The Reality of God's Love, and our Illusions

I have, on more than one occasion been asked, "How do you know God loves you -- personally, tangibly -- not as a theological truth". My heart breaks for people who ask that question. I've been there and know the pain of thinking you are unlovable, and to be honest there are days when I find myself back in that place. For someone like me, who spent 20+ years of my life thinking I was 'damaged goods' and 'unlovable if you really knew me', it is an exceedingly hard place to get free from. But thankfully, gradually, the days of living as if I'm not loved are becoming fewer and farther apart.

Part of my problem, and the problem that I think many like me face, is that we accept our culture's definition of love, and our culture's standards for 'being lovable'. So we put on a mask of performance to meet those standards. The world may love the mask, but our true selves behind the mask receives none of that love. We may even think God loves the mask, but in our more honest moments we know that he sees right through it and we think that, by the worlds definition of love, God can't possibly love us.

But the open secret of scripture is that God's love for us precedes any action on our part. "For God so Loved the world that he sent his only begotten son..." (Jn 3:16) and "We loved because he first Loved us." (1 Jn 4:19) are truths we all too often forget. And God's Love isn't the needy and conditional 'I love you because of what you can do for me' kind of love that the world offers; His love is selfless and without end. He says, "I have loved you with an everlasting love." I know this is still in the general head knowledge or 'read in a book' kind of information, but it is one of the things we need to know if we are going to dare to believe it and dare to put down the mask of performance.

Putting the mask down is probably the hardest thing a person will ever do. For certainly there are some people who live by the worlds definition of love and will walk away; preferring illusion to reality. We will all be tempted to pick the mask back up when around certain people, especially those who are significant to us in our relationships. But if we are to begin to experience the reality of God's love for us, we need to face the reality of ourselves. Only then then will we realize that God has always loved us, our true selves hidden under our masks and the walls of protection we've built for ourselves. And we can be confident of his love, because we have given up the illusions and see that God's love depends on God, not on us.

I read a quote from Thomas Merton's "No Man is an Island" on one of the blogs I follow, and thought it would be worth sharing here as well.

13. Our ability to be sincere with ourselves, with God, and with other men is really proportionate to our capacity for sincere love. And the sincerity of our love depends in large measure upon our capacity to believe ourselves loved. Most of the moral and mental and even religious complexities of our time go back to our desperate fear that we are not and can never be really loved by anyone.

When we consider that most men want to be loved as if they were gods, it is hardly surprising that they should despair of receiving the love they think they deserve. Even the biggest of fools must be dimly aware that he is not worthy of adoration, and no matter what he may believe about his right to be adored, he will not be long in finding out that he can never fool anyone enough to make her adore him. And yet our idea of ourselves is so fantastically unreal that we rebel against this lack of “love” as though we were the victims of an injustice. Our whole life is then constructed on a basis of duplicity. We assume that others are receiving the kind of appreciation we want for ourselves, and we proceed on the assumption that since we are not lovable as we are, we must become lovable under false pretenses, as if we were something better than we are. The real reason why so few men believe in God is that they have ceased to believe that even a God can love them. But their despair is, perhaps, more respectable than the insincerity of those who think they can trick God into loving them for something they are not. This kind of duplicity is, after all, fairly common among so-called “believers,” who consciously cling to the hope that God Himself, placated by prayer, will support their egotism and their insincerity, and help them to achieve their own selfish ends.

14. If we are to love sincerely, and with simplicity, we must first of all overcome the fear of not being loved. And this cannot be done by forcing ourselves to believe in some illusion, saying that we are loved when we are not. We must somehow strip ourselves of our greatest illusions about ourselves, frankly recognize in how many ways we are unlovable, descend into the depths of our being until we come to the basic reality that is in us, and learn to see that we are lovable after all, in spite of everything! This is a difficult job. It can only really be done by a lifetime of genuine humility. We must accept the fact that we are not what we would like to be. We must cast off our false, exterior self like the cheap and showy garment that it is. We must find our real self, in all its elemental poverty but also in its very great and very simple dignity: created to be a child of God, and capable of loving with something of God’s own sincerity and His unselfishness.

The first step in this sincerity is the recognition that although we are worth little or nothing in ourselves, we are potentially worth very much, because we can hope to be loved by God. He does not love us because we are good, but we become good when and because He loves us. If we receive this love in all simplicity, the sincerity of our love for others will more or less take care of itself. Strong in the confidence that we are loved by Him, we will not worry too much about the uncertainty of being loved by other men. I do not mean that we will be indifferent to their love for us: since we wish them to love in us the God Who loves them in us. But we will never have to be anxious about their love, which in any case we do not expect to see too dearly in this life.

15. The whole question of sincerity, then, is basically a question of love and fear. The man who is selfish, narrow, who loves little and fears much that he will not be loved, can never be deeply sincere, even though he may sometimes have a character that seems to be frank on the surface. In his depths he will always be involved in duplicity. He will deceive himself in his best and most serious intentions. Nothing he says or feels about love, whether human or divine, can safely be believed, until his love be purged at least of its basest and most unreasonable fears.

But the man who is not afraid to admit everything that he sees to be wrong with himself, and yet recognizes that he may be the object of God’s love precisely because of his shortcomings, can begin to be sincere. His sincerity is based on confidence, not in his illusions about himself, but in the endless, unfailing mercy of God.

doing vs being - where do we find our identity?

When you talk to youth (and some adults) about their future career, how do you usually phrase it? Do you ask "What do you want to do when you grow up?" or do you ask "What do you want to be when you grow up?" I think there is an important distinction to be made here. We live in a culture where our vocation is usually one of the primary ways to identify, or define a person; he's a doctor, she's a photographer, he's a home-maker, she's a CEO, etc. But what happens when the person leaves or loses their vocation? Do they lose their identity? Are they a different person? Are they now a 'nobody'? What about those who have not yet entered a vocation? Has their life not 'started' yet? I ask these questions because I myself had to come face to face with my own misconceptions about identity just a few years ago. Up until my current vocation with a rather large company, I had always made a name for myself and had a reputation of being the 'go to' guy. It was my 'identity', or at least a big part of it. Then I joined this large corporation and found myself without an 'identity'; I was part of the herd, I was (and still am) doing a very minor job that most people didn't even know existed, and doesn't begin to use the knowledge and skills that I have. For the first 6 months, I was like a drug user going through withdrawals; and I can definitely see why some who lose their job can sink into deep depression. But through it all God was helping me to see that my true identity was something else altogether, something unshakable, something that had to do with being rather than doing.

There is another thing that I've noticed about myself in the area of doing. For a large part of my life, I've allowed my failures to define me. Saying 'I'm a sinner' is easy for me to say and believe. I've never been a good enough son, or a good enough friend, or a good enough husband, or father. And I've wondered if people would be better off without me. To be defined by our failures isn't what God intended, yet I think that this is a powerful lie, that so many people (myself included) struggle with. As hard at it was for me to let go of the false identity of vocation, this one is even harder. Every time I fail, the whisper 'I am not....' is there to tell me how utterly worthless I am.

Yet there is another voice. The voice of the great 'I AM', that has been whispering something different to me. He tells me that I am his son, whom he loves. He tells me that from the foundation of the world he looked forward to my adoption as a son. He tells me that no matter where I wander in life - even in the darkest places, I will always be a son. For those who are sons and daughters of our great Abba, this is an unshakable truth, all that we now know will pass away, but this will never change.

And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge
- Paul's prayer for us in Ephesians 3:17-19

A 'Punishing God'? - Thoughts on the Cross and Forgiveness

Was the Cross punishment? In one sense; yes it was. It was a particularly cruel punishment established by Rome. The historian Josephus called it "the most wretched of deaths." So yes, humanly speaking it was a punishment, and I do not want at all to make light of the intense suffering that Jesus endured on the Cross. What I do want to look at though is whether or not there is a scriptural basis to say that 'God punished Jesus for our sin.' As I stated in the previous post, this understating of the cross makes no sense to me. It's not forgiveness, and it may appease or change God but it doesn't change me. And it may be quite Loving for Jesus to 'take my punishment', but it leaves us with a cruel and unforgiving Father. While scripture clearly indicates that the cross was intended to be a demonstration of love, by both Jesus and Father (Rom 5:8). Athanasius in his writing On the Incarnation, postulates that God could have done the work of reconciliation in secret somewhere in heaven, but that we would not have believed such a message. Rather the very public, and very obvious death of Jesus and the eyewitness accounts of his resurrection was meant to leave us without any doubt that indeed something happened; something that even after 2000 years we can look to.

Why doesn't God just forgive us?
I'm sure you've heard that question hundreds of times before and the answer usually given has to do with God's justice. The argument is that God justice must be 'satisfied'. While looking at Hebrews 9:22 I took a look at the Greek word that is translated into 'forgiveness' and found something astounding. I found that God doesn't 'just forgive', because that doesn't help us. It was never his intention to 'just forgive' because he wanted to solve our problem, not just forgive it and leave us eternally in our bondage to sin. The word in the Greek that is translated forgive is Aphiemi and it has a much broader meaning that the word forgive conveys in English. In Greek it carries with it the idea of actually removing sin from a person, so that when Jesus tells people their sins are forgiven in scripture he is saying their sins have been taken away.

What God accomplished by the Cross:
In the most basic terms, the Christ's death and resurrection is said to take away our sins (John 1:29, Heb 9:28, 1 John 3:5), and reconcile (2 Cor 5:18-19 , Eph 2:16, Col 1:20, 1 Peter 3:18) us to God. Both sin and the law (Eph 2:14-16, Col 2:14, Rom 7:1-6) are abolished in Christ. I'm sure you've heard these said before, but don't be so quick to pass them by. Think about what scripture is teaching here and what it is not teaching. It is saying that our problem is resolved, our spiritual disease is cured, we are set free and the law that condemns us is abolished. Scripture points to God's work on the cross as being something greater, something multifaceted that we can bring our questions to and find an answer; Love for the unloved, worth for those who feel worthless, a clean conscience for those who feel the weight of their guilt, freedom for those enslaved by their addictions. Consider the additional passages:

And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross. (Col 2:15)

For this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance—now that he has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant. (Heb 9:15)

For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. (1 Peter 3:18)

For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures (1 Cor 15:3)

Justifies - makes us right with God. (Rom 5)

Cleanse our conscience (Heb 9:14)

The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil's work. ( 1 John 3:8 )

In all of scripture there is only one verse that comes close to calling the cross 'God's punishment'. And that is Isaiah 53:5, yet even this verse uses a Hebrew word that is distinct from the word used for punishment. This word, muwcar, means chastening, correction, or instruction. This of course differs greatly from punishing someone for a criminal act. So you still have to bring your own presuppositions about 'punishment' to the text in order to read it that way (which, unfortunately, the NIV translators did).

How does the Cross (and resurrection) work?
While we are told what Christ did on the cross for us to resolved our problem, we aren't really given much information on the technical details of how this is accomplished. Maybe this is intended to be part of our faith, or trust in God. To trust that he is telling us the truth and not worry about the technical details. Maybe asking this question is what got us the doctrine of 'Penal Atonement' in the first place. Yet I believe there are hints in scripture that give us some small clue:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being by Him; and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being (Jn 1:1-3)
He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. (Col 1:17, see also 1 Cor. 8:6)
And He (Christ) is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power (Heb 1:3)
For Christ's love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. (2 Cor 5:14)
He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him (2 Cor 5:21)

If the one who is sustaining all of creation dies, what happens to creation? If he bears our sin, what happens to sin when he dies? And if the one who is sustaining creation is raised from the dead what happens to creation? If he ascends to the Father, is there then any consequence for creation?

Now, what are we to make of the fact that this One became a human being? What are we to make of the fact that the eternal and beloved Son of the Father–in and through and by whom all things were created–entered into his creation and became a man? Are we to treat this Son incarnate, Jesus Christ, as a mere man, a single, solitary, individual human being, who lived and died like every other human being? Does his presence, the presence of this Son incarnate, not carry immediate and decisive implications for the whole universe? How can we not see that this Son is Lord, that his existence–his life and death and resurrection and ascension–has dramatic and stunning significance for the cosmos? How can we not see that the human race is necessarily and beautifully and wonderfully bound up in this Son incarnate, this Creator incarnate, and therefore how could we possibly be blind to the staggering and glorious fact that the human race has been gathered together in this one Man, the Son-Creator incarnate, and taken to the Father in his ascension? For good or ill, what becomes of this Son, this Son-Creator incarnate, becomes of us. If he dies, we die. If he rises again, we rise again. If he ascends to the Father and sits down at His right hand, we too are lifted up and embraced by the Father and accepted into the life of the Trinity.
-- Baxter Kruger, The light of the Cosmos

Wrath?

I may get in trouble for admitting this, but I have some confessions to make. First, I still attend a local congregation with my wife and kids. Second, I teach 10th grade boys during 'Sunday School' (God help them). Third, I try my best not to listen to the sermon. Usually, I crack open my bible and begin reading in an effort to tune out whoever is speaking. I have to do this for the sake of my sanity, really. If you read my previous post, you can understand why I don't want to go back to that kind of thinking, and much of the time the god that many a preacher presents sound downright mean and nasty, like he keeps a flamethrower handy to toast anyone who steps out of line.

This past Wednesday, however, I heard a pastor say something that smacked me in the forehead and helped me to see that I can sometimes still read certain passages with my old religious lenses on and not even realize it. I'm talking about Romans chapter 1, where it talks about the 'wrath of God being revealed against all unrighteousness'. Now, I shouldn't be totally surprised that he said something this cool and amazing, because he is a good friend who is on a journey of his own with God -- away from the traditional religious view.

So Wednesday night, during the Q & A time someone asked him if AIDS was God's punishment for homosexuality, and I believe that they made a reference to Romans chapter 1; this is a typical fundamentalist take on AIDS. His answer was an unequivocal no. And then he said that if you pay attention to the passage it says 'God gave them over' not 'God punished them with or for' and that often sin is it's own punishment. That's when I heard the smack on my forehead. Sounds like something I read in 'The Shack' which I knew from life experience was true, but didn't realize there was a Scripture to back it up. I had to go read it for myself to be sure, which is funny because I am quite familiar with this passage but all those years had been reading it wrong. That is a very different kind of wrath indeed, not the god with the flamethrower, but the Father who lets the prodigal go hoping that he will learn that what he is wanting will destroy him. And, once he has learn that, turn back toward home.

Ahhhhh....

No, I did not just burp or pass gas! Yesterday, while riding the commuter bus home from work, I suddenly realized that I felt quite a bit lighter in my spirit. Funny I hadn't fully realized I was carrying some weight until I noticed it was gone. Thanks Papa! What was that all about anyway?

I knew, of course, that I had been deeply disturbed by the images of Hell, as portrayed by a recent 'Judgement House' event. But I guess I didn't realize that it had become a constant weight on my soul. Wrestling through all that has helped me to realize just how deeply we are effected by Greek philosophy here in the west. As westerners when we hear the words Holy, Just, Righteous we automatically think in legal terms. That paradigm is greco-roman in origin and carries with it the though that God is more of a singular entity, than Trinity. It's an important distinction to make; if God is a singular entity then a legal/moral being would make the most sense. But the Father, Son, and Spirit is Trinity -- a community. That means that the Father, Son, and Spirit are relational at their core, just as we are. Now look at the terms Holy, Just, and Righteous in relational terms instead of legal terms. They take on whole new meanings. Holy - whole, beautiful, perfect community. Just - setting things right, a promise to restore all things. Righteous - relationally right.

Just some thoughts that have helped me to see our true Father a bit better.

This is a bit random, but I just had to post this quote from C. Baxter Kruger talking about the idea the God punishes Jesus for our sin:

There is no forgiveness in that model. God doesn't forgive you, Jesus suffers your punishment. That's not forgiveness is it? It's justice; there's not any forgiveness there. Now, I know that rocks your world -- I hope it does.

Just another reason why I believe the Cross was a cure for our sin, rather than satisfying God's supposed 'need' to punish.