God in Our Image

Sometimes I begin a seminar by having the group close their eyes and answer the question, ‘Have you ever heard the whisper, I am not?’ Without my even asking, hands go up. Sometimes people raise both hands. There is always a gasp or two, and nervous laughter. Then I ask, ‘I am not what...? Instinctively people answer the question with one word. As they answer I write it down on the board. Here is a list from a recent conference.

I am not... welcome, not perfect, not good enough, not loved, not lovable, not understood, not deserving, not the one, not satisfied, not acceptable, not special, not certain, not appreciated, not there yet, not important, not smart enough, not worthy, not fast enough, not safe, not liked, not included, not anything, not fulfilled, not respected, not valuable, not it, not happy, not free, not forgiven, not able, not tall enough, not pretty enough, not strong, not healed, not supported, not saved, not wanted, not special, not adequate.

Whether we are conscious of it or not, we all carry the burden of this whisper, and it is a burden, a ‘yoke grievous to be borne’ to borrow a great phrase my Professor, J. B. Torrance. It debilitates and poisons our lives. It can be scary to look honestly at our own ‘I am nots,’ or the family of them that have taken root in our souls. Two things will happen for sure. First, you will be shocked at how much of your time, energy and life have been dedicated to managing this burdensome yoke, and how it has shaped your perception of yourself and others, and your relationships or lack of them. But, as Paul Fitzgerald of Heartconnexion ministries says, ‘what is not acknowledge cannot be healed.’ And if is not healed, it is influencing.

Second, you will be liberated. When we look at ourselves and face our ‘I am nots’ a wonderful thing happens. We experience the sheer acceptance of the Father, Son and Spirit. It’s almost funny. For we all know that the Lord knows us inside and out anyway, but we have a way of not thinking about his awareness of us, and our lives. But an honest look at ourselves makes us vulnerable to Papa’s love. That is as beautiful as it is ironic. Our ‘I am nots’ make us fear exposure and thus judgment. This is the trick of the father of lies. But what actually happens when we get honest is that we have nowhere to go. And when you have nowhere to go you become keenly aware of where you are—known, loved, accepted and delighted in by Jesus, his Father and the Holy Spirit. You may even hear another whisper, this one laced with divine delight and humor, “Well, duh! And... You didn’t think we knew that?” We have been loved and accepted our whole lives, but not in our minds. And that is the problem.

John Calvin said that our minds are a perpetual factory of idols. The beautiful news of our inclusion in Jesus’ relationship with his Father and in his relationship with the Holy Spirit is too good to believe. How could I be so loved, so embraced, so accepted? It can’t be.

At somewhere around this point in the seminar I have the group close their eyes again and ask another question. ‘What is God like?’ Answers come quickly and usually with considerable passion. Here is a list of the answers.

Holy, Judgmental, Indifferent, Powerful, Mean, Removed, Love, Distant, Legalistic, Uncaring, Impersonal, in Two Minds, Unsafe, Unapproachable, Angry, Gracious, Loving, Harsh, Abusive

With a list like this you would think I was speaking in a prison, but I wasn’t. This list, or one very similar to it has cropped up time and again in my travels around the world. It appears to be universal. Never once has the word Trinity been said, or the word relational—except, of course, by people who had been through the seminar before.

Here is another question. ‘Do you notice a similarity between the two lists?’ At this moment in the seminar there is dead silence, usually followed by something akin to a corporate gasp, and then head shaking and laughter. The way we think of God is the fruit of our ‘I am nots.’ It is called projection. While the Bible tells us that God created us in his own image, the truth is we have created god in ours. We hear the whisper, ‘I am not...’ believe it, project its pain into heaven and create a corresponding god, who then confirms our ‘I am not...’ Without even knowing it we tar the face of Jesus’ Papa with the brush of own wrongly perceived ‘notness.’ It is a hermeneutical nightmare, which ruins life, poisons freedom, and destroys relationships. With a god like this how could anyone face their ‘I am nots,’ or even acknowledge that anything is wrong?

The whole quagmire is rooted in a lie, and knowing the truth is its undoing. Jesus shares his own ‘I Am’ with us. He always has and always will. And he does so in the deep places. It is Jesus’ own I Am—I am the beloved Son of the Father, I am anointed with the Holy Spirit, I am wanted, welcomed, loved, known, cared for, safe, a thrill to my Father’s heart, I am acceptable, important, worthy, good, and full of joy—that he puts within our hearts. And the Holy Spirit works to help us hear it and to take baby steps of faith that it is true, steps against our own judgment or mindset. As we do, we begin to know that we are known, accepted, loved and delighted in, and we have freedom to look honestly at ourselves. We begin to see Jesus’ Papa with Jesus’ eyes. Then comes more freedom to be honest. In time our ‘I am nots’ are erased by Jesus’ great ‘I ams.’ And Jesus’ own life and peace and joy and freedom with his Father and the Holy Spirit begin to express themselves in us, in the way we see ourselves and others, in our relationships, work and play. It is, as Paul Young says, ‘an incremental process.’ And it produces life. Such is the kingdom of the Triune God. Thank you, Holy Spirit. We will have more please.

Good Friday

I just read an essay on Jesus “absorbing the wrath of God” on the cross. It almost made me throw up. With such ease and passion and not a little patronizing the writer split Jesus’ Father into two different persons, and then ripped the Father-Son relationship apart, apparently without even knowing it, or caring. What madness. I suppose the Holy Spirit just stood there dazed wondering whose side he was supposed to join. There is something sinister about the need to have the Father vent his rage upon his own Son. And even more so when one then tries to call such an act “glorious grace.” But punishment is not forgiveness, and murder is not grace, and Jesus did not suffer the wrath of his Father, and the Holy Spirit was not torn between two lovers.

“Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem; and the Son of Man will be delivered to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn Him to death, and will hand Him over to the Gentiles to mock and scourge and crucify Him, and on the third day He will be raised up.” (MT 20:18-19)

It was the human race—not the Father—who condemned his Son. We cursed him. We poured our scorn, our wrath, our rage upon Jesus. We murdered him. And Jesus deliberately submitted himself to us and to our bizarre wrongheadedness. He bore our wrath. He suffered our enmity and died in the arms of our scorn. And he was not alone. His Father and the Holy Spirit were with him. And that is just the point. In the murder of Jesus the life of the Father, Son and Spirit found its way into our greatest sin—and overcame it. The cross is not about Jesus being forsaken by his Father; it is about the Father’s Son incarnate and the One anointed in the Holy Spirit submitting himself to the darkness of the human race, and thereby establishing a relationship with us as gross sinners. In the genius of the blessed Trinity our rejection and murder of Jesus were turned into the ultimate act of acceptance and embrace. In the murder of Jesus the blessed Trinity was “absorbing the wrath of the human race,” thereby forming oneness with us in our sin, and including us in Jesus’ relationship with his Father in the Holy Spirit. That is glorious grace, and forgiveness, and atonement, and real reconciliation, and love, and holiness, and right relationship, and mercy, and judgment.

Thank you Father, Son and Spirit for loving us beyond our wildest dreams.

The Blessed Roux

The astonishing beauty and joy and goodness of the relationship of the Father, Son and Spirit is the blessed roux destined to permeate the dish of the whole cosmos.

Freedom to Be

My friend Paul Fitzgerald of Grace Connexion Ministries showed me a poster that he uses in one of his lectures. It was a tombstone with a place for a name. Underneath that was the simple epitaph “I survived.” When I first saw it I laughed, but then it has haunted me ever since. I will be posting some thoughts soon on the origin of our “I am nots.” I am not loveable. I am not good enough. I am not worthy, not special, not wanted. We all have them, and they debilitate us, poisoning our freedom to live life. We go into survival mode. One of my most damaging is “I am not there yet.” It is a simple statement, but it drives me, and I suspect it drives nations, corporations and denominations as well. The particular problem that “I am not there yet” creates is the inability to enjoy the moment, and that means people and Papa’s creation. That is a consequence of the enormous drive to contribute, to do more, to create. Folks who are afflicted with this particular problem get an awful lot done. They are typically over-achievers. And we typically miss out on our daughter’s smile, the simple joy of being in the room with friends, or the exquisite colors of a bird. Even when we take a break, we can’t take a break.

Last week I got a call from a older man who had been ‘asked to leave’ the church where he served as a pastor. He was devastated. He had no idea what he would do. ‘Ministry’ was his life. After I listened for a while to his hurt and to his fear, I told him, “Jesus loves you an awful lot.” He asked, “what do you mean?” “He loves you so much as to deliver you from the machine, so that you can be free to live. If you are a pastor, no one can keep you from caring about people. You don’t need to be in a institution to do that. All you need is people. So now you are free to get to know people. And you can do that anywhere, beginning with your own family.”

“I am not there yet” usually means that we buy into someone’s definition of where ‘there’ is, and some notion of how to get there, and we lose ourselves in the diligent process of being faithful. So much so that we don’t even know who we really are. Our very identity, our sense of who we are becomes confused with our role in ‘getting there.’ My pastor friend got delivered from being in ‘ministry.’ Or perhaps I should say he got delivered from someone’s or some group’s definition of ‘ministry.’ It was a surgical cut that hurts like hell, but it was designed with love for liberation.

Where is ‘there”? All our “I am nots” have their origin in the whisper of the father of lies. They certainly are confirmed by life experiences, by childhood wounds, by financial loss, betrayal, tragedy, and disappointments. There is evidence for the whisper, or so it would seem. But given the evidence, what will it take to get there? What will it take to feel worthy? What will it take to feel important, or wanted, or special or loved? These are the better questions. Who told us what ‘special’ is and why did we believe them? Who defined ‘there’ for me, and why does their opinion matter so much? What is the origin of ‘important’ or ‘worthy’? What constitutes being ‘wanted’ or ‘loved?’ Who or what has defined these quite fundamental ideas for us?

Toward the end of The Shack there is conversation between Mack and Jesus that is very relevant here.

‘Jesus?’ he whispered, as his voice choked. ‘I feel so lost.’

A hand reached out and squeezed his, and didn’t let go. ‘I know, Mack. But it’s not true. I am with you and I’m not lost. I’m sorry it feels that way, but hear me clearly. You are not lost.’” 114

I think Jesus’ own “I Am” is the answer to all of our “I am nots.”

I Am there, and you are in me. So you are there too.
I Am worthy, and you are in me. So you are worthy too.
I Am loved, and you are in me. So you are loved too.
I Am important, and you are in me. So you are important too.
I Am wanted, and you are in me. So you are wanted too.

Blessed are the ones who have the freedom to be, for they shall see glory everywhere.

I just noticed a male cardinal sitting on a limb in my backyard. Blood red feathers against the backdrop of the brown hues of leafless trees. I wonder what that means?

Two Gods

Since Christmas I have been working around the clock on a book on The Shack. For the next stretch I will be posting some of the material I am working on. By now, The Shack has probably become the best selling book in history, apart from the Bible, or at least it is close to it. Well over 11 million copies have been sold in about 30 languages. At least ten more translations are in the works. The wild, global popularity of The Shack in itself tells me that there is serious spiritual hunger in people’s hearts. I hope and pray it is a sign of the passing of the Augustinian captivity of the Church. Perhaps I am too critical of Augustine, but he is the Father of Western Christianity, and that version has handed down the deadly quagmire of deism, legalism and rationalism—the unholy trinity of the Latin West.

A quick search of the internet reveals that The Shack has liberated untold numbers of people, and, not surprisingly, stirred up the proverbial hornet’s nest. Some folks are not pleased at all, slinging the ‘h’ word around like they are the appointed guardians of orthodoxy. Whatever people are trying to say is wrong with the book when they call it heretical, I think Athanasius would be quite pleased with The Shack, not to mention the Father, Son and Spirit. I would go the other way and say that insofar as one thinks the theology of The Shack is heretical, that is the distance they themselves have fallen from the early Church’s vision. If the doctrine of God set forward in The Shack appears problematic, then have a read of Athanasius’ On the Incarnation of the Word of God. The faulty assumption in much of the criticism of The Shack is that ‘modern’ evangelicalism is indeed the definition of orthodox Christianity. That is a dangerous assumption.

The issue is the goodness of God. Apparently some folks don’t think that Jesus’ Father is in fact as good as the ‘Papa’ of The Shack. Are we really worried that someone might get into heaven who is not supposed to be there? Are we actually concerned that a broken man or woman or child might illegitimately believe in the sheer goodness of God and find healing and hope, only to be bitterly disappointed when they finally meet Jesus’ Father?

Perhaps behind the criticisms of The Shack is the sting of another question that is way more personal, and scary, and in some ways more profound. It is simple and straightforward. ‘Could I be this wrong?’ ‘Could we be this wrong? Paul Young is the apostle of the broken heart, holding out to hurting people a vision of the Triune God that actually brings healing to the soul, but as such he is also necessarily the apostle of Western crisis. Somewhere inside, I suspect, we all know that he is right, that Jesus’ Father is this good, that we are this loved and accepted, that the Holy Spirit in person has embraced us all in Jesus, but my, my does this ever fly in the face of many of our cherished notions.

The mythology of the fallen mind found its most sublime expression in Greek philosophy, which through Augustine and others then warped Western theology at large. That is not to say, of course, that all is wrong, for the Holy Spirit is blessedly at work in us all. There have been many protest, and many breakthroughs, not least in the great Reformation, and in the work of Karl Barth and others, but the god of the philosophers still reigns in the West. And that is the problem. The Western mind is riddled with two entirely different gods. The one being the Father, Son and Spirit, and the other what the Greeks called the ‘Unmade’ or ‘Unoriginate,’ whose ambiguous nature has steadily been filled with legalistic indifference, distance and sterility. Such a god leaves humanity hesitant, fearful, insecure. The Shack brings the problem to the surface. The love, indeed the tenderness, the sheer approachability and humanity of the Triune God portrayed in The Shack touches the raw nerves of our despairing hearts, and it does so with unimaginable hope. If God is like Papa, Jesus and Sarayu, then my life can be different. I can live loved in peace and hope. But how can this hope become real to us, truly liberating and healing, when the god of the philosophers fills our heads? We are torn between the news of being loved, cared for and accepted, which is given to us in the witness of the Holy Spirit, and the alien concepts that rule our minds from Greece, which tell us that God is not so kind and cannot be trusted. The god of the philosophers with all its theological tentacles must be slain. But that is scary business. For some of those tentacles might be favored notions upon which careers and indeed entire denominations have been built. So, while The Shack is a great story of one man’s healing, it is also a prophetic Word crashing the lifeless party of Western deism, legalism and rationalism. Thank you, Holy Spirit, we will have more please. Kill the beast.

A final word from Athanasius. “The pagans, who are altogether strangers to the Son, were the authors of the word, ‘unmade;’ whereas our Lord Himself commonly spoke of God as His Father, and has taught us in like manner to use and apply the same…. Nowhere in Holy Scripture does the Son call the Father the ‘unmade.’ And when he teaches us to pray, He does not say, ‘When you pray, say, O God unmade,’ but rather, ‘When you pray, say, Our Father, which are in heaven.” (Against the Arians, I.34)

He Became

"Our beloved Lord Jesus Christ became what we are to bring us to be what he is in himself" (Irenaeus, not an exact quote, but very close). Merry Christmas to all.

Grace

If you haven’t read the comments from the ‘dead fly’ post you are missing something exceptional, especially bdfwinn’s poem, and 2lb2’s off the charts oration—what a stunner. 2lb2, you need to visit more often. Your comments are welcome here.

Now back to the incarnation. I have written of the incarnation as the Lord’s acceptance of us as fallen creatures, and in terms of His determined identification with us in our fallenness. The Father, Son and Spirit are not in denial about the disaster of the fall, nor do they react with neutrality or indifference, and certainly not with rage. The dream of our adoption stands, but now this dream includes dealing with our profound darkness. The one thing that the Father, Son and Spirit counted on from us—the single divine expectation—is that we would reject Jesus and put Him to death. It is here that we see the incarnation as grace.

I have heard grace defined as ‘God’s unmerited favor’ and as ‘God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense.’ There is something to be said for both ideas, notwithstanding the latter’s assumed and dreadful split between the Father and the Son. The love of the Father, Son and Spirit is certainly unmerited, and it is costly, but more must be said about the pain of grace. To be gracious is to hurt, for it is not merely to wink at a problem, but to enter into it and bear it personally, to endure it, in love and mercy and patience. The incarnation involved and continues to involve Jesus’ entrance into our fallen world and broken lives, and it involves his personal suffering from our blindness. Grace is the freedom to bear another’s scorn, for their salvation.

Many years ago I read Rudyard Kipling’s great poem, “If,” and was struck by one particular line. “If you can keep your head, when all about you are losing theirs, and blaming it on you, you will be a man.” It is the blaming part that reveals the deep heart of grace. Keeping your wits about you, maintaining your balance and orientation can be difficult, but how much more so when everyone else is flying off the handle, so to speak, or losing the plot, as the Ozzies say, and in their fear and pain making you the scapegoat for their trauma? ‘That is what you call ironic,’ as the one-eyed pirate said. And the grace of the blessed Trinity involves terrible irony. Either the Father, Son and Spirit were caught by surprise when we humiliated and murdered Jesus, or they saw it coming, and deliberately incorporated it as the way of incarnation and reconciliation.

We killed the solution. The blessed Trinity expected it, and used our rejection of Jesus as the means to establish a real relationship with us as we are in our brokenness. Such is grace. But as shocking and beautiful as this is, more must be said. For the death of Jesus was not an act of detached, clinical justice. We murdered him, and the act was full of contempt, and disdain, bitterness, mocking, and hatred. The Father’s Son himself was patronized by his own creatures as a blaspheming, demon-possessed, cursed of God liar who mislead the people and deserved to be spit upon and crucified. Jesus deliberately and willfully submitted himself to suffer our patronizing contempt, even to the point of death by public humiliation. The whole world sneered. Part of his grace toward us was the fact that he did not vaporize the human race, and part was his astonishing heart of submission to our profoundly bizarre and cruel judgment. But there was no other way for the dream off the Father, Son and Spirit to be fulfilled. Grace is the freedom to bear the scorn of another’s enlightenment, and Jesus did it, thereby proving himself a Kipling man, gracious, and truly divine.

‘No room in the in,’ was the first hint of the human enmity on Jesus’ horizon. He never batted an eye, and “instead of the joy set before Him, He endured the cross, despising the shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God (Hebrews 12:2). Think about this: in Jesus himself, in his own person and experience, the world of our darkness, contempt and disdain met the world of his relationship with his Father and the Holy Spirit. Jesus is the place where these two worlds met and are united. By bearing our bitter, patronizing cruelty, Jesus has united his life with the worst of ours. That is acceptance, and identification, real forgiveness and reconciliation, and that is grace. And it is real. And we are included in Jesus’ relationship with his Father and the Holy Spirit, because, as Athanasius said, he is a gracious and merciful Lord who loves the human race.

“What love, what care, what fearless joy
has found us in the night
that we may know as he has known
the everlasting light”

May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of his Papa, and the free flowing fellowship of the Holy Spirit overwhelm us all, this season in particular.