Those Walking in Darkness...

Note to readers: I wrote this post back in December, probably around the 20th. I have left the Christmas references intact. ;) I had planned to share this much, much sooner, but it was personal enough that I wrote it for myself primarily and found myself in no hurry to share it. The act of getting the words out on the page did something for me, somehow. It set my thoughts in order and helped me get on the same page with God. I’m very grateful for what He has done in my life since then, and I have finally decided to publish this in (close) to its original form in case it can be of help to anyone else.

My lengthy absences between posts make me a terrible blogger, I admit, but luckily for me, I have never claimed to be a very good one, and so hopefully your expectations have been realistically low. Thank you for sticking around.

This past year or two, I have spent a lot of time thinking about how I met God. I couldn’t tell you exactly when it happened, but it was probably when I was eight or nine. I was raised memorizing Scripture, attending church, and being taught about God. My foundation was good, but it’s amazing how different it is before your spiritual eyes are opened. I had a zeal for God from a very young age, but without knowing Him personally yet, I didn’t have His guidance, and my attempts to please Him and my understanding of what Christianity was got a little skewed.

I created an idol of self-punishment that I used to try to fix myself, or at least settle accounts. I grew pretty attached to that system of doing things, if only because I was my own judge, and I got to mete out and monitor the punishments. All the while, I considered myself a Christian and started obeying a conviction to read my Bible on my own. I was a bright kid, and I knew how books worked; you started at the left and worked your way to the right. Duh. So, I started crawling my way through Genesis. It took me many years to get to the gospels, so it wasn’t what I read that instructed me in what happened next (I did, however, become aware of the presence of God for the first time while reading the OT).

I already knew the gospel because of my upbringing, but I didn’t realize that I wasn’t living it until God straightened me out. It’s funny looking back on that event, because in the moment, it didn’t seem to be a particularly dramatic experience. But in retrospect, the course of my life hinged on that moment, and the Father and Friend who is so familiar to me now stands out so clear. I had tasted his presence once before, while reading the Bible on my own. But now he came near to me and claimed me.

It was like God held out one hand and showed me the way of the Gospel, in which I was hopefully sinful and lost and broken (which I well knew), and all that I did and every shortcoming and the bitter nature inside of me were tallied. My price tag held a minus before it. But when Jesus came, in his infinite worth–the Creator and King of the universe!--and laid down his life, the infinite price on his head was taken off and given to me. It was entirely apart from my merit. Entirely! To my bafflement, my actual, intrinsic substance was not my worth; my worth in the eyes of God (whose opinions nullify all others) was measured by the grace that he poured over me, burying me so deep that neither my worst sins or my greatest virtues could ever make a dent in it.

In his other hand, God held out the path that I was on, so that I could see it side-by-side with the Gospel. They were not the same path. In fact they led in completely different directions. It was impossible to walk both at the same time. Which meant that I was lying about one of those paths that I claimed to be walking.

I couldn’t have it both ways. If I was bought and paid for by the blood of Christ, then it would be impossible to pay for myself. Or destroy myself to make up for my deficit, because I would have no deficit. To spit on myself as something worthless was to spit on Christ, because through his transaction, he equated my value with the value of his own life. If I continued the way that I was going, I would have no part with God.

When I think of Grace I think of that. And sometimes I am in disbelief. And this year I have found myself in turmoil.

The trouble is, when I first had to choose between my self-destructive way and letting God love me, that was just the first surrender. It was a first splash of joy, hope, and freedom. And faith, because all of a sudden I was doing something that was very against my nature: I opened my hands and trusted someone else. I leapt without having to know exactly how long I would be falling or where I would land. I can still remember that feeling.

The trouble is, looking back, I wonder what good it has done. I suspect that Jesus saved my life, and that’s no small thing, but it also seems like some of my chains just never came off. Over and over again, I’ve gotten snagged and hung up on my fear and my insistence on control rather than faith. I’ve worn myself out and gotten angry, and I’ve wrestled with new questions.

When I first got saved, I think I could accept my inherent sinfulness more easily than I do now. Because as soon as I got washed, it was no longer my identity. It was the past. It was someone else. But I have prayed many times since then that God would possess my body and wipe my mind and constrain my soul so that I could always be clean and never have to be ashamed, and God has not done it. Which seemed kind of unfair. I mean, of course he values free will, but if I’m offering it to him freely and even begging him to do it, then that would make it legal in his book, right?

I find that I am still bound by perfectionism. I am still loath to practice Grace, at least toward myself (but often toward other people as a consequence of my lack of practice). God commanded me not to treat something he loves like trash, but I have no compassion for the despicable, hateful creature I see in the mirror. And then I try to boss God around, telling him to “possess” me and such. Which begs the question: given all that I have done in the sight of God, how am I still standing??

“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by the yoke of slavery” (Galatians 5:1).

This year, I have been perplexed. Am I still chained to the same idol that God called me away from over ten years ago? If so, how has that happened? I look back and try to see what I was doing wrong. I start trying things. Read my Bible more. Pray more. Talk to mentors. Cry a lot. But I never seem to come out of it. I just go back to normal life until the frustration and desperation hits again. It’s gotten really hard for me to want change, because it seems out of my reach. I’m discouraged from trying and I don’t want to care anymore. I don’t have the answers. I don’t have the clarity. I don’t have the power.

Oh, but God does! The whole point isn’t to keep throwing myself at the problem but to rely on God instead. He is my strength when I am weak.

But how many times have I wrestled over this with no answers? I am commanded to seek him, right? I’m commanded to ask? Maybe I need to muster more desperation and spend more time pleading. Maybe that will be what it takes for God to meet me and save me. Maybe I just have to take the first steps.

But taking the first steps is my own effort. Trying to care again and dare to hope is my own effort. It’s hard for me to keep believing, and it seems so much depends on me to have good desires and a good heart, but I don’t think I have that. I can’t seem to shake my idols, and I can’t seem to shake self-hatred. When things get tough and all is stripped away, I’m left in a dark room with the closet open, staring my oldest friends in the face. Skeletons I thought I buried. Monsters who couldn’t touch me for a while but have just been waiting for me to awake from my fantasy and recognize them. What if they never go away?

It’s in this moment of defeat that the darkness warps everything. Namely, Grace, which has always felt too good to be true, anyway. If I’m paid for free and clear, I wonder, if it has nothing to do with my effort but with the free gift of God, then whose fault is it that I’m still what I am? I gave into God because he was going to change me, and then I could be someone I could love. That was the deal, wasn’t it? Or maybe not.

I go back to the gospel for answers. I go back to that first time that I heard God’s voice, and he smacked me upside the head with that gospel and woke me up to the truth. I wonder what he’s really trying to teach me, and if it’s possible for me to learn it.

One thing I remember about meeting God is that the core of his message was love, but the way he went about telling me was not soft or sentimental or what people would usually think of as loving. He was very blunt and matter-of-fact about how much he loved me and how much I was worth to him, and we reached an understanding on what sort of tragedy and crime it would be for me to refuse that in favor of my own private torment. God is very firm, probably because I need him to be, and I think that’s what he’s doing now.

I’ve been asking him for years to take me deeper with him, but I think I’ve subconsciously had strings attached to that request. But I can’t have it both ways. I can’t walk both paths. Maybe God has left me in the dark room with my oldest friends because I dug my heels in and wouldn’t follow him where he was leading. And maybe I can’t move on until I learn to despise the wages of sin that I’ve been living with. I am sick of the taste of death in my mouth. I want out!

The trouble with struggling in this way as someone who has been a Christian for over ten years is that I feel like my pre-saved self, which makes it seem like salvation was a myth to begin with. It has given me very serious doubts.

In moments when I had no doubt, I have found my moral resolve worn away by a resentment that made me want to become as the demons and rebel against a God that I know full well is real and righteous and good. Just to be clear, while I have given this post a positive change arc, I’m still wrestling it all out, and my hopeful ending is perhaps just an attempt to make sense of what I’m experiencing and instill in myself some of that hope. I write it out of faith in the God who has saved me from crushing depression and so much more, proving over and over again that he is good and can be trusted. Which I suppose means that I am wrong about at least one thing: walking with God has changed me.

Finding faith inside of me is a miracle. Finding hope inside of me is a miracle.

And that’s about all the thoughts I have on the subject for now. It is my hope that I will at some point be able to tell you where all of this was leading, but for now, I’m still in the process of living it. Merry Christmas, my friends. God is with us (Immanuel). As we reflect on the beginning of the salvation plan for mankind, remember where you yourself came from. Remember how the gospel came alive for you. Remember meeting God.

“To the law and to the testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, they have no light of dawn. Distressed and hungry, they will roam through the land; when they are famished, they will become enraged and, looking upward, will curse their king and their God. Then they will look toward the earth and see only distress and darkness and fearful gloom, and they will be thrust into utter darkness.

“Nevertheless, there will be no more gloom for those who were in distress. In the past he humbled the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the future he will honor Galilee of the Gentiles, by the way of the sea, along the Jordan–

“The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned… you have shattered the yoke that burdens them, the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor… For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 8:20-9:2,4,6, NIV).