Tag Archives: healing

The love I have known

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(I wrote this several years ago in response to an anonymous article in my graduate school newspaper.  The article was written by a young woman struggling with her husband’s addiction to pornography).

 

I want to reply to this anonymous article by recounting two experiences.  The first occurred recently when, here at graduate school, I talked with a group of new classmates about “prayer and fasting.”  Some had tried it, some had not, though no one had anything significant to relate.  As the discussion proceeded I became increasingly uncomfortable: I had tried it and had experienced something, something transformative and healing.

My point is not that God answers prayer or makes things “all better” if we pray (and perhaps fast) hard enough.  No.  My point is that I was embarrassed to speak because the environment precluded the very type of discussion that was sought—how could I be so vulnerable with people I hardly knew, share something so special with a 10 minute time-limit?

The second occurred years earlier when my wife and I grew increasingly anxious as her fourth pregnancy came to term.  Her high blood pressure and other symptoms hinted that we might lose another baby.  Looking for help, I turned to Ina May Gaskin’s classic, Spiritual Midwifery.  Rifling through the book I was completely deflated: where was the help that I needed?  Instead of re-assuring information it was simply filled with stories.

Yet as I read the book something strange started to happen.  I found myself in the presence of women whose experiences of birth and birthing covered the map—wonderful or tragic, complicated or serenely simple.  Yet among them all was the realization that they were involved in something more, something which they did not control, something which they longed for, something supremely real.  Through reading their stories, I came to understand that I was not alone.

These two accounts go together.

On the one hand I not only understand but believe the biblical accounts of God healing people because I have experienced such healing in my life.  Yet sadly it is also the case that our churches—like seminaries and Christian graduate schools—can often be the very places where discussing our best experiences of God (and sometimes our deepest needs for God) is hardest.

On the other hand, my experience is that God’s healing occurs partly as we tell our stories and hear those of others; as we realize that we are not alone nor without hope here and now: our lives and marriages aren’t designed to endure our brokenness until “eschatological” healing occurs.

Having been sexually abused I have some sense of the pain and recalcitrance of sexual brokenness.  To complicate matters, I understand that addictions are but symptoms—surface-level outworkings of deeper hurts and ills.  So more than stopping the symptoms we must know their causes, which means understanding oneself and one’s history.  This process of “reading” ourselves is one of self-discovery, of meeting the alien (and often unpalatable) aspects of our upbringing, life choices, and beliefs.

Despite the mending that is possible, this side of God’s full presence I don’t believe that we get ‘all better’.

But, maybe, that’s the point.

What I mean is that the journey towards wholeness necessarily travels through honesty, with stops at disappointment, defeat, and loneliness.  Yet it finishes via self-forgiveness and self-love.  In other words, my experience is that in healing us God also makes us real.  And this “realness” is not so much the product of being healed but comes through experiencing the core of God’s desire for our wholeness: God’s love.

Greater than my anger, deeper than my shame, nearer than my hurt, was a longing to be loved and to love, to be responded to as Job: where God spoke not of me (and my pain), but to me in my deepest and best personhood—where God was not simply divine or powerful but real, and God really loved me.  “ ‘Real isn’t how you are made,’ said the Skin Horse. ‘It’s a thing that happens to you.  When [he] loves you . . . REALLY loves you, then you become real.’ ” (The Velveteen Rabbit).

God sees the heart; we are not so lucky.  Yet as I reflect on the pain in the hearts of that couple I’ll wager that they are not alone.  The woman wrote anonymously—without a name.  I suspect this is because much of their emotional currency went into living with this addiction: living on the margins of their Christian community and concealing a secret considered too ugly to share.

I am posting this with my name attached because I know how lonely the margins can be, so I hope that my story helps those who are there feel less alone.  And also I publish this because the fear of our ugliness (and the difficulty our churches have in bearing it) is overcome in the same way—by being made real: “these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real, you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.” (Ibid.)

Such is the love I have known.

Truths about Truth: being pragmatic, subjective, and relative

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Christians are quite concerned about truth.

For example, Os Guiness argues that Christian truth is opposed to pragmatism, subjectivism, and relativism.  Yet as I discussed last week, we must be careful to distinguish between pragmatism and being pragmatic; between subjectivism and being subjective; between relativism and being relative.

Why?

The issue is that while certain ideologies are destructive their underlying orientations may be helpful (and even necessary).  For example, the ‘ism’ in pragmatism specifies an ideology—it means that a pragmatic orientation is not simply accepted but is one’s “guiding principle.”  So when someone embraces pragmatism ‘functionality‘ becomes more important to that person than anything, even truthfulness.

Now I agree that truthfulness should be a guiding principle for everyone, Christian or not.[1. As the overall content of this blog will show, however, I do not think that truth and truthfulness “stand alone” as the sole guiding principle.  Instead, I continue to argue that love and truth, truth and love are co-central within both human existence and Christian faith.]  But we must be very careful not to confuse destructive ideologies with proper, human orientations, especially when such orientations are necessary to assessing the Bible’s truth claims correctly (orientations such as being pragmatic, subjective, and relative).  Why necessary?

Here’s why: Christianity concerns not simply intellectual assent but relational content.

In other words, Christianity is not only thinking rightly about God but being rightly disposed to God, and these two things are reciprocal.  So to be in right relationship with God I must know some true things about God (i.e., that this God alone is God, that the Bible especially reveals this God, that I communicate with God by prayer, etc.).  Yet I can only understand and believe the Bible’s relational claims about God (i.e., that God knows me and loves me) through personal experience.

Further, while right disposition begins with right understanding, their reciprocal relation means that right disposition also creates right belief and understanding!  So Christians generally understand that one cannot rightly relate to God if this God is conceived of (and so is pursued) as Allah, the Hindu Gods, etc.  Yet they often misunderstand that the Bible’s undeniably personal and relational claims (i.e., that God knows me better than I know myself and loves more deeply than I love myself) can only be validated through personal experience.

And validating these relational truth claims—recognizing their truth value—requires being pragmatic, relativistic, and subjective.

This is so because these truth claims are both intellectual and relational, in keeping with a) my human nature as situated and finite and b) God’s nature, who is love, and so seeks to be in relationship with me.  Intellectually, I assess any truth claim from my subjective viewpoint and relative to my finite experience.  Yet relationally I am always seeking my own good (I’m pragmatic because it matters to me how things turn out in my own life), and so claims about being known and loved must turn out to be just that![2. More on how we assess this sort of claim later.]

Now having personal experience of God does not necessitate that everyone experiences God in dramatic and undeniable ways.  But my hunch is that it does mean that within current communities of Christians there will be personal experiences of relating with God that validate the truth claim that “God knows and loves us” in deep—and deeply healing and satisfying—ways.

What do I mean?

By “current communities” I mean that it is not enough to read how God delivered Israel, supported David, or even how Jesus healed and fed many.  I believe these accounts.  However, my argument is that the Bible’s claims that God is real and good are validated by experiencing God delivering, restoring and healing now, in the lives of real people.  Literally.[3. More on what constitutes such restoration and healing, upcoming.]

By “personal experiences” I do not mean that God will appear to everyone similarly or with the same intensity.  Instead, Christianity endorses testimony—understandable accounts from credible people—as a valid way to know and understand God.  Through testimony I understand and am mentored in the relational component of Christian faith.  In this respect I would say that God engages with humanity personally but not individually.

Considering these questions may help:
a) If you are Christian, what relational experiences of God are important within your Christian community?
b) If you are not Christian, what relational experiences have been important in your life?

Stress, pain, and “surrendering all” to God…

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What are we to do with the things that burden us?  Typically Christians respond that we should “surrender all” to God.

The idea, I think, is to give over my desire to control situations and outcomes, as well as my negative feelings about them, to God.  This way I can be at peace with the matter (and also with God and with others—even those who have hurt me).  And the sooner I do this, the better.

Great goals.

But I don’t think that immediately “surrendering all” to God will achieve them.  Let me explain:

My experience is that God responds to my pleas for help in a variety of ways, based on: a) who I am and understand myself to be, b) what the situation is / how I understand it, and c) the nature of my relationship with God (and who I conceive God to be).  In other words, God’s response always considers “who I am” and “where I’m at.”

And God’s response is always—always—conditioned by God’s greatest desire for me: that I be in right relationship with God (and thereby, in right relationship with myself, others, and the created world).  The core of this “right relationship” is spelled out clearly in the gospels: love God entirely, love yourself rightly (so that you may) love your neighbour likewise.

And this God whom I am to love entirely is one who knows me intimately and loves me adoringly.  So, strange as it may sound, my wager is that being in right relationship with this God means not letting go of our issues but embracing them.  More to the point, perhaps God’s response is not so much to take away our burdens but to be clear (and demonstratively so) that God knows us truly and yet loves us deeply even as we are burdened.

Knowing us truly, God distinguishes between hurts that wound us and our own orientations / filters that create worry, stress, or pain out of situations where they should not.  Both require healing, one because we are wounded by them and the other because we wound ourselves (and likely others) by them.

Loving us deeply, God determines how (and how much) I can understand the difference between the two and God is patient—patient enough to allow me to blunder through this the wrong way.  But God’s love always aims at returning me to right relationship with God.

So in this context “being in right relationship with God” might require such things as me releasing my fears, trusting God, experiencing God’s love, etc.  Yet doing so involves going through the fear, anxiety, or worry that impede this releasing, trusting, experiencing.  It involves literally “sitting in them;” living with the tension they evoke.

And while the Christian life is not to be marked by worry, stress, and negative emotions, I wonder if Christians are too eager to “surrender” what is uncomfortable… to their detriment.  My belief is that we are to rely on God by collaboratively “going through the issues,” understanding that resolution involves many stages.  This sometimes requires me doing (or not doing) certain things, sometimes God.  Sometimes both of us, and sometimes neither—just waiting.

So promptly “surrendering all” needs to be replaced with prudent, reliant stewardship.

As Christians we are to exercise prudent stewardship in the context of right relationship with (and so reliance on) God, even stewardship over things we don’t like.  Yes, I will be victimized—I will suffer rejection, mistreatment, and dismissal.  But, in addition to feeling pain, working through such situations has stimulated my intellect, developed my relational abilities, and cultivated my talents and imagination.

Yes, I may take seasons, years, or even decades to forgive.  But I accept the time because it is only through the full process that forgiveness becomes what it is meant to be: an embodied response capable of reconciling despite great betrayals, and fully able to point back to relationship where I am truly known yet most deeply loved.

Obama is Buddhist?

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“God has taken them home.”

So U.S. President Obama accounts for the wanton killing of grade schoolers in Newtown, CT.  But does this view sit well with us?  Does it ease our pain or explain the unthinkable?  And does it present God in a way that encourages trust or hope?

My answer: e) None of the above.

Situations like Sandy Hook are so terrifying that it can be tempting to think that God must be pulling the strings.  We want to believe that someone is in control and that somewhere there is good to be found in it.  Yet ironically, by diminishing human agency and responsibility for evil we likewise strip ourselves of our agency and responsibility for good.

For if this is all God’s will, then really we can do nothing about it: who can resist God?

No.  Far from rekindling hope or even allowing fuller expression of our grief, at best this view results in complacency.  At worst, I reckon it results in despair.

Complacency because taking what is evil and “sanctifying” it (through ascribing it to God) subverts our most natural human responses: should we grieve or feel upset about God’s will?  At best the implication is that our grief and rage are really misplaced—the result of being too limited (or if you theology is more heavy-handed, too sinful) to understand that this is all for some “greater good.”  Ironically again, such a view has more in common with Buddhism than Christianity.

Despair because, faced with this perspective, we must necessarily understand our emotions, goals, and even our children as insignificant—unimportant before the lofty designs of God.  For a god who “calls home” little children via such murderous and seemingly purposeless action is, like a maleficent version of Zeus, a fearful entity indeed.  Before such a God we cannot but despair.

Many reject this god.  And those that accept it?  Well, is it any wonder that so much of evangelical Christianity seems based on fear and rule-following rather than on love and truth?

In reality Obama’s view denies us the very substance that the Psalmist would have us rely upon, both in coming to embrace God and as that which fosters and furthers right relationship with God: the created order, within which we are called to “taste and see” God’s goodness.

Now hear me rightly: I see no goodness in this situation.  It is not something “in light of which” I believe in God but something “despite which” I still believe.  But neither is this a situation where Christians should encourage complacency or despair.  Rather, I think the first step is to recognize that the problem of evil is not simply an issue or even a big issue.  To my mind it is the issue.

And if my personal experience with evil is any guide, the second step is for Christians to stand against it and—in evil’s overwhelming shadow—to tell our tales of how God has acted in our lives to heal and mend us.

And this, I think, is where goodness can possibly be found amid evil: not that God solves our issues or addresses all our concerns, but that in place of evil God offers Godself.  Not through the historical work of Christ or theological explanation, important as these are.  But rather as acts of healing and liberation within our everyday existence that convince our minds, inspire our imaginations, and win our hearts—acts of knowing us more truly than we know ourselves and loving us more deeply than we love ourselves.

So against the view that God’ goodness is invisible or, at best, unfathomable, Christians must not only claim with their words but demonstrate—and attest to how God has demonstrated—in their lived existence that God is good.  And we do so not because of but despite the wanton evil that we are able (and clearly, all too wiling) to inflcit upon each other.

How to “waste your time” with the Bible

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“If it’s not real, I don’t waste my time reading it.”

On occasion I have heard this from a senior citizen.  But from an 8 year old?  My first response was sadness at the wonderful worlds that this child will never visit, and the fantastic places that will remain unknown as so many stories—”timewasters”—don’t make the cut.

Previously, I debunked the idea that stories threaten certainty by showing how such certainty (and the security that accompanies it) are pathological desires for an absolute or ultimate perspective that only God can have.

But what about the related idea that reality is more important than what is imaginary, particularly for Christians?

Interestingly, this view comes from the 8 year old’s church-going parents.  And for Christians—people whose beliefs are deeply informed by a book replete with stories—such a view amounts to believing that biblical narratives are truly (and only) historical.  Historical writing, or historiography, is good; fictional writing is not.

But does this view mesh with the Bible itself?

In a word, No.  The form and content of the Gospels resists such a view.  For when read in this light, they are eminently contradictory.  Matthew portrays that this happened before that; Mark portrays the opposite.  Luke indicates that Jesus was X days between his arrest and resurrection; John indicates Y days.  The list goes on.

On the “historical reality” view one of the Gospels may be true, but not the others.  Or maybe we need to weave them all together somehow.  Or . . .  On such a view the gospel writers are at very least confused (and not worth our attention), if not liars.

No, weighing the gospel (or biblical) narratives according to such a view is misrepresentative because this view itself is false.  Two points demonstrate this.

First, the gospels are ancient documents written according to first century conventions and standards of historiography, not according to our own.  For example, the gospels are clearly not concerned to present historical reality as “what really happened,” because the same events in Jesus’ life could not possibly have happened in two different ways.

Instead, the Gospels are fictionalized history: texts based on actual, historical events yet artistically composed with a goal of cultivating belief in Jesus as the son of God.  Expressed differently, it does not so much matter that Jesus healed this person in this way after having healed that person in that way (and before healing this third person).  What matters is that Jesus truly healed.  And most significantly, I will later argue that (in ways yet to be specified) Jesus heals now, and can heal even us.

Second, the “reality trumps all” view undermines the most crucial of biblical claims: that God loves you and deeply desires relationship with you.  On the historical reality view these are simply facts to be accepted: take it or leave it.  And facts are assessed using reason (to determine whether these claims make sense to us) and responded to with the will (to make ourselves act upon them).

But Christian faith is not foremost an act of the will, but a disposition of the heart.  Nor does belief primarily originate with reason.  This is reflected in the very nature of the Bible’s key claims: they are not  dead facts but living dispositions of an entity who is love.

And just as love invites, woos, and inspires so if God’s love is real it cannot be expressed by (or constrained within) historical reality alone.  It far bigger (and more real!) than that.  As historiography, the Bible has the power artfully to express what happened in the past, while as fiction it has the power to transport the events of the past into our own lives by drawing us into its unique world.  Thus the Bible not only recounts what is real but champions what is possible: these claims become living possibilities waiting to be actualized.

And how are they actualized?  It begins with human imagination.