The (Bloody) Way of Love

God has brought something really affirming to me this morning. I can at times come so close to being taken out by the brokenness around me. I feel it like a tremor in my bones sometimes, particularly with those closest to me. I hold to redemption -- I'm alive by way of that great work of Jesus and for the sake of it for others is why I'm in counseling school now. I battle for others that the Kingdom may be won in their lives. But it still threatens me, the hurt of others. Over the last couple of weeks I've felt overwhelmed and exhausted. I'm not trying to "fix" anybody; I'm just desiring life in the deepest and most glorious sense for those I know (and for myself). But what Jesus brought to me is that I feel these quakes in my heart because of love. It is proof that my heart has been made and redeemed to love. It is the same suffering that Jesus experiences (Philippians 3:10).

But what I need to do with that now is to learn to stand in the face of it, to stand as a warrior even as I kneel as a servant. To desire life and freedom for others but continue to walk with Jesus wherever it is He's taking me. The offer and invitaiton for others is the same. "The direct experience of God is grace, indeed," said Ignatius of Loyola, "and basically, there is no one to whom it is refused." But the responsibility of following after Jesus rests on the shoulders of each person individually. I am to "seek life in the spirit of furious indifference to it," in the words of G.K. Chesterton, even for others. We each must "desire life like water and yet drink death like wine."

I have a close friend that's going through a profound change in his life -- or the possibility of change, at least. He is in a desperate place, a frightening one. Rock bottom, really. But, I don't think he's in such a foreign place as I would like him to be. I'd be comfortable if the seeming waste and debris of his life were because of a sin or God's wrath or Satan's strongholds. But I rather think he's where he is because of God's love, that the fierce love of God refuses to leave him where he is, and that He is even now unwraveling him from the thorns and brambles that he's got himself caught in. It's painful, and it's bloody, but it's also redemptive.

God waits to be wanted by us all. Having Him and having his Kingdom come through our lives and the ones we love will require all the violence of our "Viking" hearts in full-throttle (Matthew 11:12). To borrow from Robert Service in his poem The Law of the Yukon,

I will not be won by weaklings, subtle, suave and mild,
but by men with the hearts of Vikings, and the simple faith of a child.

Maybe the disillusioned ex-literary professor vagrant Harry Sagan in The Fisher King said it best in relating the story of the Fool and the Fisher King: "...One day, a fool wandered into the castle and found the king alone. Being a fool, he was simple-minded, he didn't see a king, he saw a man alone and in pain. And he asked the king: 'What ails you, friend?' The king replied: 'I'm thirsty. I need some water to cool my throat.' So the fool took a cup from beside the bed, filled it with water, handed it to the king. As the king began to drink he realized that his wound was healed. He looked at his hands, and there was the Holy Grail that which he sought all his life! And he turned to the fool and said in amazement: 'How could you find that which what my brightest and bravest could not?' And the fool replied: 'I don't know. I only knew that you were thirsty."

May we find our hearts and follow the bloody and "foolish" Way of Love.

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.

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).

Jehovah Rafa - God the Healer

"Christ was sent into the world to heal the broken hearted. " -D.L. Moody

"On hearing this, Jesus said to them, 'It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.'" -Mark 2:17

So many we know are hurt, so many ill, so many torn to shreds by the affect of the Fall, by sin, by the work of the Evil One. We are a fractured people, all of us. We are all of us the broken-hearted, in need of healing.

But the modern approach to healing (since the era of "modernity") is to try to fix only the outer shell. It's like taking a truck that's been totaled to an autobody place. They may be able to fix the external body for awhile, but the engine (the heart) and the frame (the soul) may remain a wreck. Eventually, the truck will be back in due to more damage. The bent frame will force it back into the ditch, or the damaged engine may throw a piston through the hood. Or, the outer shell will be unfixable because the frame or engine is protruding out of the truck and it will be deemed "terminal." "There's nothing more we can do." The thought of opening the hood and dealing with core structure of the frame doesn't even enter their minds.

The church, instead of being "central to the world and the world peripheral to the church," has taken on this incomplete reality and has largely approached people in the same way in our era, seeing them mostly as body only and not recognized, not really, not in practice, the soul or heart. That is why therapy and psychological sciences have only been around for the past 150 years or so. Before then, the church largely took care of the soul. For all his loony-ness, Freud at least recognized a gaping hole in the culture's ontology and began dealing with the unseen, deeper reality of the soul (what he termed the "subconscious" and mostly misunderstood and misrepresented, but at least tried to recognize.)

We now have the "medical models" in the healing professions that seek to diagnose a "disorder" and seek to fix it, typically through medication. It's a product of our culture, really. We are used to television shows that wrap up in an hour, to microwavable meals that are ready to eat in 2 minutes, to quick-drying glue and instant messages and packages that arrive to us expediently. The thought of an involved process is not new, but it is neither desired. And why is that?

To speak of process is really to speak of a journey, and in terms of the healing of our souls, it is a lifelong process. It is a journey, really, of becoming. Becoming whole, becoming holy. Jesus has provided us all we need for this life and all we need to become fully healed and fully whole, just like Jesus is (Philippians 4:19).

That is why the labels we use to identify "disorders" and those with them are so often unhelpful and even harmful. "He is bipolar." "She has attention deficit disorder." For one, it implies that the treatment must call for the use of drugs, which implies that the problem is biological. Second, it sets the person with the condition like a post is set is concrete -- it solidifies the two together, making it rather hopeless for the one with the problem. Usually their best hope is to find a medication that will "work" for them to "fix the problem." But the real problem is that the problem is not usually resolved, and the deeper issues of the heart not addressed, brought up, and exposed to the Light of day so that God may bring healing and wholeness to that person. The condition you see is always, always, a symptom of a broken heart due to the fallen world, sin, the work of the Evil One, or a combination of the three, which is usually the case.

I am taking a graduate-level psychopathology class in which we study the various mental disorders that are detailed in the DSM-IV, the psychiatrist's handbook and bible. I need to know the labels and the disorders listed here simply because it's the terminology that's used and so many have been diagnosed with these various illnesses. And make no mistake, these problems are real, for sure. It is what we do with them, how we go about discovering the real problems and treating them that is lacking.

I promise you, attention deficit disorder is not the core issue. It never is. I know of a high school student who has been on Ritalin since he was 5 years old. Why? Because his mom is a single mother, trying her hardest to balance full-time work with being the full-time and only parent for her children. He was an active child, a creative one. The quick fix? Put him on medication that slows him down, keeps him calm, keeps him controlled. A pseudo-parent. He is now 17 years old and has no idea how to be a man, no idea what to do with the manly and creative energy and passion of his heart. Not only is he broken-hearted -- no doubt due in part to the absence of a father in his life and now to the reality that there is no man around to lead him into true godly masculinity and manhood -- he has doctors and other adults around him telling him that his real problem is that he is too active, too "onery" and wild. Too wild?! But he is a young man! Wildness is his very nature! That is being medicated out of him, all the while the wounds go unaddressed and untreated.

Psychopathology is another way of talking about psychological abnormalities. But what is "normal," anyway? Seriously. Conformity to a standard? What standard? What one culture defines as normal is viewed as outside the range of the average acceptable behavior by another. It seems to be culturally defined. Jesus definitely did not fit what the culture of the time viewed as "normal." For this, he was misunderstood, rejected, thought to be "out of his mind" (Mark 3:21), and of course eventually crucified. In our day, he probably would have been diagnosed with disassociative identity disorder, fancying Himself to be Immanuel and all. He would have been placed in an asylum, given electroshock treatments, and dosed up on high amounts of reality-altering drugs.

But "normal" is not so relative as we would like to think. A friend of mine had a brilliant definition to the term. He said "Normal is the image of God displayed in His people." The "standard" of confirmity is to His image! Jesus, as the "image of the invisible God" (Colossians 1:15), is the ultimate standard and definition of "normal"! He is the one we are to become like. It is His image we are to bear. It is His image, His heart, His attributes, that we are growing by grace to inherit, to express, to extend even unto "the ends of the earth" (Acts 1:8). We are on a journey to becoming like God. We are being "fully trained" (Luke 6:40) in righteousness, which is to say, in full living (John 10:10). He is showing us the Way.

Do you see how that definition of normality is so hopeful? It is because all the ways we are abnormal, all the ways in which we miss the mark, are redeemable. The healing and restoration of the broken places of our hearts is the very mission of this Intimate Savior (Luke 19:10; Isaiah 61:1). If I have problems that point toward something like attention deficit, maybe it is because I have lacked a father in my life. Well, let me be introduced to the Father of all fathers! If I have issues that relate to obsessive-compulsive disorder, let the deep waters of my heart be explored, the broken pieces found and set back together, that I may become "whole and holy" by the love of God (Ephesians 1:3, The Message).

I am not trivializing the problems we face or trying to over-simplify them. They can be horrific and quite complicated. I'm actually recognizing them as much deeper and tragic than what we typically believe. We will not be able to treat them without the Healer Himself, the One who has come that we might have life to the full. Nor am I saying that medicine is a bad treatment option for some "mental" disorders (are they not "heart" disorders?). I am saying that it is not enough, and it never will be. The deep ministry of Jesus to our hearts is a grace, a gift. The Spirit that we are given is a Counselor, and He has come to stay. God must think that we need a lot of therapy. How great it is He has come (John 16:7). And how great it is God has given us men and women with compassionate insight and godly wisdom (Proverbs 20:5) that through their help as well we might discover and bring to light the lost and broken places of our hearts, that they might be fully healed, made whole, and set free.