Link to first post in this series.
Friends, I really like to put well-thought-out ideas out here, and I'm afraid I can't really deliver these days. There's too much going on. Way too much. But, this Postmodernism stuff is still burning a hole in my pockets so let me put some quick summary guesses out here.
All attempts to stop Postmodernism's "erosion" of our inspired religion are both doomed and misguided. Christianity is not postmodern, but it's not anti-postmodern either. Postmodernism is an informed way of reacting to the world in which we live. Some people are doing Postmodernism in a very ugly way, but others are doing it with utmost sincerity - just the way we did Modernism and Romanticism in our time.
Postmodernism is an accurate reaction to the horrors of a fallen world when the Information Age forces us all to face those horrors honestly.
The question before the house is how Christians react to hardcore reality. For reasons I hope I've already given, we can no longer hide behind "It'll all be worth it in heaven," or "God is ordering everything for the good." Both those statements are true, but we have to face up to facts. Things aren't good now, and Jesus didn't come selling heaven. Jesus meets people where they are, not where we'd like them to be. We need to know how Jesus meets us now.
Over the past 4000 years, there've been many, many times and many, many prominent verses. Luther gave us, "the just shall live by faith." The fundamentalists brought, "The Word was with God and the Word was God," into new focus. I'd like to suggest the verse for our time is, "Jesus wept."
The urge of every youth movement is to assume no one who came before them was as passionate, caring, concerned, informed, intelligent, spiritual, persuaded, committed, or somehow just didn't get it. I know I made that mistake in spades, but I can't do it again. Now that I'm 46, I need to grab hold of "Jesus wept," but to do so without letting go of any of the other words that have come before. "Jesus wept" informs "The just shall live by faith" and "The Word was God." It doesn't replace them; it defines them.
The just live by faith in a Man Who weeps with them. The Word Who is God includes stanzas of mourning.
Jesus didn't weep when He heard His friend Lazarus was dying, nor after he'd died. He didn't weep when He explained to Martha the theology of death, resurrection, and life. He wept when Mary fell on the ground and asked Him why He'd not come sooner. He wept, just like we do, when the pain touched Him. The pain touched Almighty God in Flesh when the tears of those He loved were wept to Him.
Jesus is touched by those things that touch us.
I look out at all the disasters and pain in the world, in my church, and in my family and I'm crushed. I could as soon save those I love as win three tennis matches all at the same time. I might win or lose any one match if I practice and train, but this life shoots too many balls at us. It's hopeless.
Jesus weeps.
I don't know how to make Jesus weeping sync-up with God ever-blessed. I don't know the theological magic it takes to reconcile the God Who declares He brings disaster with the God Who weeps when the disaster strikes, but Jesus is YHWH in flesh and YHWH wept with Mary.
All of which brings us, finally, to the heart of the matter. I've come to believe Postmodernism is a failure of hope. A Christian Postmodernist can muster the faith to believe in Christ and the love to give his lif to God, but he can't hope being a Christian will make any difference. He reads God's promises and hears God declare them yeah and amen, but they don't seem to work in real life. A Christian's life looks an awful lot like a non-Christian's life, minus the sleeping in on Sunday.
Christianity makes sense when Jesus raises Lazarus, but I want Him to raise every Lazarus and He doesn't. He raised one man to make one point at one time. He raised Lazarus to show us Whom He was, but Lazarus died again a few years later and Jesus didn't raise Him again. There are Lazarus's all over this place whom Jesus doesn't raise, and that makes no sense. I'm so happy with Jesus I could bust, but then I'm a Modernist with a deep well of irrational hope from which to draw. What do I tell my children? Where's the hope? What's the hope?
(For this, I have to thank my wife. I flat didn't see where to go next, but she found it.)
Heb 5:7 While Jesus was here on earth, he offered prayers and pleadings, with a loud cry and tears, to the one who could deliver him out of death. And God heard his prayers because of his reverence for God.
Jesus wept again before He died. He wept strongly and prayed ... hard ... for fear of personal suffering. Jesus even understood fully why He would suffer. It didn't help. Knowing "why" didn't end the tears. Jesus even had the assurance God heard His prayers. He had every benefit we imagine might make our suffering tolerable, and He wept all the same. He died all the same. And so must we.
I would like to hear whether any Postmodernists can find some hope there. Jesus wept for us and He wept for Himself, but the evil still came. He prayed and God answered by delivering Him over to His enemies, but the story didn't end there. A couple days later God delivered Jesus. He delivered Him from death, from shame, from tears. Jesus is not just the Firstborn from the dead, but Firstborn from tears. Jesus wept, but weeps no more, and He will deliver us from our tears. Jesus earned the power to dry our eyes.
Jesus' death has not yet removed evil from this world, but He told us it wouldn't for a while. We weep when pain comes to those we love and we weep when pain comes to us and we pass through the valley, just like our Lord did.
We answer pain with hope, hope founded on the victory of our Forerunner, Jesus the Annointed. His victory was not over pain but through it, and ours will be too. He promised it would be that way, and we need to grab hold of His example.
To do that, I might recommend we grab hold of an example of Americans who've done this before, beautifully and brilliantly. America's slaves learned to hurt and hope through pain, injustice, grief, and unanswered prayers. They composed songs that called out every pain honestly to the Lord and waited on Him for a deliverance they could only expect after death. I suspect the best answer to Postmodernism is going to sound a lot like a negro spiritual.
On this July 4th we'll celebrate our freedom, but maybe we really need to celebrate the hope of some who lived an American Nightmare.
Showing posts with label Pain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pain. Show all posts
04 July, 2010
05 October, 2009
The Flaming Sword
The age old question of whether we should pray for healing, or pray for healing if it's God's will, came up in Sunday School. The specific question was why God could will not to heal us.
It's always a tough question.
There are too many wounded people whom I love too much to answer that question lightly. The teacher was gracious enough to actually allow some silence after asking the question. I am often impressed by her, and this was one of those times. Anyway, in the silence I ran around the mulberry bush a few more times, but the way the question was asked brought me to a new place.
Could God will that we not be healed? It is actually His will that we die. There's a tree somewhere on this planet named the Tree of Life, and that tree has an angel standing in front of it with a flaming sword. That sword is there by the will of God, and it's there to make sure we die.
Genesis 3 is not really explicit about why we should not live forever, but it is explicit God will not allow it. It might be because He's too merciful to allow us to debauch ourselves and destroy ourselves for any longer than 70 years. It could be to preserve us from His wrath. It could be to preserve His glory. The one thing of which we're certain is our pain comes as an outflow from Adam's sin. God is handling the introduction of evil into our world in the most merciful and loving way possible. Maybe sometimes we underestimate the terrible power of the unholy, but Jesus paid a terrible price to cleanse us.
Yes, God might will us to remain wounded. If He does, He does so tenderly and with love, like a good mother helping a child to throw up so it can all be better in the morning.
Whatever might happen, our Heavenly Comforter stays with us all through the night.
It's always a tough question.
There are too many wounded people whom I love too much to answer that question lightly. The teacher was gracious enough to actually allow some silence after asking the question. I am often impressed by her, and this was one of those times. Anyway, in the silence I ran around the mulberry bush a few more times, but the way the question was asked brought me to a new place.
Could God will that we not be healed? It is actually His will that we die. There's a tree somewhere on this planet named the Tree of Life, and that tree has an angel standing in front of it with a flaming sword. That sword is there by the will of God, and it's there to make sure we die.
Genesis 3 is not really explicit about why we should not live forever, but it is explicit God will not allow it. It might be because He's too merciful to allow us to debauch ourselves and destroy ourselves for any longer than 70 years. It could be to preserve us from His wrath. It could be to preserve His glory. The one thing of which we're certain is our pain comes as an outflow from Adam's sin. God is handling the introduction of evil into our world in the most merciful and loving way possible. Maybe sometimes we underestimate the terrible power of the unholy, but Jesus paid a terrible price to cleanse us.
Yes, God might will us to remain wounded. If He does, He does so tenderly and with love, like a good mother helping a child to throw up so it can all be better in the morning.
Whatever might happen, our Heavenly Comforter stays with us all through the night.
03 October, 2009
Scarred for Life
I have no patience these days with the Nietzschean cliché, 'That which does not kill us makes us stronger.' I’ve found that the deepest pain holds no meaning. It is not purifying. It is not ennobling. It does not make you a better human being. It just is.
All the worst pain does is reduce us to our most primal animal. We want it to stop. We want to survive. It short-circuits any sense of self, diminishes us to a bundle of biological reflexes.
NYTimes blog by way of the Fibromyalgia Blog.
I'm ashamed to add words to such a statement, but I've felt pain too. I've felt pain just like that - not recently, but those feelings. Since those days I've said, "That which does not kill us scars us for life."
And I'm scared to say anything about these words because there are those I love who are in that place right now. How dare I speak words into their pain that they cannot feel now? But I do remember. Really, I do. I remember and I think I would have wanted to hear both the words I've quoted above and the words I add below.
You're alive.
Ecclesiastes says a living dog is better than a dead lion, and pain taught me how right Solomon was. I wanted to be a noble lion in noble pain, but I survived because I realized I was a humble little mongrel held in the hands of the Living Lord. He preserved me because He loved me, and I lived because I finally found that grain of trust in His love.
I bear scars I'll nurse until I die, but only that long. There is a glory of life and trust, a love of God and man, my pain taught me and by which I'll be carried through all eternity.
Surviving such pain cripples us. Finding God scarred exactly as we were scarred, exactly because He loves us, metamorphosizes us. Pain cripples, but love transforms. The work love does with pain is divine.
Cry out to God and believe. His love for you is stronger than your agony. It is.
Jesus is.
11 September, 2009
Lucie's Prayer
HT: GlenScriv linked to these two hilarious videos
(Interesting. I cannot see the "comments" link on this post. Here's a manual link to comments)
08 February, 2009
We're Only as Sick as Our Secrets
I learned something last weekend. I learned why I hardly ever hear from old brothers and sisters from my time with Gene Edwards. I gave my life to them and to Gene for 10 years, and somehow I seldom even hear from them. Oh, and I also learned why they never hear from me. And I think I figured out how to stop some of the bleeding.
Step one is to realize most of us are bleeding.
A couple hundred lovers of the Lord in a dozen or so cities across America and Europe stepped into the glorious unknown. We all hoped to advance the glory of Christ by restoring the testimony of the church. We wanted to work together to bring a deeper, truer, simpler way of fellowshipping with each other and with Christ. We wanted the Christian life to move into our living rooms, where it was so sorely missed. Gene Edwards gave us a vision, and we fell in love with each other pouring out our hearts and souls and climbing that highest mountain. Gene welcomed us into his plans and in turn, we embraced him and each other whole-heartedly.
All those churches died under Gene's tutelage. Their deaths and our wounds were ugly affairs, each stage-managed by Gene personally. Each of the deaths had a unique fingerprint, but I've noticed one consistent outcome. Nobody knows what happened. Nobody knows what happened to the other brothers and sisters. Nobody knows what happened to Gene. Nobody knows what happened to the brothers who were supposed to bail them out. Nobody even really knows what happened to them. Everything that mattered was a secret.
John and Jane Doe were members of a church in Jonesville, and they know how that church died, but they don't know what really happened. They know about "The Incident" and the "Emergency Meetings" and "Who left first," but they don't know "Anything that Matters."
John and Jane don't know why Joe and June quit talking to them about anything that mattered. They don't know why Jim and Jody were always Gene's favorites, or why Jack and Jan thought Gene hated them. They don't know why they don't hear from anyone any more, and they don't know why they think about calling but don't quite pick up the phone.
Secrets work like that.
We need to tell our stories.
We need to hear each other's stories.
This weekend I heard a couple stories, and things that plagued me for ten years melted away. In one evening and an afternoon, ten years of loneliness made sense. I began to feel reunited to my brothers and sisters. I did not hear what I wanted to hear, and it was still healing. In one case, I heard almost the opposite of what I wanted to hear, but I heard the truth and it was perfect. I heard what actually happened. It was just the truth, but the truth changes everything.
Gene taught us to hide the truth.
That was all well and good while I believed he was trying to protect people who deserved a second chance, but I don't believe that any more. After all these years, and after talking to the people who were there, the only thing Gene ever deeply cared about protecting was his work.
That explains why Gene never told anyone the truth, but it leaves an open question about why no one else told what they knew of the truth. We were all silent about the things that mattered. What did our brothers and sisters think as they were bleeding? Or as they watched others bleed? And why did they do what they did? None of us knows because no one talked, and that's no accident. Gene repeatedly and forcefully indoctrinated silence into us. He taught us that speaking of anything that matters is undermining the worker, and that undermining the worker was a grave sin.
Gene once told us, "I consider you to have neither honor, nor integrity, nor honesty, nor trustworthiness if you in any way undermine another man's work. Nor can I personally extend my fellowship to one who does."
We learned this lesson well.
We honored Gene and we honored God to the best of our abilities in refusing to undermine Gene's work. When we doubted, we spoke to no one. If one of us disagreed with any brother, even the most or the least disagreeable brother, we'd wrestle through to a satisfying conclusion. We grew close that way, and it was beautiful. But you could tell right away when a brother started disagreeing with Gene. He'd grow agreeable. He'd start going along with anything, and grow silent. He'd start having secrets. Then he'd announce he was leaving, and reserve the reason why. We'd all mollify each other with kind words and friendly smiles, and one day we'd help him pack and he was gone.
Gene warned us repeatedly of the power of words to destroy, and that only silence could glorify God. Only in silent suffering could a man not undermine the work of God. Only in silent suffering could the man with authority know how the Holy Spirit would measure his work. Only in silent suffering could the man without authority know the Holy Spirit would guard him. If a man spoke, he was hindering the Spirit. Gene taught us it was the Lord's church, not ours, and the Lord would defend it.
Silence, he told us, was the route to safety.
But that was all a smokescreen.
It was a lie.
Gene, himself, did not practice silence. I know it for a fact.
I sat and listened as Gene lied about practicing silence in the middle of a church crisis. I listened to him tell the leading brothers of a church he would never defend his work with words. Hours earlier I'd I heard him plotting and describing to us how he would defend his work with words. His promise to not defend the church with words was one of the things he'd told us he'd say to defend his work in that church. I listened while he patted himself on the back for his own cunning.
Three times I was personally ordered by Gene, face-to-face, to find a way to get three different churches to quit listening to three different brothers in those churches. Gene perceived a threat from them, and he told me to take them out. (In Scotland, Romania, and Florida. If any of you brothers wonder what I did, just ask. Gene rated me a failure all three times.)
In Gene's books and personal appearances he always advocated silence, but behind closed doors he undermined his own words. Why would he do this?
It's a pattern familiar to any woman or child who's suffered abuse.
An abusive husband relentlessly presses for control of his victim (don't call her a "wife" - that's a dishonor to the word.) Whether he gains control through seduction or battering, through flattery or belittling, through bribery or deprivation, he will have control - whatever the cost. The first thing he must do to win that control is isolate his victim from anyone who might help her.
We who gave our lives to Gene were already well isolated. To varying degrees, and sometimes to a great degree, we were isolated from families, from outside friends, from Christians who didn't follow Gene, from leaders in other churches, and even from great Christian writers and thinkers who had the misfortune of not being promoted by Gene.
Gene was isolated, too, but in a different sense. Gene reported to no one, except his secretaries and his wife. No one knew the whole counsel of Gene's heart and no one could speak with gravity into his life. Gene consistently claimed to be under the oversight of someone, but who that was changed on a regular basis and I never heard of that oversight making any difference in his plans. For a brief period my name was on that list, and I can certify he never heard anything from me that made him change his mind about the least thing. Maybe others fared better.
So far as I know, there was only one thing that impinged upon Gene's total control over his churches - those same churches.
Individuals in the various churches sometimes had opinions of their own, opinions that could spread and create tension and raise difficult questions . And Gene was never happy with difficult. If a brother in Timbuktoo loved everything Gene said and loved Gene, but questioned whether there might be a better way to do some little thing, Gene would shut him down.
An accountant in our church once recommended Gene let us handle our donations to him a little differently, so as to make our tax records more audit-proof. His suggestion was good for Gene as much as for the churches, and as we all listened to him we were all impressed and happy. All but Gene, that is. Gene came down on that brother like a cornered animal. He fired that brother from all responsibility in the church, and did everything in his power to discredit him to us. We were not to tell that brother anything; we were to treat him as someone who had a hidden hatred for Gene. He made our rejection of that good brother a measure of whether we loved God's work.
We were already isolated from everyone on Earth, but Gene still needed to isolate us from each other.
Over the years, Gene did two things.
1) He invented the doctrine of silence.
It's not quite true Gene invented the doctrine of silence, of course. Search for "code of silence" and you'll find it's been around for a long time. You might just notice it's been polished and perfected largely by two classes of organization: the mafia and cults. One thing is sure, though. Gene's idea of silence was invented by someone, because it was never revealed by God in scripture. It's not there.
2) Gene made sure we always were afraid of each other.
I was not the only brother sent out to "take down" another brother. Whenever Gene felt a threat from a young brother, one thing would not happen and another thing would, just like clockwork. Gene would NOT talk to that brother at all, and he would send another man to teach the church to distrust that brother. It was brilliant, because it didn't just isolate the brother Gene found threatening. It also isolated the man obeying Gene by doing something we all found frightening and questionable, and it isolated everyone by creating an environment of distrust in each other.
When Gene put a knife in one brother's hands and required him to use it on another brother, everyone was wounded, the brother who felt the cut, the brother who dealt the cut, and the brothers who knew their day would come. He isolated all of us. It was a double bind. We knew any man who respected Gene could not be trusted, and any man who did not respect Gene could not be listened to.
It's also good old, traditional, spiritual abuse 101, and we bent our minds like pretzels trying to make sense of it.
Gene was either practicing something so holy that his methods were justified, or the thing to which we'd given our lives was a garden-variety cult. From here it looks like an easy decision, but when you've sold everything and fallen in love with brothers and sisters, even brothers and sisters with whom you are sharing terror, it's a big investment. It's hard to walk away from that investment. Still, given what I witnessed while I was allowed "behind the curtain" my doubts eventually became certainties. Following Gene was a corrosive force on every life I knew.
Gene's work is most destructive to those saints who most give themselves to it. It has to be, because his work is glued together with lies and manipulation. Truth would bring his house down. The day that truth "undermines another brother's work" is an ugly day indeed.
I am not breaking silence to bring Gene's work down, though. Gene's already done that himself. A thriving community of a dozen churches has been reduced to a single church diminished by splits. I'm breaking silence because this weekend I saw a little healing come to some of brothers and sisters, and I felt a little healing myself.
For ten years I've wondered what really happened when I left. I've wondered what damage I did when I followed Gene's orders. I've wondered whether the brothers and sisters I loved back then could still love me after all the water under the bridge.
Gene's teaching of silence isolated me for ten years in his church and for another ten years after I'd left, but this weekend I ignored that teaching. For the first time, I sat face-to-face with brothers and sisters and heard little bits of their stories and told little bits of mine.
It was good.
A few pages up I said I have an idea what we need to do to heal.
We are isolated because we were systematically taught to isolate ourselves. We all loved the exciting, deep, and happy bonds we formed with brothers and sisters, but there was one area in which each of us was isolated. On any question of Gene's control, we each stood and bled alone.
If we're going to heal, we need to break the silence. We need to tell and hear each other's stories.
I don't think there's a formula for how it has to happen, but an awful lot of us need it. Face-to-face, email, phone, or web posting all work for me, but I know they don't all work for everyone equally. Let's find something that works.
It's been a long time. I think it's time we stopped bleeding and told the truth.
Kevin Knox
(Email Address in Profile)
Step one is to realize most of us are bleeding.
A couple hundred lovers of the Lord in a dozen or so cities across America and Europe stepped into the glorious unknown. We all hoped to advance the glory of Christ by restoring the testimony of the church. We wanted to work together to bring a deeper, truer, simpler way of fellowshipping with each other and with Christ. We wanted the Christian life to move into our living rooms, where it was so sorely missed. Gene Edwards gave us a vision, and we fell in love with each other pouring out our hearts and souls and climbing that highest mountain. Gene welcomed us into his plans and in turn, we embraced him and each other whole-heartedly.
All those churches died under Gene's tutelage. Their deaths and our wounds were ugly affairs, each stage-managed by Gene personally. Each of the deaths had a unique fingerprint, but I've noticed one consistent outcome. Nobody knows what happened. Nobody knows what happened to the other brothers and sisters. Nobody knows what happened to Gene. Nobody knows what happened to the brothers who were supposed to bail them out. Nobody even really knows what happened to them. Everything that mattered was a secret.
John and Jane Doe were members of a church in Jonesville, and they know how that church died, but they don't know what really happened. They know about "The Incident" and the "Emergency Meetings" and "Who left first," but they don't know "Anything that Matters."
John and Jane don't know why Joe and June quit talking to them about anything that mattered. They don't know why Jim and Jody were always Gene's favorites, or why Jack and Jan thought Gene hated them. They don't know why they don't hear from anyone any more, and they don't know why they think about calling but don't quite pick up the phone.
Secrets work like that.
We need to tell our stories.
We need to hear each other's stories.
This weekend I heard a couple stories, and things that plagued me for ten years melted away. In one evening and an afternoon, ten years of loneliness made sense. I began to feel reunited to my brothers and sisters. I did not hear what I wanted to hear, and it was still healing. In one case, I heard almost the opposite of what I wanted to hear, but I heard the truth and it was perfect. I heard what actually happened. It was just the truth, but the truth changes everything.
Gene taught us to hide the truth.
That was all well and good while I believed he was trying to protect people who deserved a second chance, but I don't believe that any more. After all these years, and after talking to the people who were there, the only thing Gene ever deeply cared about protecting was his work.
That explains why Gene never told anyone the truth, but it leaves an open question about why no one else told what they knew of the truth. We were all silent about the things that mattered. What did our brothers and sisters think as they were bleeding? Or as they watched others bleed? And why did they do what they did? None of us knows because no one talked, and that's no accident. Gene repeatedly and forcefully indoctrinated silence into us. He taught us that speaking of anything that matters is undermining the worker, and that undermining the worker was a grave sin.
Gene once told us, "I consider you to have neither honor, nor integrity, nor honesty, nor trustworthiness if you in any way undermine another man's work. Nor can I personally extend my fellowship to one who does."
We learned this lesson well.
We honored Gene and we honored God to the best of our abilities in refusing to undermine Gene's work. When we doubted, we spoke to no one. If one of us disagreed with any brother, even the most or the least disagreeable brother, we'd wrestle through to a satisfying conclusion. We grew close that way, and it was beautiful. But you could tell right away when a brother started disagreeing with Gene. He'd grow agreeable. He'd start going along with anything, and grow silent. He'd start having secrets. Then he'd announce he was leaving, and reserve the reason why. We'd all mollify each other with kind words and friendly smiles, and one day we'd help him pack and he was gone.
Gene warned us repeatedly of the power of words to destroy, and that only silence could glorify God. Only in silent suffering could a man not undermine the work of God. Only in silent suffering could the man with authority know how the Holy Spirit would measure his work. Only in silent suffering could the man without authority know the Holy Spirit would guard him. If a man spoke, he was hindering the Spirit. Gene taught us it was the Lord's church, not ours, and the Lord would defend it.
Silence, he told us, was the route to safety.
But that was all a smokescreen.
It was a lie.
Gene, himself, did not practice silence. I know it for a fact.
I sat and listened as Gene lied about practicing silence in the middle of a church crisis. I listened to him tell the leading brothers of a church he would never defend his work with words. Hours earlier I'd I heard him plotting and describing to us how he would defend his work with words. His promise to not defend the church with words was one of the things he'd told us he'd say to defend his work in that church. I listened while he patted himself on the back for his own cunning.
Three times I was personally ordered by Gene, face-to-face, to find a way to get three different churches to quit listening to three different brothers in those churches. Gene perceived a threat from them, and he told me to take them out. (In Scotland, Romania, and Florida. If any of you brothers wonder what I did, just ask. Gene rated me a failure all three times.)
In Gene's books and personal appearances he always advocated silence, but behind closed doors he undermined his own words. Why would he do this?
It's a pattern familiar to any woman or child who's suffered abuse.
An abusive husband relentlessly presses for control of his victim (don't call her a "wife" - that's a dishonor to the word.) Whether he gains control through seduction or battering, through flattery or belittling, through bribery or deprivation, he will have control - whatever the cost. The first thing he must do to win that control is isolate his victim from anyone who might help her.
We who gave our lives to Gene were already well isolated. To varying degrees, and sometimes to a great degree, we were isolated from families, from outside friends, from Christians who didn't follow Gene, from leaders in other churches, and even from great Christian writers and thinkers who had the misfortune of not being promoted by Gene.
Gene was isolated, too, but in a different sense. Gene reported to no one, except his secretaries and his wife. No one knew the whole counsel of Gene's heart and no one could speak with gravity into his life. Gene consistently claimed to be under the oversight of someone, but who that was changed on a regular basis and I never heard of that oversight making any difference in his plans. For a brief period my name was on that list, and I can certify he never heard anything from me that made him change his mind about the least thing. Maybe others fared better.
So far as I know, there was only one thing that impinged upon Gene's total control over his churches - those same churches.
Individuals in the various churches sometimes had opinions of their own, opinions that could spread and create tension and raise difficult questions . And Gene was never happy with difficult. If a brother in Timbuktoo loved everything Gene said and loved Gene, but questioned whether there might be a better way to do some little thing, Gene would shut him down.
An accountant in our church once recommended Gene let us handle our donations to him a little differently, so as to make our tax records more audit-proof. His suggestion was good for Gene as much as for the churches, and as we all listened to him we were all impressed and happy. All but Gene, that is. Gene came down on that brother like a cornered animal. He fired that brother from all responsibility in the church, and did everything in his power to discredit him to us. We were not to tell that brother anything; we were to treat him as someone who had a hidden hatred for Gene. He made our rejection of that good brother a measure of whether we loved God's work.
We were already isolated from everyone on Earth, but Gene still needed to isolate us from each other.
Over the years, Gene did two things.
1) He invented the doctrine of silence.
It's not quite true Gene invented the doctrine of silence, of course. Search for "code of silence" and you'll find it's been around for a long time. You might just notice it's been polished and perfected largely by two classes of organization: the mafia and cults. One thing is sure, though. Gene's idea of silence was invented by someone, because it was never revealed by God in scripture. It's not there.
2) Gene made sure we always were afraid of each other.
I was not the only brother sent out to "take down" another brother. Whenever Gene felt a threat from a young brother, one thing would not happen and another thing would, just like clockwork. Gene would NOT talk to that brother at all, and he would send another man to teach the church to distrust that brother. It was brilliant, because it didn't just isolate the brother Gene found threatening. It also isolated the man obeying Gene by doing something we all found frightening and questionable, and it isolated everyone by creating an environment of distrust in each other.
When Gene put a knife in one brother's hands and required him to use it on another brother, everyone was wounded, the brother who felt the cut, the brother who dealt the cut, and the brothers who knew their day would come. He isolated all of us. It was a double bind. We knew any man who respected Gene could not be trusted, and any man who did not respect Gene could not be listened to.
It's also good old, traditional, spiritual abuse 101, and we bent our minds like pretzels trying to make sense of it.
Gene was either practicing something so holy that his methods were justified, or the thing to which we'd given our lives was a garden-variety cult. From here it looks like an easy decision, but when you've sold everything and fallen in love with brothers and sisters, even brothers and sisters with whom you are sharing terror, it's a big investment. It's hard to walk away from that investment. Still, given what I witnessed while I was allowed "behind the curtain" my doubts eventually became certainties. Following Gene was a corrosive force on every life I knew.
Gene's work is most destructive to those saints who most give themselves to it. It has to be, because his work is glued together with lies and manipulation. Truth would bring his house down. The day that truth "undermines another brother's work" is an ugly day indeed.
I am not breaking silence to bring Gene's work down, though. Gene's already done that himself. A thriving community of a dozen churches has been reduced to a single church diminished by splits. I'm breaking silence because this weekend I saw a little healing come to some of brothers and sisters, and I felt a little healing myself.
For ten years I've wondered what really happened when I left. I've wondered what damage I did when I followed Gene's orders. I've wondered whether the brothers and sisters I loved back then could still love me after all the water under the bridge.
Gene's teaching of silence isolated me for ten years in his church and for another ten years after I'd left, but this weekend I ignored that teaching. For the first time, I sat face-to-face with brothers and sisters and heard little bits of their stories and told little bits of mine.
It was good.
A few pages up I said I have an idea what we need to do to heal.
We are isolated because we were systematically taught to isolate ourselves. We all loved the exciting, deep, and happy bonds we formed with brothers and sisters, but there was one area in which each of us was isolated. On any question of Gene's control, we each stood and bled alone.
If we're going to heal, we need to break the silence. We need to tell and hear each other's stories.
I don't think there's a formula for how it has to happen, but an awful lot of us need it. Face-to-face, email, phone, or web posting all work for me, but I know they don't all work for everyone equally. Let's find something that works.
It's been a long time. I think it's time we stopped bleeding and told the truth.
Kevin Knox
(Email Address in Profile)
28 September, 2008
Why We Divorce
Salvo Mag started up a conversation between me and my son. The magazine is excellent for that. If any of you need such fodder, I HIGHLY recommend it. I even agree with it quite often.
Anyway, Salvo blamed the rising and already astronomical divorce rate on something. I'll let you read it for yourself to find out what. I'm going to give you the rant I went on over it. The conversation was pretty awkward, because I'm one of those statistics, but I never let a little awkwardness stop me. I argued that everyone's wrong about the reasons behind the crazy divorce rates.
The Left Wing often says the divorce rates went up as soon as women were no longer forced by economic necessity to survive in empty, unfulfilling and even abusive marriages. They have a fascinating data point, and one for which I have respect. The divorce rate in any society increases and decreases in lockstep with the degree to which women are treated like chattel. As women become freer, the divorce rate increases. With this data, they point out the essential inequality of the deal women get in marriage. Women, they assert, immediately realize how much better off they are alone when the option becomes viable for them.
The Right Wing usually says all us divorcees just lacked commitment. The romantic excitement went away, and things got hard, and we all caved and ran away looking for greener pastures. They point to the hippy generation's free love mindset and the Boomer's self-obsession and find all the explanation they could possibly want. The "Greatest Generation" died and left America in the hands of a bunch of selfish cowards. When the marital going got tough, we walked away.
Bzzzt.
It seems to me both arguments are paper thin on the surface. The lefties cannot possibly imagine women are better off alone. Raising kids is the most fulfilling experience life offers us in our 30's and 40's, but doing it as a single parent is devastating. There's still good and joy in it, but the workload kills you a little bit every day. And financially, the single life is stupid. To be single financially is to have no backup plan, and to pay double for most of the resources in your life. (Housing, food, utilities, etc. could all be split with a spouse.) The idea that women are freer just because there's not anyone committed to facing life with them is silly.
The righties could possibly be more insulting, but I don't know how. Everyone who says divorcees lack commitment has simply tattooed on their forehead that they've never been divorced. Again, I don't know any Christian who got bored and decided to spice things up by starting over fresh with a new face. Pretty much when your "answer" on any subject is that everyone's lazy, you're missing something key. I just wish evangelical Christians wouldn't miss this one from the rooftops with their bibles held high over their heads, because millions of broken souls have no way to take their self-righteous accusations helpfully. They just turn away, every bit as lost and broken as they were before Jesus' self-appointed representative stepped in to "help."
Still, we all need an explanation for the hockey stick that describes divorce rates from 1960 until the present.
The explanation is simple. None of us knows how to stay married any more.
It's a skills thing. Our parents used to be involved in helping us judge the quality of our prospective spouses, and after we'd chosen someone to wear our ring, they were "present" enough in our lives to help us navigate a course through those critical first rollercoaster humps.
Who's involved now?
Our parents used to live a couple blocks away from their Mom and Dad. Now we live a couple states away. The extended family used to be the only family there was. Now, it's almost weird to stay in touch with Mom and Dad, much less to lean on them for help and advice. Moms and Dads used to watch "that son-in-law of theirs" and if things got iffy, they got mad. Not any more. These days we keep everything to ourselves, and our parents never hear about our problems, even if they can see them.
And we are hopelessly awkward at fighting. Spouses used to know how to have a good fight and a good forgive. These days the fights are too intense and the forgiveness is too shallow. Consequently, we don't know how to complain to each other. If you cannot complain without starting a too-strong, too-permanent fight, then you won't complain. And if you don't complain, things that could be changed fester. We panic at every conflict.
And that's caused because we don't know about the rhythms of relationship.
We're told that the emotion in a marriage follows a steep downward curve and bottoms out by about year 10 of marriage. If you ask many kids today to draw the trajectory of romantic love in marriage, you'll get something that looks like the current housing market - it starts high and spends the next 50 years in the toilet.
But that picture is not true. Instead, romantic love starts high, dips low, bounces back a little less high, dips a little less low, and through this process eventually settles somewhere in the middle of the scale. No one taught us that. No one taught us it was so simple, so when the first huge dip came we poured heart and soul into getting the fight resolved and the love restored. And when we "won" and everything was back where it should be, we relaxed - only to find ourselves speeding into another dip. We wore ourselves out trying to fight every dip and depression, when all we had to do was trust each other and exercise courtesy, honesty, and forgiveness.
Our generation KNOWS that you need a personal trainer to lose weight or learn tennis. Anything that requires actual skill requires meaningful training. No one tries to become a good tennis player without finding a good coach to give them the basics.
So what do we think? Marriage is easy?!?!
Marriage requires no skill?
Anyone can have a successful marriage if they are willing to be enslaved and if they have enough commitment?
When my wife and I were struggling through those first years of marriage, we had no training and no support. I don't think we were unique in that. We had another couple going through the same stuff we were, but we couldn't really talk to them. Church leadership didn't care to be involved, and our families were so distant as to be no influence at all.
We were guessing!
The real question is how we guessed right for 16 years given all the ballast we were carrying. But we were Americans, and we were smart, and we were successful at so many things. And it looked like things were working for so long, and we made it through so many high waters together. We sweated out days and months and years of low times, and we made it. Up until the last year of our marriage, we were proud of how we'd faced everything together.
But every struggle took its toll.
Go ahead and lecture me about not being committed. What? Do you think I haven't played that mp3 in my head? You can be as committed to tennis as you want. If you lack training, you'll injure yourself while learning nothing so much as to hate the game.
All our successes taught us to hate the marriage.
It takes a village to make a marriage. Look back on history, and you're fooling yourself if you think you see greater commitment in 1950. You're fooling yourself if you think you see women who wanted to be free, but couldn't find a way out. Look back on a world that lacked the isolating entertainment of the television, though, and I think you're onto something. Those kids HAD to play with each other, and they learned profitable conflict. There was nothing else. Look back on a world that expected parents to be involved in their adult children's lives. You can see the last vestiges of that world played out in the sitcoms that made the mother-in-law a villain. Mother-in-law jokes aren't funny any more, because there's no more friction there. The mother-in-law is half a state away, and the young couple has her visitation rights carefully controlled.
Nobody meddles any more, and it's costing us dearly.
We need help.
Anyway, Salvo blamed the rising and already astronomical divorce rate on something. I'll let you read it for yourself to find out what. I'm going to give you the rant I went on over it. The conversation was pretty awkward, because I'm one of those statistics, but I never let a little awkwardness stop me. I argued that everyone's wrong about the reasons behind the crazy divorce rates.
The Left Wing often says the divorce rates went up as soon as women were no longer forced by economic necessity to survive in empty, unfulfilling and even abusive marriages. They have a fascinating data point, and one for which I have respect. The divorce rate in any society increases and decreases in lockstep with the degree to which women are treated like chattel. As women become freer, the divorce rate increases. With this data, they point out the essential inequality of the deal women get in marriage. Women, they assert, immediately realize how much better off they are alone when the option becomes viable for them.
The Right Wing usually says all us divorcees just lacked commitment. The romantic excitement went away, and things got hard, and we all caved and ran away looking for greener pastures. They point to the hippy generation's free love mindset and the Boomer's self-obsession and find all the explanation they could possibly want. The "Greatest Generation" died and left America in the hands of a bunch of selfish cowards. When the marital going got tough, we walked away.
Bzzzt.
It seems to me both arguments are paper thin on the surface. The lefties cannot possibly imagine women are better off alone. Raising kids is the most fulfilling experience life offers us in our 30's and 40's, but doing it as a single parent is devastating. There's still good and joy in it, but the workload kills you a little bit every day. And financially, the single life is stupid. To be single financially is to have no backup plan, and to pay double for most of the resources in your life. (Housing, food, utilities, etc. could all be split with a spouse.) The idea that women are freer just because there's not anyone committed to facing life with them is silly.
The righties could possibly be more insulting, but I don't know how. Everyone who says divorcees lack commitment has simply tattooed on their forehead that they've never been divorced. Again, I don't know any Christian who got bored and decided to spice things up by starting over fresh with a new face. Pretty much when your "answer" on any subject is that everyone's lazy, you're missing something key. I just wish evangelical Christians wouldn't miss this one from the rooftops with their bibles held high over their heads, because millions of broken souls have no way to take their self-righteous accusations helpfully. They just turn away, every bit as lost and broken as they were before Jesus' self-appointed representative stepped in to "help."
Still, we all need an explanation for the hockey stick that describes divorce rates from 1960 until the present.
The explanation is simple. None of us knows how to stay married any more.
It's a skills thing. Our parents used to be involved in helping us judge the quality of our prospective spouses, and after we'd chosen someone to wear our ring, they were "present" enough in our lives to help us navigate a course through those critical first rollercoaster humps.
Who's involved now?
Our parents used to live a couple blocks away from their Mom and Dad. Now we live a couple states away. The extended family used to be the only family there was. Now, it's almost weird to stay in touch with Mom and Dad, much less to lean on them for help and advice. Moms and Dads used to watch "that son-in-law of theirs" and if things got iffy, they got mad. Not any more. These days we keep everything to ourselves, and our parents never hear about our problems, even if they can see them.
And we are hopelessly awkward at fighting. Spouses used to know how to have a good fight and a good forgive. These days the fights are too intense and the forgiveness is too shallow. Consequently, we don't know how to complain to each other. If you cannot complain without starting a too-strong, too-permanent fight, then you won't complain. And if you don't complain, things that could be changed fester. We panic at every conflict.
And that's caused because we don't know about the rhythms of relationship.
We're told that the emotion in a marriage follows a steep downward curve and bottoms out by about year 10 of marriage. If you ask many kids today to draw the trajectory of romantic love in marriage, you'll get something that looks like the current housing market - it starts high and spends the next 50 years in the toilet.
But that picture is not true. Instead, romantic love starts high, dips low, bounces back a little less high, dips a little less low, and through this process eventually settles somewhere in the middle of the scale. No one taught us that. No one taught us it was so simple, so when the first huge dip came we poured heart and soul into getting the fight resolved and the love restored. And when we "won" and everything was back where it should be, we relaxed - only to find ourselves speeding into another dip. We wore ourselves out trying to fight every dip and depression, when all we had to do was trust each other and exercise courtesy, honesty, and forgiveness.
Our generation KNOWS that you need a personal trainer to lose weight or learn tennis. Anything that requires actual skill requires meaningful training. No one tries to become a good tennis player without finding a good coach to give them the basics.
So what do we think? Marriage is easy?!?!
Marriage requires no skill?
Anyone can have a successful marriage if they are willing to be enslaved and if they have enough commitment?
When my wife and I were struggling through those first years of marriage, we had no training and no support. I don't think we were unique in that. We had another couple going through the same stuff we were, but we couldn't really talk to them. Church leadership didn't care to be involved, and our families were so distant as to be no influence at all.
We were guessing!
The real question is how we guessed right for 16 years given all the ballast we were carrying. But we were Americans, and we were smart, and we were successful at so many things. And it looked like things were working for so long, and we made it through so many high waters together. We sweated out days and months and years of low times, and we made it. Up until the last year of our marriage, we were proud of how we'd faced everything together.
But every struggle took its toll.
Go ahead and lecture me about not being committed. What? Do you think I haven't played that mp3 in my head? You can be as committed to tennis as you want. If you lack training, you'll injure yourself while learning nothing so much as to hate the game.
All our successes taught us to hate the marriage.
It takes a village to make a marriage. Look back on history, and you're fooling yourself if you think you see greater commitment in 1950. You're fooling yourself if you think you see women who wanted to be free, but couldn't find a way out. Look back on a world that lacked the isolating entertainment of the television, though, and I think you're onto something. Those kids HAD to play with each other, and they learned profitable conflict. There was nothing else. Look back on a world that expected parents to be involved in their adult children's lives. You can see the last vestiges of that world played out in the sitcoms that made the mother-in-law a villain. Mother-in-law jokes aren't funny any more, because there's no more friction there. The mother-in-law is half a state away, and the young couple has her visitation rights carefully controlled.
Nobody meddles any more, and it's costing us dearly.
We need help.
24 April, 2007
Courage and Depression
The question came up after my post on Rest, what it means to "labor to enter into His rest." I fiddled around with different ways of approaching the subject when depression happened into my mind. It's an easy call for me, for a number of reasons. I have lots of experience with it, and can only think of a few times that I have not fought it daily.
This is not one of those times. ;-)
Depression is an insidious enemy. It's poison is not in that it cannot be fought, but that it lulls every desire to fight it into a passive slumber. There are many worse things than being depressed. Sometimes being depressed even helps me pray. Why not just stay there?
The good-intentioned have lots of answers for the depressed, and all of them are right.
- Count your blessings.
- Praise God.
- Get out with others.
- Do something caring.
- See other people's needs.
- Work in the garden.
Every single one of those things works. The advice is sound, but it addresses the wrong problem. I want to be depressed, and all those things just get in the way of being well and usefully so.
When the "do something" approach fails, round 2 of the good-intentioned is an attempt to address my motivation. In this stage the kind souls remind me that God forbids depression, or at least hanging around there. Again, this is true - true enough to be really depressing. ;-)
God deserves the richest praise, and He has surely blessed me, so dwelling upon the negatives of my condition must be quite unthankful. So there must be a skill to being well and usefully depressed. I must praise whilst weeping. That confuses 'em real good. They don't quite know what to do when I am praising God, but am still every bit as depressed as before they showed up.
Eventually all the helpful people go away. They've caused all the pain they have the patience for, and I have to figure out what to do next. I am finally alone with my pain, and I have to find an appropriate response.
Here is where I must find the intersection of Courage, Rest and Pain.
Psalms 61 Lord, do not rebuke me in your anger or discipline me in your wrath.
David's first word is, "Lord." It should always be. He expands on this as we go, but for now he is scared of his Lord.
I am a daddy, and it tears my heart how quickly my children believe I am angry with them or that I will be. Neither of them would want to do anything that would really make me angry, and neither of them has. I can be made angry, but not by them - not a chance. We are even more safe with our Daddy, but it doesn't feel that way.
Specifically, David is afraid God will be angry at him or discipline him. I'm afraid of those things, too. I'm afraid because I have done things wrong, and I'm afraid because being depressed is just another thing I'm probably in trouble for - but this trouble includes phrases like, "Depart from Me, I never knew you."
2 Have mercy on me, Lord, for I am faint; heal me, Lord, for my bones are in agony. 3 My soul is in deep anguish. How long, Lord, how long?
David is fainting. He lacks the strength to fight this fight. He is curled up against a wall, wishing he had the strength to get a kerchief. He begs for healing of his bones. His body cannot even hold itself up. His heart quails from the thought of his own agony. And he asks the Lord the key question, "How long?"
He can muster the strength for one last push, but how many more pushes will it take? Deep down, he knows it's too many, and that he will fail.
But, he keeps calling out to the Lord. It is the Lord Who holds his times and seasons, and the Lord Who holds his healing. It is the Lord Who fills his mind.
4 Turn, Lord, and deliver me; save me because of your unfailing love. 5 Among the dead no one proclaims your name. Who praises you from the grave?
David quits mincing words.
"Repent, Lord. Deliver me. Save me," he says.
He knows the Lord has not quit loving him, so he implores Him do what He wants to do anyway. He can yet praise God, if barely, but if the Lord keeps him even a little longer in this agony, that last trickle of praise will end. The grave is never far away from the depressed.
David does not want it to end.
6 I am worn out from my groaning. 7 My eyes grow weak with sorrow; they fail because of all my foes.
Again, a hallmark of depression, fatigue.
It takes a great deal of energy to be well and usefully depressed, but David has done it here. He has spent himself. He has drained the bucket, all the way to the bottom. He is tired of listening to his own weeping, and has cried until he can hardly stand to open his own eyes.
Now, he is naked before His Lord.
Something happens between verse 7 and verse 8, something that takes time, maybe hours and maybe months.
David has admitted his Pain. Now, he finds his Courage. He finds the strength to stand up from all his fatigue and ...
Rest.
When we hear that a person has found Courage, we expect that they defeat their enemies one after another. That's what happens in all the stories, right? But it's not what happens to David.
Depression is the least active of states in all of life, and yet it is horribly fatiguing. Even while praising in the midst of depression, fatigue weighs its victim down. Ever wondered why anti-depressant drugs lead to suicide? In that first couple weeks after starting the drug, the person gets emotionally stronger without getting happier. During that dangerous window, they find the strength to finish themselves before they find the reasons not to. Depression wears a person down even to the point that they cannot harm themselves.
So, what happened during the space between verse 7 and verse 8?
Maybe David sought out someone to help him find his courage. Maybe he sung some of the good songs. Maybe he just kept weeping a little longer, and remembering his God.
This "something" that he did, for however long he had to do it, is what Hebrews 4:11 calls "laboring to enter into His rest."
David reminds himself why he should resist depression. In life there are countless ways to be depressed, and each one affords itself a different way to resist, to overcome. In the context of this psalm, David reminds himself that his enemies are God's enemies. He reminds himself, too, that his enemies are evil, and must not be allowed to triumph. Lastly, he reminds himself that God will not vanquish his enemies apart from his own participation by faith.
8 Away from me, all you who do evil, for the Lord has heard my weeping. 9 The Lord has heard my cry for mercy; the Lord accepts my prayer. 10 All my enemies will be overwhelmed with shame and anguish; they will turn back and suddenly be put to shame.
David reminds himself of the Lord in a supreme act of love. This is an act of courage, and (oddly) the action is to rest.
Love
David gives up his fetal refuge up against the wall for love's sake, love of those who will be helped when this battle is won. There are those who need David to stand against these enemies, and it's love that strengthens him to rise. It's brotherhood that causes a soldier at war to fire on the enemy, and it's brotherhood that teaches a man to resist every other fear, too.
More, though, it's the childlike love for his God that picks David back up. It is trusting and remembering that the Lord is good and strong and dependable that puts the starch back in his spine. These enemies will win if David does not remember God. David quits fearing God's rebuke, and begins to fear the loss of honor to God's Name. David can choose here to do a thing, to stand up against all the fears in his heart, that will give God a chance to hallow His Name on earth.
Love depends upon God to make a way to offer God a gift. It's remarkably like a mother helping her toddler make a Mother's Day gift. It seems a little silly, but it's one of the most charming expressions of love the world affords.
Courage
James Bond would handle these enemies by infiltrating the enemy command post and taking out the bad guy. Braveheart would give a stirring speech and raise the nation against the baddies. Gen. Patton would make the other poor sap give his life for his country. That's how we write our stories of courage.
The history of the kingdom sees human courage differently, badly.
Israel turned back to Egypt when they were being brave. Or they called on strange gods. They drew courage from throwing their children into Molech's fires, and from buying clues about the future from fortune tellers all across God's land.
David decided before he ever penned this poem to pour his heart out to an invisible God. After receiving no answer to his weeping, and after his bones shook within him, he reminded himself of the works of this invisible God and stirred himself to hope. I AM tells no fortunes. I AM made David a promise through Nathan, and then He went silent.
And in that silence David had to decide what to do.
Would he attack his enemies in human boldness? Or buy them off in craven fear? Might he turn to Molech? Or maybe offer sacrifices to the true God out of fear like Saul had, hoping to appease Him Who had been silent so long?
The man after God's own heart had the courage to throw his lot in with the invisible.
Rest
It is not recorded what David did to actually address the problem, but David records the important step. He believed. He believed so strongly that his despair annealled into confidence, and into holy boasting.
Israel lacked this boasting when it came time for the people to take the land of Canaan as their own. They needed only to march across the Jordan, and God would have given the land into their hands.
It says,Ex 23:28 And I will send hornets before thee, which shall drive out the Hivite, the Canaanite, and the Hittite, from before thee.
Israel had a chance to obey and to rest and to conquer all in one motion. She could have crossed that river into that land of giants, and lived in peace without the sacrifice of a single life, either from Israel or from Canaan. Instead, she listened to the 10 spies who told her that God could never deliver this land into her hands.
Note, though, that Israel could not conquer the land without courage and motion. They needed to walk into that land of giants to inhabit it. Courage inspires action, not indolence. Rest comes from God, and it comes as we act, not as we sit. Think back on every story of God's deliverance, and you will find an action on the part of the people. God would not allow Gideon to conquer with 30,000 soldiers, because that is not rest, but He also would not allow Gideon to conquer without the motion of 300 men against the enemy.
Us
We have every opportunity to live out courage and rest in the midst of our pain. We have the more sure word than mere prophecy. We have the Life and Resurrection of the Son of God on which to pin our trust.
Let's say a hangnail has me down right now. I need to spend a while decrying the pain of that hangnail to God. Then I need to spend a while earnestly seeking Truth to inspire courage in my heart. And finally, having found courage and rest in God, I need to trust that the Lord cares about my hangnail and go to the doctor to have it fixed.
I hope to continue this subject, looking at courage in our personal lives and in the life of the church.
This is not one of those times. ;-)
Depression is an insidious enemy. It's poison is not in that it cannot be fought, but that it lulls every desire to fight it into a passive slumber. There are many worse things than being depressed. Sometimes being depressed even helps me pray. Why not just stay there?
The good-intentioned have lots of answers for the depressed, and all of them are right.
- Count your blessings.
- Praise God.
- Get out with others.
- Do something caring.
- See other people's needs.
- Work in the garden.
Every single one of those things works. The advice is sound, but it addresses the wrong problem. I want to be depressed, and all those things just get in the way of being well and usefully so.
When the "do something" approach fails, round 2 of the good-intentioned is an attempt to address my motivation. In this stage the kind souls remind me that God forbids depression, or at least hanging around there. Again, this is true - true enough to be really depressing. ;-)
God deserves the richest praise, and He has surely blessed me, so dwelling upon the negatives of my condition must be quite unthankful. So there must be a skill to being well and usefully depressed. I must praise whilst weeping. That confuses 'em real good. They don't quite know what to do when I am praising God, but am still every bit as depressed as before they showed up.
Eventually all the helpful people go away. They've caused all the pain they have the patience for, and I have to figure out what to do next. I am finally alone with my pain, and I have to find an appropriate response.
Here is where I must find the intersection of Courage, Rest and Pain.
Psalms 61 Lord, do not rebuke me in your anger or discipline me in your wrath.
David's first word is, "Lord." It should always be. He expands on this as we go, but for now he is scared of his Lord.
I am a daddy, and it tears my heart how quickly my children believe I am angry with them or that I will be. Neither of them would want to do anything that would really make me angry, and neither of them has. I can be made angry, but not by them - not a chance. We are even more safe with our Daddy, but it doesn't feel that way.
Specifically, David is afraid God will be angry at him or discipline him. I'm afraid of those things, too. I'm afraid because I have done things wrong, and I'm afraid because being depressed is just another thing I'm probably in trouble for - but this trouble includes phrases like, "Depart from Me, I never knew you."
2 Have mercy on me, Lord, for I am faint; heal me, Lord, for my bones are in agony. 3 My soul is in deep anguish. How long, Lord, how long?
David is fainting. He lacks the strength to fight this fight. He is curled up against a wall, wishing he had the strength to get a kerchief. He begs for healing of his bones. His body cannot even hold itself up. His heart quails from the thought of his own agony. And he asks the Lord the key question, "How long?"
He can muster the strength for one last push, but how many more pushes will it take? Deep down, he knows it's too many, and that he will fail.
But, he keeps calling out to the Lord. It is the Lord Who holds his times and seasons, and the Lord Who holds his healing. It is the Lord Who fills his mind.
4 Turn, Lord, and deliver me; save me because of your unfailing love. 5 Among the dead no one proclaims your name. Who praises you from the grave?
David quits mincing words.
"Repent, Lord. Deliver me. Save me," he says.
He knows the Lord has not quit loving him, so he implores Him do what He wants to do anyway. He can yet praise God, if barely, but if the Lord keeps him even a little longer in this agony, that last trickle of praise will end. The grave is never far away from the depressed.
David does not want it to end.
6 I am worn out from my groaning. 7 My eyes grow weak with sorrow; they fail because of all my foes.
Again, a hallmark of depression, fatigue.
It takes a great deal of energy to be well and usefully depressed, but David has done it here. He has spent himself. He has drained the bucket, all the way to the bottom. He is tired of listening to his own weeping, and has cried until he can hardly stand to open his own eyes.
Now, he is naked before His Lord.
Take a two hour break, now, before reading verses 8-10. Spend those two
hours reading verses 1-7 over and over, because connecting verse 7 to verse
8 in the span of a single breath is insane.
It cannot be done.
Something happens between verse 7 and verse 8, something that takes time, maybe hours and maybe months.
David has admitted his Pain. Now, he finds his Courage. He finds the strength to stand up from all his fatigue and ...
Rest.
When we hear that a person has found Courage, we expect that they defeat their enemies one after another. That's what happens in all the stories, right? But it's not what happens to David.
Depression is the least active of states in all of life, and yet it is horribly fatiguing. Even while praising in the midst of depression, fatigue weighs its victim down. Ever wondered why anti-depressant drugs lead to suicide? In that first couple weeks after starting the drug, the person gets emotionally stronger without getting happier. During that dangerous window, they find the strength to finish themselves before they find the reasons not to. Depression wears a person down even to the point that they cannot harm themselves.
So, what happened during the space between verse 7 and verse 8?
Maybe David sought out someone to help him find his courage. Maybe he sung some of the good songs. Maybe he just kept weeping a little longer, and remembering his God.
This "something" that he did, for however long he had to do it, is what Hebrews 4:11 calls "laboring to enter into His rest."
David reminds himself why he should resist depression. In life there are countless ways to be depressed, and each one affords itself a different way to resist, to overcome. In the context of this psalm, David reminds himself that his enemies are God's enemies. He reminds himself, too, that his enemies are evil, and must not be allowed to triumph. Lastly, he reminds himself that God will not vanquish his enemies apart from his own participation by faith.
8 Away from me, all you who do evil, for the Lord has heard my weeping. 9 The Lord has heard my cry for mercy; the Lord accepts my prayer. 10 All my enemies will be overwhelmed with shame and anguish; they will turn back and suddenly be put to shame.
David reminds himself of the Lord in a supreme act of love. This is an act of courage, and (oddly) the action is to rest.
Love
David gives up his fetal refuge up against the wall for love's sake, love of those who will be helped when this battle is won. There are those who need David to stand against these enemies, and it's love that strengthens him to rise. It's brotherhood that causes a soldier at war to fire on the enemy, and it's brotherhood that teaches a man to resist every other fear, too.
More, though, it's the childlike love for his God that picks David back up. It is trusting and remembering that the Lord is good and strong and dependable that puts the starch back in his spine. These enemies will win if David does not remember God. David quits fearing God's rebuke, and begins to fear the loss of honor to God's Name. David can choose here to do a thing, to stand up against all the fears in his heart, that will give God a chance to hallow His Name on earth.
Love depends upon God to make a way to offer God a gift. It's remarkably like a mother helping her toddler make a Mother's Day gift. It seems a little silly, but it's one of the most charming expressions of love the world affords.
Courage
James Bond would handle these enemies by infiltrating the enemy command post and taking out the bad guy. Braveheart would give a stirring speech and raise the nation against the baddies. Gen. Patton would make the other poor sap give his life for his country. That's how we write our stories of courage.
The history of the kingdom sees human courage differently, badly.
Israel turned back to Egypt when they were being brave. Or they called on strange gods. They drew courage from throwing their children into Molech's fires, and from buying clues about the future from fortune tellers all across God's land.
David decided before he ever penned this poem to pour his heart out to an invisible God. After receiving no answer to his weeping, and after his bones shook within him, he reminded himself of the works of this invisible God and stirred himself to hope. I AM tells no fortunes. I AM made David a promise through Nathan, and then He went silent.
And in that silence David had to decide what to do.
Would he attack his enemies in human boldness? Or buy them off in craven fear? Might he turn to Molech? Or maybe offer sacrifices to the true God out of fear like Saul had, hoping to appease Him Who had been silent so long?
The man after God's own heart had the courage to throw his lot in with the invisible.
Rest
It is not recorded what David did to actually address the problem, but David records the important step. He believed. He believed so strongly that his despair annealled into confidence, and into holy boasting.
Israel lacked this boasting when it came time for the people to take the land of Canaan as their own. They needed only to march across the Jordan, and God would have given the land into their hands.
It says,Ex 23:28 And I will send hornets before thee, which shall drive out the Hivite, the Canaanite, and the Hittite, from before thee.
Israel had a chance to obey and to rest and to conquer all in one motion. She could have crossed that river into that land of giants, and lived in peace without the sacrifice of a single life, either from Israel or from Canaan. Instead, she listened to the 10 spies who told her that God could never deliver this land into her hands.
Note, though, that Israel could not conquer the land without courage and motion. They needed to walk into that land of giants to inhabit it. Courage inspires action, not indolence. Rest comes from God, and it comes as we act, not as we sit. Think back on every story of God's deliverance, and you will find an action on the part of the people. God would not allow Gideon to conquer with 30,000 soldiers, because that is not rest, but He also would not allow Gideon to conquer without the motion of 300 men against the enemy.
Us
We have every opportunity to live out courage and rest in the midst of our pain. We have the more sure word than mere prophecy. We have the Life and Resurrection of the Son of God on which to pin our trust.
Let's say a hangnail has me down right now. I need to spend a while decrying the pain of that hangnail to God. Then I need to spend a while earnestly seeking Truth to inspire courage in my heart. And finally, having found courage and rest in God, I need to trust that the Lord cares about my hangnail and go to the doctor to have it fixed.
I hope to continue this subject, looking at courage in our personal lives and in the life of the church.
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