My friend, Kevin Miller, spoke at church last Sunday. He shared about some of the joys and sorrows of being a movie screenwriter. I laughed as I heard about his encounters with some famous characters: shaking Chuck Norris' hand, getting eye-contact with the pope, duking it out with Ben Stein, and getting sued by Yoko Ono. But when he shared from the heart about how a series of deep disappointments can lead to a sense of broken trust with God, I sobered up quickly. He was preaching right to my sadness.
In my disappointment, I know that I lost confidence in God's way of running this buggered up world and at times, took it upon myself to take his place--with disastrous effects. I have seen my capacity to fail others miserably and know the hellish pride of self-loathing. It's easy for me to get stuck there, because that place opposes the very core of God's message. Kev related how our old friend, Tyler, had challenged him to stop and to just spend time "soaking" in worship and just listening to God. Sounds simple, but the resistance to engage that way was itself instructive. He recommended sitting quietly and listening to Kim Walker's "Oh How He Loves Us" ... repeatedly, until a message came through.
The message that Kevin heard was "Come Home," a call both to refocus on his family life and on his childhood call to film-making. The results were magnificent (here's a great sample).
So I made a deliberate decision to lay down offences and defences at the Cross and to wait for God's word to me, in whatever form he chose to bring it. I was in for a surprise.
First, I woke up in the night with some song lyrics echoing in my head: "Why can't we give love one more chance?" I snickered ... a visitation from the late Freddie Mercury of Queen. The song is titled, "Under Pressure." When I got up, I decided to give God the benefit of the doubt. What if that was his message? So I read the lyrics of the entire song and ... well, I was floored! Here they are (please don't skim!).
Yeah, that about summed it up. But my objections remained. The disappointments, the broken trust, the "what if's" and "what about's" that lead to the despair of "what's the point?" or even just the sadness of accepting that this world is not right. How does one regain trust in a God who intervenes to save or judge less than I think he should or could? But I had laid down these obstacles and kept listening.
Pressure pushing down on me,
Pressing down on you no man ask for
Under pressure - that burns a building down,
Splits a family in two, Puts people on streets
It's the terror of knowing what this world is about
Watching some good friends screaming 'Let me out'
Pray tomorrow - gets me higher
Pressure on people - people on streets
Chippin' around - kick my brains around the floor
These are the days it never rains but it pours
People on streets, People on streets
It's the terror of knowing what this world is about
Watching some good friends screaming 'Let me out'
Pray tomorrow - gets me higher high high
Pressure on people - people on streets
Turned away from it all like a blind man
Sat on a fence but it don't work
Keep coming up with love, but it's so slashed and torn
Why - why - why ? Love love love love love
Insanity laughs under pressure we're cracking
Can't we give ourselves one more chance
Why can't we give love that one more chance
Why can't we give love give love give love give love
give love give love give love give love give love
'Cause love's such an old fashioned word
And love dares you to care for the people on the edge of the night
And loves dares you to change our way of caring about ourselves
This is our last dance, this is our last dance
This is ourselves, Under pressure, Under pressure, Pressure
That's when my friend, Brita, sent me the follow-up message from another unexpected source. I don't know if these words will ring like church bells for you, but they sure did for me. And while I may still have sad eyes, I felt myself carried laterally from acquiesence to surrender. Here was the revelation:
In the moment of surrender, I let go of all the theological or social questions which had kept me from Him for countless years. I simply let them go. There was the sense, profound and wordless, that if He knew everything I did not have to know everything, and that, in seeking to know everything, I'd been, all of my life, missing the entire point.
No social paradox, no historic disaster, no hideous record of injustice or misery should keep me from Him. No question of Scriptural integrity, no torment over the fate of this or that atheist or gay friend, no worry for those condemned and ostracized by my church or any other church should stand between me and Him. The reason? It was magnificently simple: He knew how or why everything happened; He knew the disposition of every single soul.
He wasn't going to let anything happen by accident! Nobody was going to go to Hell by mistake. This was His world, all this! He had complete control of it; His justice. His mercy--were not our justice or our mercy. What folly to even imagine such a thing.
I didn't have to know how He was going to save the unlettered and the unbaptized, or how He would redeem the conscientious heathen who had never spoken His name. I didn't have to know how my gay friends would find their way to Redemption; or how my hardworking secular humanist friends could or would receive the power of His Saving Grace. I didn't have to know why good people suffered agony or died in pain. He knew.
And it was His knowing that overwhelmed me. His knowing that became completely real to me, His knowing that became the warp and woof of the Universe which He had made.
His was--after all--the Divine Mind which had made the miracle of the Big Bang, and created the DNA only lately discovered in every physical cell. His was the Divine Mind that had created the sound of the violin in the Beethoven concerto; His was the Divine Mind that made snowflakes, idle flames, birds soaring upwards, the unfolding mystery of gender, and the gravity that seemingly held the Universe together--as our planet, our single little planet, hurtled through space.
Of course. If He could do all that, naturally He knew the answer to every conceivable question before it was formulated. He knew the worst suffering that a human soul could feel. Nothing was wasted with Him because He was the author of all of it. He was the Creator of creatures who felt anger, alienation, rage, despair. In this great novel that was action, every voice, every syllable, and every jot of ink.
And why should I remain apart from Him just because I couldn't grasp all this? He could grasp it. Of course!
It was love that brought me to this awareness, love that brought me into a complete trust in Him, a trust that God who made us could not ever abandon us--that the seeming meaninglessness of our world was the limit of our understanding, but never, never the limit of His. (Anne Rice, Called Out of Darkness, 183-185)
Yes, that Anne Rice, the old vampire erotica novelist. Called out of darkness to call me out of darkness. I don't know where this is going, but I can feel such freedom in her words that I plan to use this passage as my daily meditation--to soak in it--until this growing trust gives love one more chance.
bj
If by "Justice" we mean something like, "God's active wrath against horrendous injustice," such justice is scarce indeed. In fact, we might say that if God is wrathful, he's not very good (or consistent) at it.
If by "Justice" we mean something like, "Things being made right," then the ball is in our court, and we're even worse at it than God ... and sometimes in His name.
The only Justice I can really point to is the Cross, where things are made right as God takes injustice upon Himself and trumps it, not by slaughtering the unjust, but by forgiving.
An explanation of the Cross doesn't not do the trick. Only a vision of it. Worth a try.
Posted by: Brad | March 17, 2010 at 12:09 PM
I think that justice in this world is a fleeting thing, a concept that is foreign to the world as System. Certainly the 'world' has language for justice, but it lacks any real vitality when it comes to justice, thus so many cynics are proven correct when a drunk driver that kills someone receives a sentence that is an insult to the victim and their families for example. But there is a different justice that is not of this world/system. The justice of God is a far deeper and much more far reaching power than any 'justice' we can hope for in this world. So, while you may not believe that justice exists in this world (and believe me they cynic in me wants to agree) it does not mean that justice does not exist.
Posted by: Eric H Janzen | March 11, 2010 at 10:58 PM
Brad
Your sharing on New Day and this blog has impacted me more than I can begin to describe - I have spent the last five years raising Jonathan, our grandson who survived the loss of his family, and learning how to let go of SUCH an overdeveloped sense of responsibility - I really thought I could make a difference - I am seeing now that it is all Papa, Jesus and the Holy Spirit and I am finally letting myself be loved and letting go. I'm wondering if i could also be a prototype for restoration...... a friend, Gloria Roberts
Posted by: Gloria Roberts | April 26, 2009 at 12:46 PM
Hi Andy,
I wish the momentary mountain-top aha! moment I had when I wrote the article had transfigured me somehow past the need to climb the mountain. I guess it was a hopeful vision of where we're heading, with no promise of shortcuts. I find myself looking up now from the base of a cliff that I have no energy to climb. Baby steps.
A friend of mine recently distinguished between forgiveness, which happens in a moment, and cleansing, which relates to these horrid processes by which the grime and infections are scrubbed from our shredded flesh.
Okay, now I'm just being morbid. But let me ask you this. What if you and I could be proto-types for restoration? Even from my place of hiding, I mean it when I say that I love you,
bj
Posted by: bj | April 05, 2009 at 10:12 AM
Andy... Andy... Andy
peace
Posted by: anns | April 01, 2009 at 08:04 PM
As a man who betrayed Jesus by trying to be Him I can testify to the dark place we get plunged into when we try and take His place. You try and be a saviour and form the world in your own image and the results are chaos and fear . It is a dark place of torment where there are no words to express the grief. Thanks Brad for showing the way home. I long to find it also.
Posted by: andymac | April 01, 2009 at 06:37 PM
Do you not know? Have you not heard? My Father does not grow weary. He gives passion to the willing heart, and even if the youth get tired and faint, strength will come to those who wait.
I know its a psalm, but to me they are lyrics from Kevin Prosch's song 'They that Wait'. I often sing these words for the very reason you are talking about my friend. I imagine the big bad ugly world as a person and beside that person is the Enemy and together they are trying to overwhelm me. Then I sing to them in as defiant a voice as I can: "Do YOU not know? Have YOU not heard? MY Father does NOT grow weary." That puts me in a strong place in the Spirit because all the focus is now on Father God. Yes I am weak, but this is not about my weakness, it is about my Father's strength. Then I pray my heart to be willing and I wait on Father to fill me with passion and strength. I have also learned the hard way around that I am not a Savior, Jesus is the Savior and I am waaaay better off letting him fill that role.
Posted by: Eric H Janzen | March 13, 2009 at 12:27 PM
thanks Brad.
words needed by this heart too.
Posted by: carol | March 09, 2009 at 09:48 PM
Thank you Brad :)
Posted by: Deb | March 09, 2009 at 11:39 AM
Great, now I have Under Pressure and Ice Ice Baby going through my head ;)
I've been going through a similar thought process http://www.facebook.com/ext/share.php?sid=65331495235&h=mls5P&u=P8T7G
I've been led again and again to John 15:9.
Thanks for sharing.
Posted by: Paul Rivas | March 06, 2009 at 09:38 AM
A few years ago I had the difficult privilege of performing the funeral of a young girl who died suddenly and unexpectedly of massive heart failure. What I remember most from that time is the Holy Spirit speaking clearly to me and through me that what mattered was not that Jesus had the answers to the questions in our hearts and minds but that Jesus IS the answer to those questions.
Brad, thanks (yet again) for being transparent enough in your dark times to reflect some Light into my dark times.
Oh how he loves US...
Posted by: Eric B | March 06, 2009 at 08:44 AM
it is a wonder that surrender can be so simple and so difficult at the same time.
thank you - this feels like a gentle and not so gentle push in the right direction.
musing..., is surrender a direction or a destination?
Blessings
Posted by: adit | March 05, 2009 at 11:24 AM