The Power of the Church

A few months ago I attended an AA meeting as an exercise for a class. I went as an "observer," though my experience drew me to understand I was more than that. I wrote the following afterwards:

I wasn’t sure what to expect as I entered the room. I had just met one of the regulars to the recovery group outside. I’ll call him Tom, a man who seemed joyous, whose friendliness and genuine interest in others was contagious. A man who reeked of alcohol. That had been, he explained, his addiction of choice, and he spoke of it throughout the time in the past tense as if it were something he had beaten. His conviction was so compelling that at several points I found myself wondering if maybe I had taken a whiff of something else, maybe a hint of alcohol wafting on the air from some other source. Maybe it had been on his clothes or even on his skin. Could it do that? Could years of abuse with the stuff cause it to meld somehow into the skin so that years later other could still detect it, I found myself wondering. A worse thought came to mind. Maybe I had imagined it. Maybe I had expected it and my mind had created the smell for me. I was repulsed at the thought. Throughout the meeting, though, Tom’s stumbling and slurred speech confirmed for me that he had not yet found his freedom from the clutches of the disease as he had so passionately declared.

Tom’s declaration of complete freedom from his illness seemed an exception rather than the rule. For the others, the tug-of-war between freedom (and life as its fruit) and imprisonment (and death as a result) would become the kind-of mantra of the evening, the theme to the lives of each of members who came. Addiction for the majority of them was not something they had completely overcome, but rather they had braved the journey away from it, and “addict” was not an identity they were quick to shed, aware of their propensity to return to its lair when the temptation came. It seemed to be an ever-present reminder for them of their desperate need of grace and strength from Christ. Nowhere before had I encountered such an immediate and practical appreciation of the Apostle Paul’s impassioned intention to “boast about my weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:5) and his understanding that Christ’s strength was made perfect in weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9).

Two ladies greeted me as I entered the room, Jane and Cheryl. Jane was quick to tell me that she had been a heroin addict for twenty years of her life. Cheryl’s addiction had been alcohol, though she said she had tried a variety of recreational drugs as well. They had both been sober for some time, but returned weekly to these meetings as a way to remind themselves that they are only a puff or a bottle away from destruction and that they needed the fellowship with others who could empathize with their weakness as well as remain authentic enough with them to challenge any inflated sense that they had it all together.

I took my seat beside a man reading his Bible. He seemed young, maybe in his late thirties, though his eyes and face, his numerous tattoos and scars, defied his age and seemed full of old secrets and stories. He introduced himself as Brad, and I came to see very soon that he was the elected teacher for the group. Whether he had been elected by the group or by God to teach I was never sure, for he was amazingly knowledgeable of Scripture and handled the Word of Truth with deep wisdom and passion. He spoke of addiction in terms of both disease of body and disease of soul, of both the assault from the Evil One and the assault from the flesh within. And he spoke of the real design and result of any addiction: the stealing of peace and joy, the killing of the deep heart and soul, and the destruction of relationships and purpose.

I later learned that Brad had once been a pastor, though it was unclear whether or not it was before or since his battle with addiction. For the benefit of everyone in the room, he was quick to tell his story and detail both the horrors of his addiction as well as his battle for freedom from it. And he was not alone in his gut-level honesty. It had seemed perhaps a requirement for the group, a kind of unspoken rule, that there would be no posing or pretending, and that each one would have the freedom here – if only here in all of the world – to be real and to share in the naked tragedies of their addictions as well as the unabashed triumphs as they came.

How Tom’s pretending fit into all of that I was never sure. No one called him on his obvious use of alcohol that day. He had seemed comfortable to share his struggle, though always in the past tense. Perhaps that was another stipulation of the group: that each member was free to be where they were on the journey, without fear of judgment or manipulation, the group itself acting as a kind of safety zone, a reprieve from the weight of others’ eyes and prejudice. Maybe Tom had needed this more than anything else, and he had found it here.

Nearly an hour had gone by as Brad led the discussion on the topic of knowing God and obtaining freedom from the imprisonment of addiction when the counselor brought in a well-groomed middle-class-looking couple and introduced them around. They took their seats across from me. The woman was pretty, well-dressed, and young. The man was tall, handsome, and fit, looking more like he belonged on a golf course or a basketball league than in a recovery group. The look of embarrassment on his face betrayed his discomfort. It was obvious that his wife was in distress, as if she would burst into tears at any second. After the introductions, the leader of the group, Shawn, asked the man simply and directly, “Alcohol or drugs?” The question dropped at the man’s feet like a lead weight, and he remained motionless for a few seconds trying to figure out how to answer. I had a picture in my mind of a trapped animal running back and forth trying to find a way out. He found none, and quietly answered, “D-d-drugs.” It was enough to burst the dam of his wife’s pain, and tears poured from her eyes. The man explained that he had smoked pot for years, and had hidden his addiction from his wife since their wedding a year ago. Devastated, she felt not only the pain of his addiction but also the betrayal of his secrets. It was Shawn, I think, who then said pointedly, “You’re only as sick as the secrets you keep.” We spoke more as a group to the couple, and the wife was given room to cry and to tell a bit of the story.

The entire meeting lasted an hour and a half, and then everyone got up, prayed together, said goodbye, and left. The introductions, the conversation, the teaching, and even the farewell had all been very simplistic, non-manipulative, easy. The regulars seemed to genuinely care about one another, and yet there were no attachments, no dependence upon one another outside of the concern within the meeting. Each, it seemed, had their own lives to attend to, to rebuild, to work at. And all gave room for each one to be human, full of weakness as well as glory.

What struck me perhaps more than anything else was this notion of “addiction.” Why is it that, though I do not have and never have had addiction to drugs or alcohol, I felt very much a part of the members’ stories, their lives, their teaching. Sharing with them I realized that we all have our whores that we run after instead of our One True Lover. My favorite bedfellows of resignation, of cynicism and noble despair – these are no less potent than those of drugs and alcohol, no less defining, and no less deadly. The power of the recovery group laid in authenticity with one another and desperate dependence upon the rescuing and sustaining grace of Jesus. The power of the church lies in the same.

Interactive and Conversational

I was up last night praying through some things going on in my world. Not worried prayers, not praying with anxiety (which I can do pretty well at times), but more conversational, more "Lord God, I can't wait to find out how this works out." He led me to some amazing things in Scripture, all concerned with our actually having an interactive, conversational relationship with Him, where He speaks to us personally, actively, clearly, and may at times confirm or encourage but at other times directs specifically and expects our response back to Him, like the way Samuel conversed with God in 1 Samuel 16. God told him to go to Jesse's house in Bethlehem to anoint a new king over Israel. Afraid of Saul, Samuel doesn't immediately go , but asks God how he's supposed to leave with Saul on his back. He's not doubting God or distrusting Him. It actually is an incredible act of faith to interact with the Lord God and effectively say, "Okay, I'll do this, but how am I to proceed? I believe that you'll do this and that you're out for the success of it, so I want to be on board with it, too." So, God gives Samuel him a scheme: to take a heifer and say that he's going to go sacrifice for the Lord. And so he does it. That's pretty specific, you know? And it's scheming, I mean God doesn't tell him to lie, exactly, but God's directive never initially included anything about sacrificing to the Lord. He's leading Samuel to be as wise as a serpent and then he tells him how to proceed step-by-step to follow God, almost as if God is in front of him walking through a wood, across a creek maybe, and He looks back at his son following and says, "Place your foot right there on that rock. It's a bit wobbly, so be careful. And then on that bit of log -- careful, it's slippery, and then that last rock and then you're home free". I dunno. That's pretty awesome to me.

After reading that I just sat in my chair. It was late but I was too excited to sleep. Earlier I had asked God to let me rest, to help me sleep but "keep my heart awake" (Songs 5:2), but I couldn't. I was "swooning," in the words of John Bunyan. He wrote in "Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners" that after reading of the reality of his new righteous life with God (no longer sinful as default, but rather made right and whole and good), "I thought that the glory of these words was then so weighty on me, that I was both once and twice ready to swoon as I sat, yet not with grief and trouble, but with solid joy and peace."

Yup, same here.

"We stand within a community of the spoken to," says Willard. Whoa. I just... my heart beats wildly with that thought, with the experience of that. I can't believe (I can, but you understand the expression) that God would be that intimate with us and caring and desirous of interaction, of wrestling even, with what He says. I love this. I love this reality.

Reflecting or Deflecting?

"You are not one of his disciples, are you?" the girl at the door asked Peter. He replied, "I am not." "Didn't I see you with him…?” Again Peter denied it… (from John 18:17, 26-27)

When Peter denied Jesus, he was not only betraying his friend and Lord, he was betraying his own identity. For the last three years Peter had been walking with Jesus. Think of what a transforming life this had been for him: watching miracles and even taking part in them, hearing Jesus’ teachings, learning to pray and to love and to know God and to be known by God in a deeply personal way (remember that Jesus called him “the Rock”). To breathe the free air. To put it another way, he had become Jesus’ disciple, apprenticing himself after Him, learning of this new way of being in the world and of relating to God. The girl who approached Peter in the courtyard asked him whether or not he was one of Jesus’ disciples. His flat out denial betrayed his own identity. It effectively refuted all that he had learned and come to in the previous three years. All the life he had come to evaporated in that renunciation. He relinquished the new name God had given him. Turning from Jesus, he also turned from his own honor, his integrity, his character, his uniqueness, his seity. His own individuality God had given him.

This, of course, was nothing new for Jesus. Moses had done something similar after Mount Sinai. God had, per his request, shown him His glory. He had passed by him, and the experience left Moses's face shining, his whole body and spirit radiant, alive, awake, alert, aroused. It may have been a bit like a man just coming from a sexual experience with his beloved, his face and lips flush, his eyes open wide, his breathing heavy. Moses was beaming, gleaming, blazing, resplendent, like a bridegroom coming forth from his pavilion (Psalm 19:5). He then carried down the stone tablets and was unaware that his face was radiant like this. And he scared the people to death.

"When Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the Testimony in his hands, he was not aware that his face was radiant because he had spoken with the LORD. When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, his face was radiant, and they were afraid to come near him..." (from Exodus 33:29-30).

Even Aaron was terrified. And so you know what Moses did? He hid his face. He intimidated the Israelites by his having been so intimate with the Lord, and it must have frightened and embarrassed Moses, and so he hid it. By hiding himself, he hid the glory from the people that most needed it. He shrunk back and hid his association with the Lord God, just like Peter.

Nelson Mandela could have been speaking to the both of them when he said that “your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightening about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.”

He could have been speaking to me, too. “We were born to manifest the glory of God that is within us,” Mandela continues.

Oh, yeah? We were? I suppose His glory is the gift He has given to his closest friends throughout history, a gift that He gives to us still. Recently my wife and I spent time with a local community of believers where we were asked to share something personal that God seems to be up to in our lives. I shrank back. I spoke, but only superficially, a rock skipping off the surface rather than going to the depths. Why? Because I think I am embarrassed of my place with God, of His intimacy with me. Perhaps I hide because I am in disbelief that He would have me in this way, fuddled and bashful that anyone would notice that I’ve just been with the Lord God, and afraid that others would reject me for it out of fear and intimidation.

But that is not letting my light shine, as Jesus asked that I do.

“. . . And as we let our own light shine,” says Mandela, “we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

Holy Shift

Something has shifted in my heart this morning, an important shift, toward hope. It was brought on by several things that ultimately brought me again to the realization that I am in process, that I've only barely begun. There is so much more for me -- more of everything God wants to do, came to do. I'm not done yet -- and God is not done with me! The full presence and reality of Christ is still being formed in me. "Until Christ is formed in you" is I think how the Scriptures have it (Galatians 4:19).

The heaviness of the fall evident in peoples' lives -- people I know and love as well as my own-- can be an unbearable weight at times. The despair had thickened like a dense fog settling in, hopelessness like thorns underfoot. But it's lifting today. Oh, praise God. Jesus has reversed the curse and the effects of it, truly He has, by His work in redemption, in His obedience even unto His own death. In His resurrection. In His authority. And He is in me. In Him, we have victory! It's really true!

And so now it is trust that counts, that and obedience. To really put my confidence in the entire person and God of Christ -- Creator, Redeemer, Master, Teacher, Captain, Healer, Counselor, Loving and Living One, all of that -- to really put confident trust in the full and entire identity of Jesus, then I am saved from the thorny snag of hopelenssness and the blinding disorientation of despair. Jesus crafts a crown from the thorns, destroying in ultimate finality the effects of sin and the fall against me, against us all. The fog lifts, a fresh wind clears the air today. As The Message has it,

With the arrival of Jesus, the Messiah, that fateful dilemma is
resolved. Those who enter into Christ's being-here-for-us no longer have
to live under a continuous, low-lying black cloud. A new power is in
operation. The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has
magnificently cleared the air, freeing you from a fated lifetime of brutal
tyranny at the hands of sin and death. (Romans 8:1-2)

At lunch I was drawn to sit alone in a quiet corner of a local McDonald's with my iPod, to actively engage in solitude with God, to worship and to journal. A song by Jeremy Camp was playing, called This Man. The lyrics capture the invitation I am offered through the work of Jesus for me: "And the veil was torn so we could have this open door. And all these things have finally been complete." All these things of reconciliation to God (2 Corinthians 5:18), of disarming of the foul powers (Colossians 2:15), and of restoring us back to His image (Colossians 3:10). We now have only to "embrace what God does for you" (see Romans 12:1-2, especially in The Message).