students of jesus

It’s the deepest and most beautiful problem I have ever faced. This challenge has filled me with vulnerability and risk. Working through this wonderful problem has yielded life and peace.

Before I get to the problem you must know this: I like to hide. You won’t hear what I’m thinking right away. Some thoughts you will never hear. I craft the image I want you to see; I live in fear you’ll see through the hologram. Hidden in my deepest space is the driving fear, if you really knew me, you wouldn’t like what you see. You say you admire transparency but I know the truth: you will be repulsed if I let you in all the way.

And yet, this is not the problem.

The problem is: the one who knows me best loves me the most. God. God is the problem; all my defenses are useless before him. And it fills me with terror.

Enough about me. Other people have had this problem. A man named David had the same fears:

You have searched me, Lord, and you know me.

You know when I sit and when I rise;

You perceive my thoughts from afar.

You discern my going out and my lying down;

You are familiar with all my ways.

Before a word is on my tongue you, Lord, know it completely.

You hem me in behind and before, and you lay your hand upon me.

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain. (Psalm 139:1-6)

It is no surprise to me that David wants to run: in verse seven he asks the same question I would ask:

Where can I go from your Spirit?
 Where can I flee from your presence?

By the end of this Psalm David presents the fruit of his struggle. He surrenders. God wins. David opens the secret places to the One who has already been there all along:

Search me, God, and know my heart;
 test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me,
 and lead me in the way everlasting. (Psalm 139:23-24)

David invites the Creator into the violent places hidden deep in his heart. In these places God will discover David’s longings, lusts, and insecurities. Am I willing to make the same invitation?

And this is only half the problem. Because the Great Invader of my most secret places—the very God who is holy, holy, holy—loves me despite the tempest raging in my secret place. Not only has God not been fooled by the hologram I have perfected, he loves the confused mess that is the reality of my heart. And I hate this. His love, too, causes me to want to run.

In my pride I resent that there is someone so great, so kind, so condescending as to look beyond my faults. I writhe under the pain that his love for me is greater than my self-love—greater, deeper, more pure, altogether clean. My insecurities tempt me to reduce the eternal love of God to just another human love that will disappoint in the end.

You’re asking, “What could be so wrong with being loved?” Yet this is precisely where the challenge lives. Do I dare believe such love exists, and that I am the focus of such love? To make peace with this invasive love means the end of my pride, my self-love, my shame and my insecurities. It means (as I said at the beginning) risk and vulnerability because it means absolute surrender to the Other.

If you’ve never worked through the implications of being loved perfectly, you have a journey yet to take. Anyone can accept a gift—even eternal life—without receiving perfect love. The discovery of the Father’s boundless love is an invitation to strip away every other crutch we use to prop up our self worth. Submitting to perfect love means we lose ourselves in him. Are you ready for that kind of loss? Our pride, the shame to which we cling, and our insecurities all whisper, “Take Care! You can never return if you start down this road.”

And they are right.

Some time back--never mind how long ago--I said casually to a young woman, “the surest description of God is that of Father.” She recoiled in horror. Fear and grief passed across her face. Later I learned her father had been a man filled with violence and abuse toward to his daughters. Father meant betrayal, brutality, and perversion. Her experience and definition kept her from knowing the True Father: his tender care, his understanding, and deep love. Yet who could blame her?

Another occasion I watched a boy imitate the father he loved. A poor imitation it was. Filled with blustering pride the man-child bossed and ordered others about. He thought he was doing what fathers did--commanding, directing, and leading. To him, Father meant authority and power to lead. He was a child playing the back-yard version of war, brimming over with glory and bluster.

What if our definitions keep us from seeing the truth? What if our twisted experience has taught us the opposite of the deep meanings whispered by the Spirit? Deliver us from the things we think we know, because certainty is the enemy of discovery. We could embrace a deception, or in fear we could run away from the truth. God save us from the words we think we know. What if they keep us from the truth? Since those encounters I’ve wondered time and again how many words I have misunderstood, simply because I have one meaning planted firmly in my head, rooted in my heart.

Since those experiences I have kept a list of Bible words--words filled with promise, joy, deliverance, and hope--yet also capable of frightening me to the core, or leading me completely astray. My list of wonderful-yet-dangerous words? Here is but a sample of the words I think I know:
Family
Sister
Brother
Love
Church
Community
Mission
Calling

I’ve determined never to reject these words, because the Spirit has spoken them. I will not run from them. I’ve also determined to hold them loosely in order that I might return to them again and again, and be instructed by their multi-faceted wisdom.

The revealed wisdom of God sends us this sure warning: we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears . . . For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

At that time Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit, said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure.” (Luke 10:21)

What kind of God celebrates when smart people are clueless and newcomers are in on the joke? In this chapter Luke tells the story of seventy men returning to Jesus with news of spectacular ministry results. Jesus danced for joy and said something absolutely astonishing: he rejoiced that the wise and the learned did not have access to the ways of God. He delighted that children had discovered the way of the Kingdom.

Although there has never been a greater teacher in the history of the world, Jesus placed a higher priority on innocence than intelligence. This passage reminds us that Jesus revealed the things of God by inviting others to join his mission and carry out his work--he rarely lectured. He taught in parables; he infuriated the religious wise guys; and he welcomed those foolish enough to simply do what he said.

How can a finite human mind grasp an infinite God? St. Augustine--although he was one of the greatest intellectuals in history--lamented it was his heart that was too small. He asked God to graciously enlarge the mansions of his heart, not the halls of his mind. Love comes before knowledge. I’m awestruck by this idea: God isn’t impressed with my wisdom or intelligence, but he is impressed with the condition of my heart. He will bend low to comfort a contrite spirit.

What if our approach to following Jesus is fueled by the world’s idea of wisdom? Have we chosen a worldly method to pursue the King of Heaven? The spirit of this age respects knowledge. It’s a given. Knowledge trumps ignorance. Knowledge is power. Knowledge is self-authenticating. We have loved knowledge since the Garden of Eden. Perhaps we have loved knowledge more than we have loved our Creator.

The western church presents a view of discipleship based upon ever-increasing knowledge, and Christianity becomes a subject to be mastered. Those who are smartest become the “best” disciples. The spirit of this age tells us knowledge is good because it is knowledge. But what if the smartest among us know nothing of love? The Holy Spirit is not impressed with how many verses we have committed to memory. He does seem to delight in us when even a few of those verses find their way into our everyday lives.

One of the great pitfalls of reading the scripture resides right inside my own head: there’s a distance between what the Spirit speaks and what I hear. I trust the Bible. It’s the revelation of God’s heart and mind. But I don’t trust me. I’m capable of missing the point, of reading my own values into the text. I’m capable of using God’s wonderful words for my own devices instead of his purposes. That makes the Bible a dangerous place to visit if I am not connected to the love of God.

Woven into the fabric of the Biblical witness is the still small voice of relationship. It warns of the dangers of knowledge. “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up” comes the whisper. Later on the voice grows: "Where there is knowledge, it will pass away.” We discover the voice coming from Paul’s prayer closet interceding on our behalf, “I pray that you . . . may have power . . . to know this love that surpasses knowledge.”

The Apostle Paul, one of the greatest minds in history, learned first-hand that knowledge can never drive us to the love of God, but the love of God can drive us to know him more.