cleansed, participants in the death and life of Christ Himself.

While we’d prefer a kind of unity with Christ that emphasizes the power of resurrection, the reality is that a fellowship in His sufferings can be a great encouragement, too.  It was Jesus who announced His Kingdom as the domain of the broken, the poor, the widow, the orphan, the mourner, the persecuted, and the prostitute.  It was Jesus, seeing how the Essenes, Pharisees, and Zealots had shaped the Abrahamic faith, who re-wrote the books and re-drew the lines, drawing in the shadow-members of the community.  Pretenders who acted as if the shadow didn’t exist would find themselves marginalized now, condemned under the very system they had erected, but saved if they could courageously admit the plank in their eyes.

Truth is, God didn’t send Jesus to save half of us.  He wants us whole, and saves all of us…those parts of us we present to the world, and those parts that we’d rather others not see, both the Elder Brother and the Prodigal Son.  Disowning the shadow amounts to discounting our need – our need for one another, and our need for a Savior.  We might as well say to God, “There are some burdens too scary to admit, and too great to be healed.  I’d prefer to carry this one myself.”  The world is full of strategies for fixing ourselves.  We’re a self-help culture with bookshelves filled with self-help wisdom as old as the Greek philosophers.  Yet, St. Augustine says, “I have read in Plato and Cicero sayings that are wise and very beautiful; but I have never read in either of them: Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden.”

It is in choosing the wilderness that God is able to be who He is – Savior – and deliver us up into the Promised Land.

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What are parts of your self and your story that you’d prefer to edit out?

Imagine that these shadow parts of you are like little ’selves’, exiles quarantined to a distant country yet in need a Savior to lead them Home.  Pick one exiled part of yourself.  Imagine having a conversation with it.  What are its fears?  What burden is it carrying?  How does it need Jesus?

The habits of prison, the tug towards Home

“I often feel that the refusal to actually speak to your imprisonment condemns you to that walled off place for the rest of your existence.  One part of you will constantly remain in some form of prison or another and will compensate in your outer actions for this inner lack of freedom.  And yet a person who has an inner sense of spaciousness can be walled up for most of their life – I think of Nelson Mandela – yet can be contagious even to their jailers in what it means to be a free individual, a free man.”  David Whyte, Our Home is So Close to Us (from Free Minds, Wild Hearts)

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Why is it that in the most free country in the world – the United States – addiction runs rampant?  Stock brokers snort coke.  Stay-at-home mothers report feeling empty when their soap opera isn’t on.  Seminary students binge on porn.  An anxious CEO plots the timing of his next drink.  A high school cheerleader carves the word “disgusting” into her arm with a knife.  A secretary chugs a fifth cup of coffee by noon.  A young couple goes into debt buying a 3000 square foot home.  The supermodel secretly binges and purges.  A star athlete with a beautiful wife cheats on her.

Along this New Exodus way, we’ve discovered that though we may be free from Egypt, parts of us remain imprisoned, addicted to the habits and patterns formed in our enslaved state.  God gives us a wilderness to strip us of childish dependencies, but we’re prone to finding ways of making the wilderness hospitable.  We call this “coping” or “surviving,” and many of us find that it’s about all we can do.  Deep inside, our hearts still beat for a land like Eden, flowing with milk and honey.  But, truth be told, we’ve resigned ourselves to marriages that are barely tolerable, a daily therapeutic dosage of alcohol or porn or food, and the perpetual return of Friday when we can further descend into our catatonic state of survival.

As Thoreau once said, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”

Yet, a cynical resignation is not the answer.  These parts of ourselves that continually seek the satisfaction of Egypt have stories to tell.  One of my clients from some time ago lived much of his life as a successful businessman, seen even as a mentor and encourager to younger staff.  Yet, a secret part of him wanted to die.  This part chose slow death over a quick suicide, consuming hard liquor and porn and fast food whenever he could get away.  It was a part of him that was walled off from his family, his co-workers, his fellow elders at the church, and even himself.  When this “dark monster,” as he called it, indulged its Egyptian appetites, my client would quickly clean up, dispose of the shame, and re-emerge into his wilderness with a determination to stay clean.

These parts of ourselves exist within us as mini-selves, in one sense.  They are like little people, or distinct personalities, which hold memories, have stories, and feel pain in unique ways.  They are our inner prodigals and elder brothers, our inner lions and lambs, our ashamed little children and our rageful critics.  And each has a story to tell.  My work as a therapist is to draw out each story, and all of the many internal stories.

One of my clients had a part of himself which would overtake him in times when he felt misunderstood or second-guessed by his spouse.  At his best, he lived from the new self Christ renews within, manifesting in compassion and patience, forgiveness and wisdom.  But, in other moments, he’d say that something was “triggered” inside of him.  For years, therapists convinced him that if his wife would change her dismissive way of relating to him, things would get better.  But even as she changed, his inner world did not.  An enraged part of himself would be triggered at work, or in his church small group, always when people seemed to misunderstand him or question his opinion.  However, other internal voices would enter in, too – “You know you’re an idiot.  Just stop talking.  You don’t make any sense, anyway.”

How do we unlock these chains of slavery?  How do we contend with powerful parts of ourselves which seem mired in their old habits?

Therapists and pastors have hundreds of different strategies which, in my estimation, only lead us in the direction of sin-management. Our behavior may change, but our hearts do not change.  We’re not ultimately led to the Cross, where each part of ourselves must be surrendered for our whole person to be free.  These sin-managing parts of ourselves remain imprisoned and enslaved, and often find creative and sometimes more sinister ways of expressing themselves.  As the poet David Whyte says, “I often feel that the refusal to actually speak to your imprisonment condemns you to that walled off place for the rest of your existence.  One part of you will constantly remain in some form of prison or another and will compensate in your outer actions for this inner lack of freedom.”  Whyte hints at something important – freedom begins by simply naming these imprisoned parts of ourselves.

Yet, as a therapist, I find that simply talking about these parts of ourselves and analyzing them intellectually are not enough.  We need to talk with them.  These parts often hold feelings and store memories which require more intentional engagement.  One client, for instance, found at least two parts in one of our counseling sessions.  Initially skeptical about my approach, he agreed, at the very least, that parts of himself were still imprisoned in his own internal Egypt, addicted to ways of managing and coping that walled himself in and walled Christ out.  In this session, he identified a part of himself that he thrived living through – the “rock star.”  A star marketing executive, he was able to wow an audience with his creative ideas.  But the rock star seemed to have a shadow following him, a dark presence that simply said, “Phony.”  As he closed his eyes and listened within, this dark presence walked toward him and became more clear.  It was him, 20 years prior, as a chubby middle schooler who was dressed funny and who had a problem stuttering.  Tears came to his eyes as, in his mind’s eye, he opened his arms for this boy to come to him.  When I asked if this formerly walled off young boy needed God, he immediately said, “Yes, yes…I feel God coming toward me and wrapping his arms around me.  It’s like I’m here with this chubby kid and holding him, but God is holding me.”  He sat in that position for almost 10 minutes, as tears fell from his eyes.

Later, we saw that the “rock star” worked very hard to make sure that the chubby middle schooler wouldn’t emerge, and spoil the show.  Now it was time for the rock star to turn around, leave Egypt, and move toward the Promised Land (a turning we call “repentance.”)  The rock star was initially skeptical.  He wasn’t about to trust my client living from his core and true self.  And trusting God seemed all-too-risky, as well.  The rock star had made his way in the world, and wasn’t sure that change was most beneficial.  In his mind’s eye, my client saw the rock star, dressed in his finest Joseph Banks suit – the power suit – going in for the marketing kill.  But when I asked my client to look at him a bit closer, he saw bags under his eyes, as well as bloodshot eyes.  “He’s tired,” my client said.  “He’s been working hard to make sure I made it in the world, to make sure no one viewed me as an unacceptable failure.”

“Is he ready to relax, and perhaps to let you lead the way?” I responded.

“I think so.  But he needs God in a different way than the middle schooler.  He says he feels like he needs God to be strong -  a King, a Lord – so that he can relax.”

“Why doesn’t he ask God to be this for him,” I said.

Again, tears came to his eyes.  And he relaxed.

In one sense, he was saved that day.

Indeed, we preach the Gospel over and again to ourselves each day, inviting each un-surrendered part of ourselves to bend the knee, to release the burdens, to choose freedom over slavery.  Truth be told, this is a life-long process.  Even as I write this, I’m aware of my own seemingly endless ways of fighting God’s invitation to faith, hope, and love.  My heart seems to crave its Egypt-formed identity more than God’s better offer of life and freedom.  I’m encouraged by the reality that it is not my effort, but God’s grace, that draws me forward, that allures and invites me into the better land.

Daily surrender requires us to recognize that we’re far more enslaved than we thought we are.  Parts of us fight hard to retain their Egyptian chains.  But, God’s promise of a land flowing with milk and honey stirs in me something deeper than my addictions, igniting desire, drawing me forward, onward, to Emmanuel’s land.  God give me the grace to keep traveling ahead, unburdening more and more along the way…

Terror and security-strategies: Our inner obstacles to transformation

”As soon as I start a dialogue with my self the reality of self as a kind of society becomes apparent at once… I experience more selves when I become aware of inner conflict around decisions… The Holy Spirit of God dwells in your heart and is no stranger to the diversity and conflict there.  The Spirit dwells with and among and between all the selves of your self… There is no secret place where the Spirit has no access, nor any inner person excluded from the Spirit’s presence… The Spirit will bring the selves of the self into a unity around the center of the indwelling Christ.  The New Self will be a kind of inner community based on the principle of love in which there is room for everyone.”

“What chance is there of loving and respecting others if I refuse to meet and listen to the many sides of myself?  How can I be a reconciler if I shut my ears to the unreconciled conflicts within myself… Now I begin to see that the spiritual life is based on a basic honesty which enables me to recognize that everything I find difficult to accept, bless, forgive, and appreciate in others is actually present within myself.”

(Quotes from Martin Smith – Anglican priest, spiritual director, and author)

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. (from Matt. 5)

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We live in a black and white world.  It’s a world of good guys and bad guys, saints and sinners, the privileged and the pitiful, the righteous and the unrighteous, the Elder Brother and the Prodigal Son.

And with a great sense of justice and righteous anger, we rise up when the unjust persecute us.

Yet, those whom we hate, we secretly fear.

What will happen if we give them an inch?  Will they take a mile, or perhaps much more?  Perhaps they will overtake us, and even consume us.

Much of our extremism is born of this fear. And this extremism often breeds an inability to see what lies beneath a nation or even a person we call ‘evil’, a behavior we call ’sinful’, or a part of us we deem ‘bad.’  Think about the black-and-white extremism behind the war on terror.  Indeed, the real terror exists in our hearts, fearful of being consumed, desperate to be right at all costs, and often unable to see the plank in our own eyes.

Ask a young Muslim boy who the terrorist is and he’ll describe a white male Christian man who works on Wall Street, who lives in a home 10 times bigger than what he really needs, who scoffs at people who apparently choose not to be as wealthy as he is, and who believes that his Bible justifies an American Empire that can nation-build at will.  Ask a young Christian boy who the terrorist is and he’ll describe a dark-skinned man with a Koran in one hand and a bomb in the other, whose only motive is hate and the destruction of the American way, who despises freedom and would prefer to eliminate anyone who does not look like him.

I’d rather not argue about who the real terrorist is.  I’d rather suggest that both are full of terror, terrified.

This same principle works inside of us.  The man who comes in to see me struggling with an addiction to pornography and masturbation secretly fears it- “what if it consumes me.”  Yet, rather than engaging his fear, he turns to rage – “if only I could cut the damn thing off!”  He hates this part of himself.  And in his hate, his internal world becomes black-and-white.  To counter the terrorist within, he develops a radically extreme security strategy – at all costs, do not let it take over you! He exhausts himself managing his inner terrorist, protecting his inner borders.  But, sometimes, late at night, the terrorist strikes back, surging with a death strike of self-terrorism in the form of pornography, fantasy, and masturbation.  Petrified and ashamed, he vows to re-double his efforts in the morning in an attempt to protect his internal borders from evil.  Both parts of himself – both the terrorist and the righteous security guard – become even more extreme in their inner war.

Here’s a principle:  transformation cannot take place in a context of extremism.  Or, as Steve Brown, a former professor of mine, likes to say, “Sometimes we need to kiss the demon on the lips.”

I find Martin Smith’s words (quotes above) very, very helpful.  We cannot begin to deal with the conflicts outside of ourselves (and even between nations) unless we first deal with our inner conflicts.  And in dealing with our inner conflicts, we need the courage to step into places of great terror and fear, places inside of us that we have build walls to protect us from.

Have you ever wondered why some of the most self-righteous preachers and politicians fall?  Inevitably, this conflict I am describing exists within them.  Along the way, the walls they built inside to protect themselves from places of great darkness and shame show a sign of vulnerability, and an inner terrorist sneaks out.  They re-double their efforts to conceal the vulnerability.  But, our hearts are not made to thrive in this kind of inner cold war.  Eventually, the Elliot Spitzer’s and the Bill Clinton’s and the Mark Sanford’s and the Bernie Madoff’s violate internally the very principles they espouse publicly, giving the terrorist an inch.

Perhaps, the most honest response we can have is:  this is me, too.

I’ve seen healing and transformation when men and women begin to love their enemies, even their inner enemies.  These unreconciled parts of ourselves which live in extreme conflict cannot thrive.  Truth is, the enemy is both the inner terrorist and the inner security guard.  And like the Prodigal Son and his Elder Brother, they need to be invited to a feast of reconciliation and redemption.  You can only thrive as you become the Father in the great story, as the new and redeemed self led by Christ races out to both the Prodigal and the Elder Sons with an embrace of love and compassion.  Transformation begins when you kiss the demon on the lips.

Martin Smith suggests that the spiritual life is built and grown on a basic honesty which admits the truth about ourselves.  When this happens, not only are we transformed, but the communities in which we live and love become places of transformation.  And like yeast in bread, the Kingdom of God becomes an ever-expanding reality.  However, where honesty is lacking, we not only create walls within our hearts and between ourselves, but we create a great divide between ourselves and God.  This is why the Christian Gospel takes as it premise that men and women are basically sinful, in need of a reconciling love that cannot be manufactured and managed, that cannot be won by wall-building self-righteousness.  Sadly, many of us who claim the name of Christ live unreconciled in so many ways.  Put me at the top of that list.

Yet, part of the honest admission required for real transformation confesses that all of this ‘real transformation’ talk, too, is but a feeble attempt to put words around big mysteries.  Perhaps, this is why Henri Nouwen found that an image of hands opened, surrendered to God, conveyed what words cannot.  When we become exhausted of our dogmatic certainty, and relax the fists which clench our extreme postures motivated by real fear and terror, perhaps the reconciling love of Christ can do something that security strategies and self-management techniques cannot.  Perhaps, then, a cynical watching world, divided in so many ways, might even desire to be reconciled to us and to Christ.

Security-strategies for the soul, and the invitation to rest

In Susan Howatch’s great novel, Glittering Images, Charles Ashworth is an Anglican priest and canon who is sent by the Archbishop of Canterbury to do some investigate work on a controversial Bishop is suspected to be living a double life.  His journey into the seductively powerful world of church politics, however, exposes a deeper seduction within – an inner conflict which prevents him from seeing his world clearly, and compels him to live out of a false self – a “glittering image” committed to protecting him not only from the pain of his external world, but his internal pain as well.  In a moment of crisis, Ashworth meets Jon Darrow, a spiritual director who dares to ask about the self behind the glittering image.  Darrow sees Ashworth for who he really is – a man burdened by the world’s demands and his own internal demand to be successful.

Speaking to Ashworth’s hidden, burdened self within, Darrow says, “He must be exhausted.  Has he never been tempted to set down the burden by telling someone about it?”

“I can’t,” I said.

“Who’s ‘I’?” said Darrow.

“The glittering image.”

“Ah yes,” said Darrow, ” and of course that’s the only Charles Ashworth that the world’s allowed to see, but you’re out of the world now, aren’t you, and I’m different from everyone else because I know there are two of you.  I’m becoming interested in this other self of yours, the self nobody meets.  I’d like to help him come out from behind that glittering image and set down this appalling burden which has been tormenting him for so long.”

“He can’t come out.”

“Why not?”

“You wouldn’t like or approve of him.”

“Charles, when a traveller’s staggering along with a back-breaking amount of luggage he doesn’t need someone to pat him on the head and tell him how wonderful he is.  He needs someone who’ll offer to share the load.”

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The words of Jesus I find more comforting than any others are these: Come to me, all you who are weary and heavily burdened, and I will give you rest.  No words may better summarize his priestly mission.  No words may better expose our self-righteous hearts.

Prone to manage our own burdens, we develop sophisticated strategies to cope.  Our psyche is so wonderfully complex, and yet so quick to participate as an accomplice in our self-redemptive strategizing.  Perhaps even more disturbing is that so much of this takes place subconsciously.  Most of us don’t wake up one morning was a commitment to develop a sophisticated mask, a false self that rejects Christ’s invitation to give our burdens over, and stubbornly commits to managing life alone.  I’ve never seen anyone for counseling who has confessed, “At age 7, I recognized that what people liked in me was ‘The Joker’, and that I’d be accepted if I was the funny guy for the rest of my life.”  Yet, with some time and reflection, many people do remember a subtle shift, a pull from within to hide their baggage and show their best image.

I was a skinny kid with big ears, and a huge burden of fear within.  No one knew of this fear, of course.  My parents did their best to tell him the right things.  But they, and everyone else, did what he all do as adults in a child’s world – accentuate the good, and deny the bad.  I do it with my kids all the time.

“Daddy, I can’t wear these baggy pants to school, everyone will laugh,” my 7 year old says.

“No they won’t,” I say.  “You look great.  Just hang in there and it will be ok.”

Did I just set my child up for a lifetime of therapy?  That’s a complicated answer.  As a kid, what I learned was that my fear was never justified, that it was some silly thing that could be handled by just getting over it.  In time, I learned more sophisticated ways of doing it.  I became good at things – music and academics, and of course, people-pleasing and strategizing my life in such as a way as to maximize my feeling of achievement and minimize, even eradicate, the inner voice that said, “I’m scared.”  Being fearful was not alright.

Like the Israelites on the first Exodus journey, we suspect that burying our burdens under a thousand different security-strategies will save us.  We respond to Jesus like a Pharisee – “we’re managing our burdens just fine, Rabbi…in fact, we’ve created a whole system of security maintenance that we think you’d really appreciate.”  Yet, like Jon Darrow to Charles Ashworth, Jesus says, “But you look exhausted.  Let me carry the load.  My yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

One of the difficult recognitions in my own life is that while I had an expansive theology that claimed that God was Sovereign, that Jesus was Lord, and that I was in need of grace, my life did not match my theology at all.  In fact, I’d be lying if I said it does now.  There are parts of me that refuse to relinquish control.  In fact, they love control.  They stand alongside me whispering, “All of this New Exodus talk about taking the wilderness way is fine, Chuck, but you’re not going to do it.  It’s way too dangerous.”

Progress along the New Exodus way requires listening to that voice of Jesus, like the voice of Jon Darrow to Charles Ashworth, acknowledging your exhaustion and offering not a pat on the back, but a load off of your back.  There will be many other voices within and without, however, fighting this, enraged that you’d trust anyone but yourself to navigate life’s rugged terrain.  A spiritual discipline required for this stage of the journey, therefore, is listening. Through the noise, you’ll recognize the voice of Jesus, and it will slowly grow to become your own voice.  From that new place, you’ll be able to speak again, not from the glittering image, but from the new self, emerging out of the wilderness of shame, venturing on to the promised rest for weary souls…

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When you read the dialogue between Darrow and Ashworth, do you recognize yourself in it?

What is your version of the “glittering image?”

What burdens does the “glittering image” refuse to let go of? 

 

 

Wilderness Emergence: Living from the New Self

“The dark night helps the false self to wither.  It liberates our true self.  The false self will continue to remain, perhaps, all our lives.  But thanks to God’s grace, the false self’s influence on us will be much reduced.”  Daniel Schrock, The Dark Night: A Gift of God

“So I am not the one doing wrong; it is sin living in me that does it.  There is another power within me that is at war with my mind.  I see another law at work in the members of my body.” St. Paul, from Rom 7

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One of the difficult realities of our journey from the encumbering slavery of Egypt to the expansive freedom of the Promised Land is that it takes a lifetime to get free, really free, of the ugly stench of our former enslavement.  It takes just a moment to be freed from slavery.  It takes a lifetime to get the mindset of a slave out of us.

St. Paul seems to agree.  His words in the quote from Romans 7 (above) are curious:  it’s not me sinning, it’s sin in me. Is St. Paul blame-shifting?  Is this a bit of legal maneuvering?:  I didn’t do it, your honor!  It was my alter-ego Saul, the murderer! And what’s this talk of a war within?  He’s preoccupied with another “law” or “power” within, countering his new identity in Jesus.  And he seems to indicate that this other “law” or “power” is more complex, at work in the “members” of his body.  Apparently, this dynamic within is multiple.  Does St. Paul suffer from multiple personalities?  Or, is he putting his 1st-century finger on a psychological sin-complex that speaks to the depth and scope of human brokenness?

In a series of previous posts, I introduced the idea of the “divided heart,” a biblical way of talking about the internal polarization which takes place as a result of both sin and woundedness.  But we didn’t go into depth on how to break free from this kind of internal slavery.  In the last post, I mentioned that the process of change is often over-simplified, particular among Christians who reduce change down to a behavioral choice or a mental formula.  What I’d want to argue is that St. Paul thought differently – that our inner world is more complex, that our self-reliant strategies for coping with life’s pain are more advanced, that his metaphor of “war” actually challenges simplistic versions of change.  The complexity is embedded in a Pauline phrase – “members of the body.”  These warring and dividing “members of the body” are inside, and become an illustration for what happens outside, among people.  In some respects, these internal members of the body are like an internal family, called to be unified by polarized by their different agendas.  N.T. Wright, in fact, calls these “members of the body” parts of our psyche. And sometimes these different parts of us, like members of a family, don’t get along.

Think about this practically.  We’ll often use language saying, “My heart says yes, but my head says no.”  Sometimes, we’ll say, “Part of me wants to stay in the relationship, but another part of me doesn’t.”  Or, a good friend will hear us tell her that we’re doing fantastic, but will read on our face that we’re really a mess.  Or, we’ll read a good many authors who talk about a false self or mask that we wear which isn’t our true self or core.  It seems that we’re divided within.  I illustrated this in that previous post with the ambivalence of the Israelites who, on the one hand, wanted everything the Promised Land had to offer, but on the other hand wanted the security of Egypt.  St. Paul in Rom. 7 can say, “I don’t really understand myself, for I want to do what is right, but I don’t do it. Instead, I do what I hate.”

While I spelled out the problem in my previous post, I did not elaborate on the process of growth, change, and restoration.  The first insight for wilderness emergence comes from St. Paul himself, when he says, “it’s not me sinning, it’s sin in me.” The point, for Paul, is that something new and good exists within.  He calls this “new creation” (2 Cor. 5:17), among other things.  It is new life inside of us.  It is a regenerated heart.  It is a temple of the Holy Spirit.  And for this new self, Paul prays for strength “with power through the Spirit in your inner being” (Eph. 3:16).  This is not another “part” of us, it is a new self, a new center, a new organizing principle amidst the disorganized and chaotic parts of the old self.  It is this new self, the home of God Himself, that becomes the redemptive center in a wounded soul.

Now, the problem is that many of us live more from a part of ourselves, a false self, than this new self.  In fact, sometimes these parts of us take over, going to war against this new self and sending us into a tailspin.  Often, we’ll say, “My anxiety takes over and I just can’t think,” or “When I’m depressed I just don’t feel like myself,” or “When I blow up at my wife, I don’t feel like it’s me, and I hate who I’ve become.”  The truth is, it is not you. You, the new you, the real you, the redeemed you, could not and would not do that.  This is why St. Paul can say, “It’s not me, it’s sin in me.”

While we’ll learn more about how these warring parts of us work in future posts, it is important to know that what you need to begin growing, changing, healing, and maturing is already in you.  It is not in your spouse.  It is not in a counselor.  It is not in a substance.  It is not a religious ritual.  And it is not in your self, or your “old self,” that is.  Sometimes, we expect people to fix us, or substances to fix us, or even false images of ourselves to fix us.  And while these things can be helpful to point us to growth, challenge us to maturity, and sustain us in our journey, they cannot fix us.  But if St. Paul is right, God has pitched his tent in us, and is committed to seeing this new seed of life grow, flourish, and change us from the inside out.  As a therapist, this is a great relief, in some respects, because God Himself is far more committed to seeing change take place within people than I am.  It’s a great relief, but also a great Hope as well.  The Kingdom of God, like a mustard seed, is growing within.

Emerging from the wilderness, we recognize that God had a purpose all along: “The dark night helps the false self to wither.  It liberates our true self” (Daniel Schrock).  The dark night, in fact, often makes us strikingly aware of old patterns and habits that enslaved us.  But how do we begin to recognize that centered place, that new self, that core where God resides, particularly when we feel like we’ve succumbed to identity theft?  St. John of the Cross counseled that you find “you” by identifying what isn’t you.  Sounds confusing, right?  This, for St. John, was a contemplative exercise, an exercise in self-awareness where you pay close attention to feelings or thoughts that are not you.  For our 21st century practical purposes, let’s do an exercise.

Imagine that you are standing at the foot of a mountain.  At the foot of the mountain, begin to identify and greet the different “you’s” that have been taking over.  For example, I’d see the Chuck who is a competent workaholic who finds identity in achievement, and the distant loner who finds (false) satisfaction and safety in my own mind, and the chronic helper who has trouble saying no, and the anxious plate-spinner who vigilantly obsesses on details, and the insecure little boy who rarely emerges but wields great power from his hidden place, or the lonely need-vacuum who longs for affection and approval, and many, many other Chuck’s who operate within my orbit.  In this exercise, we are not yet working with these varying parts of ourselves, just getting to know our core self.  So, as you see and experience each part of you, acknowledge it, and tell it you’ll get to know it later, but walk on and up the hillside.  As another false self greets you, acknowledge it, but ask it to stay behind.  Some of these you may greet as old, longtime friends.  Some may come as a surprise.  I was surprised to be greeted, at one point, by a very strategic part of me that was far more manipulative in my world than I knew.  Again, the point is to greet the part of you, and walk onward and upward, like Christian in Pilgrim’s Progress.  As St. John taught, the more we identify what isn’t us, the real us, the more we begin to get a glimpse of that unfettered treasure that is our new self.  At the top of the mountain, when these varying parts of you have stepped back, take some time to sit and be silent, experiencing God’s nearness as you can, experiencing the spaciousness of an inner place that “flows with milk and honey.”

Rest and enjoy.

Now that you’ve moved through the winding path upward, greeting your many counter-identities, alter-ego’s, and false selves, you’ll be more ready to greet them on the way back down from a place of greater love and sanctified compassion.  After all, these parts of you reflect good and godly longings which have become mis-directed toward achieving intimacy, purpose, and glory in our own way and in our own timing.  They have chosen Egypt over the patient longing for the land flowing with milk and honey.  They’ve chosen management over trust, and in so doing have thrown our hearts into disorder.  In the coming weeks, we’ll explore how to meet God at the mountain top, and return to our disordered world with God’s intention to love and redeem.

Until then, God’s peace.

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Emerging from the Wilderness: How We Get Change All Wrong

We’ve talked much about how the wilderness is a place of both great suffering and extraordinary promise.  It is in the wilderness that we’re stripped of every cheap hope to which we’ve clung, every alter-ego that we thought could help us save face, every manufactured identity that would win God’s approval (and that of our friends), every claim to control over our own lives.  When we fully recognize our addiction to Egypt, we pray for a wilderness.  It’s not that we’re masochistic.  Quite the contrary.  We’re hungry for life, and life to the full.  And so the wilderness provides fertile ground for the hard work of recovering our identity, the original imago, the true self once hidden behind a thousand masks.

But how? you ask.  This is where theologians and counselors alike begin becoming far too simplistic in their soul-remedies.  I recently read the draft of an academic paper by a well-known theologian writing on this very thing.  Like many in the psychological world who buy into the majority paradigm – Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy – this theologian seemed to reduce change down to “telling yourself the truth.”  And so, the Christian platitudes follow.  We’re told to remind ourselves of our justification every day, and rejoice in our forgiveness, and preach the Gospel to ourselves.  Amen…but…

These remedies, if they really worked, would make genuises out of all of us.  We’d sell best-selling books.  And some do.  But they don’t work, at least not fully.  For many, they lead to more frustration and futility.  Telling ourselves that we’re justified doesn’t make depression go away.  In fact, it tricks us a bit.  After all, it’s true that we’re loved and forgiven.  But, other voices are at work within challenging that truth over and again.  We’ll get to those “other voices” in another blog, but let’s talk first about the complexity of human change and growth.

What is most troubling, in my estimation, is the idea that we’re capable of telling ourselves to feel better when the reality is that life, on this side of the return of Jesus, is still marked by struggle in the “wilderness” in large part.  We’re aliens and strangers (1 Peter 2:11), even still, looking for that “better country” (Heb. 11:16).  And if this is the case, at least in part, then life is still chock full of suffering and struggle.  Even the saints who have already gone to heaven know this, crying out, “How long until justice comes?” (Rev. 6:10).  It’s the loud voice of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the muted voice of a genocide survivor.  It’s the desperate voice of a middle-aged housewife struggling from depression and a 13 year old enslaved by a San Francisco urban sex-slave pimp.  Tell desperate people to just “tell yourself the truth,” and if they’re honest they’ll answer with the same contempt with which C.S. Lewis responded to his truth-telling colleagues after the death of his wife.

Old Testament scholar Bruce Waltke once summarized the Old Testament Book of Job in a lecture, saying, “Job was honest and God commended him.  Job’s friends told the truth, and were scolded.”  Sometimes the truth does not set us free.  Sometimes the truth denies the God-ordained pattern of wrestling and lamenting that might actually lead to real freedom, and lived-truth.

In a previous post, I talked about the importance of this process, the process of lament.  I talked about how Old Testament scholars view Jeremiah’s lament as an acrostic, meticulously detailing every jot and tittle of his emotional storehouse.  All details must be heard.  All suffering must be acknowledged.  And frankly, this process is just too long and messy for most of us.  We’d rather clean up suffering, and we’d rather make change manageable – just change your mind.  Well, that doesn’t work, and it’s also oblivious to the reality that change, in the Bible, was extraordinary long and hard, and consisted of many failures along the way.  If change were that easy, St. Paul’s congregations would have been models of spiritual victory, as he told them the truth over and again.  Sadly, his congregations were a mess.

In the coming blogs, we’ll explore the details of lament.  What we’ll see is that change is, at the very least, a change of mind, but in actuality far more.  We’ll see that the recovery of identity, of the imago, demands a serious appraisal of our many false identities and the ways in which they operate within us.  We’ll see that St. Paul, himself, was a living contradiction, a man of competing allegiances.  We’ll also see that St. Paul was a panoply of identities nevertheless anchored in a core identity.  And we’ll see how this is true of us, too.  We’ll see how God accommodates to our own internal brokenness with a myriad of different voices and images, knowing full well that the body has many members, each needing care.  Stay tuned, because this is the part that gets both fun and controversial…and, in my estimation, tells God’s story in technicolor, the way it was meant to be told.

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The fruit that takes away life, and the fruit that gives it

“Surrender don’t come naturally to me.” (Rich Mullins from his song Hold Me Jesus)

As you see more dearly that your vocation is to be a witness to God’s love in this world, and as you become more determined to live out that vocation, the attacks of the enemy will increase. You will hear voices saying, ‘You are worthless, you have nothing to offer, you are unattractive, undesirable, unlovable: The more you sense God’s call, the more you will discover in your own soul the cosmic battle between God and Satan. Do not be afraid. Keep deepening your conviction that God’s love for you is enough, that you are in safe hands, and that you are being guided every step of the way. What is important is to keep clinging to the real, lasting, and unambiguous love of Jesus. Whenever you doubt that love, return to your inner spiritual home and listen there to love’s voice. Only when you know in your deepest being that you are intimately loved can you face the dark voices of the enemy without being seduced by them.  The love of Jesus will give you an ever-clearer vision of your call as well as of the many attempts to pull you away from that call. The more you are called to speak for God’s love, the more you will need to deepen the knowledge of that love in your own heart. The farther the outward journey takes you, the deeper the inward journey must be. Only when your roots are deep can your fruits be abundant.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.  (St. Paul)

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One of the hardest things I’ve learned (correct that:  am learning) is that surrender doesn’t come naturally to me.  Rich Mullins was right.  I’d rather cling to the old rags of Egypt rather than surrender to the infinite treasures of the New Eden.  Emerging out of the sufferings of the wilderness, I find myself stripped of those old rags…yet I remember them.  And in remembering, I sometimes lust after them again.  In their day, they held great weight.

I’ve found that my prayer in recent years has become a simple one:  Hide my life in yours, Jesus. It comes from St. Paul:  For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. This is vintage ‘New Exodus’ Paul.  It’s the death-to-life pattern of Jesus, living out the Exodus pattern of Israel.  We were lost in the wilderness, but now we’re found – found to God, found to others, found to ourselves.

I hide in a thousand other things.  I avoid God, and in doing so avoid myself in the many false selves and false identities I live out of.  After a while, I’ve forgotten myself, and feel lost to God.  Descending into the wilderness, I am stripped of these counter-identities, and reminded of my Eden-born identity as God’s image, never completely lost but hidden as a treasure in God’s heart.  The lessons of the wilderness are hard.  I find that I’m stripped of reputation, identity-through-achievement, love when I want it, progress on my terms, and more.  But as we’ve said before, it is a stripping down which actually reveals our hidden life in God, our real selves, our deepest identity.

The journey up and out of the wilderness leads to the freedom of life as it was meant to be lived.  And St. Paul gives definition to that, as well.  He calls it “fruit” – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.  Love, once mis-directed to a thousand false loves, is now re-directed and renewed in its First Love.  Joy, once found in a temporary pleasure that could be bought or controlled at will, is now found in longing, sometimes without immediate gratification, for the greater Joy.  Peace, defined as conflict avoidance and repressed desire, now becomes a verb – the renewal of shalom, the re-ordering of relationships and the reconciliation of those at war with one another.  Patience, replaced by remote-controls that falsely convince us that we can control pleasure and quick spiritual fixes which sell us on 3 steps to our best life, now finds renewal in a heart that waits longingly for a deeper satisfaction.  Kindness, domesticated in fixed smiles on Christian faces, now becomes a risky compassion (suffering with another) that deepens relationship and bestows dignity on another.  Faithfulness, crushed into definitions mandating dogmatic certainty at the expense of relationship, now flourishes in commitment to living out (delightfully) the command to love our neighbors and relentlessly pursue (rather than demonize) those we differ with.  Gentleness, exposing our need to power over and control, invites a vulnerability which may in fact expose our weakness but show Christ’s strength.  Self-control, rather than a behavioral call to pull-ourselves-up-by-our-bootstraps, actually manifests in surrender to God, which can feel like being out-of-control to control freaks like me.

These are the fruits of the New Exodus journey.

But Henri Nouwen is right.  Read the quote at the top of the blog again.  It is precisely at this moment that the memories of Egypt stir, the old demons awake, and we imagine that the control we had and the pleasures we experienced and the identities we formed back then might actually be better and more satisfying.

Hide me in you, Jesus.

Ever since Adam and Eve took a bite into the deadly passion-fruit, we’ve been hiding…hiding from who we were truly meant to be, how we were truly made to live.  Freedom and joy awaits the one who finds that hidden self bound up in God.  That is fruit that nourishes…us, and those around us…

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What are the old identities God is calling you to surrender?

What is the cost of losing that identity?  How has it defined you…to yourself, and to others?

What “fruits of the Spirit” do you feel are most difficult for you to live into?  How does your struggle reveal what you are most attached to right now, and how you might need Jesus?

fixed or found? the journey from self-reliance to surrender.

In the last post entitled Opening Our Clenched Fists and Reaching Out Towards Hope, I began to paint a picture of the scary but glorious emergence from the dark valley of pain.  Nouwen’s metaphor of clenched fists opening – released from tension and clamoring – is a beautiful metaphor for a heart that releases its grip on control (manifested in the many self-remedies we choose) and surrenders its past, present, and future to a God that Walter Brueggemann once described as “wild, unfettered, and free.”  It must have seemed crazy to the Israelites, and so it also feels crazy to us to trust this Divine Mystery.  Perhaps, though, the second generation of Israelites, having seen the follies of their parents, intuited C.S. Lewis’ insights on Aslan’s character in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe -

“‘Safe?’ said Mr. Beaver…’Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. but he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.’”

And perhaps we, too, having seen the follies of our parents (the wounds inflicted in Egypt) and the folly of our own self-remedies (the wickedness revealed at Sinai) find ourselves plunged into the valley of the shadow of death only to discover, at some point, that we’ve been released from the burden of blaming others or fixing ourselves and propelled into freedom.  These New Exodus moments can be so rare, but the beauty and joy we find in them is profound.  Surrender is a glorious thing.

But how on God’s green earth do we surrender, you say?

The theologically appropriate answer, at this point, is – the Holy Spirit.  The Spirit blew in like a fresh wind at Pentecost, re-animating a New Humanity, a New Adam with the breath of life.  And on this New Exodus journey, we find at our darkest valleys and lowest moments that we are powerless, that the First Step in the Twelve Steps is the starting place – Blessed are the poor (ptochos – broken, beggarly, powerless) in spirit. Those impoverished in spirit need a Holy Spirit.  Those who have drowned need new life.  We simply cannot revive ourselves.

But how does this theologically appropriate answer translate into our daily battles with anorexia and sex addiction, workaholism and achievement addiction, depression and grief?  How does “surrender” fix our problems?

I’m convinced that our problems may actually be God’s way of leading us to surrender.

You see, we are not problems to be fixed.  Rather, we are broken and beautiful children of the King needing to be found.

Fixing is the problem.  Think about it this way.  It is in trying to fix ourselves that we continue to perpetuate our anxiety and depression.  It is in trying to fix ourselves that we run headlong into addiction.  It is in trying to fix ourselves that childhood wounds actually fester and grow.

The Prodigal Son tried to fix his problem (hunger) by eating the pods of a carob tree, a meal that middle-eastern scholar Kenneth Bailey claims would have given him no satisfaction, no nutrition, and no relief from his hunger pains.  He needed to be Found.

The Prodigal Son tried to fix his problem (despair) by going back to his father and asking to be a slave.  His problem was fixed by being Found…greeted by a Father who would run to him in his mess, not away from him, saying, “My son was lost and now is found.”

The Elder Son tried to fix his problem (insecurity) by becoming a narcissistic, self-promoting do-gooder.  The father told him that what he perceived to be the problem was never a problem.  “Everything I have is yours.”  He was lost and needed to be found, and hadn’t even left.

Our problems reveal the specific cure we need.  They reflect parts of us that crave God’s original shalom.  Our problem (sex addiction) is not an internet connection to be cut off, but a longing to be found intimately by another.  Our problem (depression) is not simply a feeling that should go away, but a longing to be known, loved, and found in our tears.  Our problem (eating disorder) is not about more food being eaten, but about a person who wants to disappear being found by One who sees and loves.  Our problem (cutting/self-mutiliation) is not simply a bad behavior to stop, but a longing to be released from a deeper pain and held in the arms of One who was cut on for our sakes.  Our problem (marital issues) is not a problem to be solved, but two people who long to be better known, understood, and intimately allied with one another and God.  Our problem (abuse) is not a memory to be erased, but reveals a longing to be held in the healing safety of Another.

You see, we surrender our need to be fixed, or fix ourselves.  We embrace the mysterious cure found in the strong, yet intimate, care of a Good (but not safe…) God.  Repentance, then, becomes something more than a mechanical prayer we say when we feel guilty.  It becomes an active and daily turning away from self-reliance and into the loving embrace of a God who isn’t mad, but delighted…

This process takes a lifetime.  For behind each clenched fist is another.  Our brokenness runs deep.  It is embedded in decades of hard memories, brain chemistry which has adapted and actually fosters the self-fix, the torrent of a powerful unconscious which lurks beneath our awareness, the body-memory of a place where our abuser violated us, and the seemingly inviolable patterns and habits which have emerged from years of resistance.

But here is what is liberating.  To assume we can fixed leads us further into a desperate search for the illusive pod that the Prodigal sought to devour.  It leads us to the lie of quick fixes and the false promises of hotshot preachers and therapists who pretend to be gods.  Instead, we’re lead out of the wilderness and into the embrace of the Father, to be Found.  This “being found” is a lifetime journey.  We’re prone to forget, and leave the safe arms of God and our community for more familiar lovers – less-Wild lovers.  But in those times, when we’re prone to find the fix again, let the quiet whisper of the one who longs to find you say again, “Come to me all you who are weary and heavy ladened and I will give you rest.”

Found.

Where surrender is possible.

May the Spirit blow this new wind your way…

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Think about a significant “problem” you struggle with.  How have you attempted to fix it?

How is “fixing” a way we actually assume we can manage our own problems?  How does it actually minimize our need for grace, for love – to be Found?

How might it be frightening to abandon your “fixing” project?

How would your life look different if you stepped into this new reality of being Found?

Feel free to post comments about your journey.