I spend a lot of time thinking. This is, as you might expect, not always a good thing. For one thing, I spend a lot of time meditating on the abuses (real or imagined) that I perceive to have been visited upon me in life. Conversely, when I am convicted that I've wronged someone else, I spend almost as much time obsessing over them. Others have noted these traits in me and have attempted multiple times to gently reprimand those excesses, but somehow I seem to perpetually fall back into them. I've never really known why...and perhaps I still don't...but a possibility occurred to me this evening. Could it be that injustice and abuse stays with me so very long, and bothers me so deeply, because of a fundamental subconscious desire I have for a "smooth righteousness"?
By the term "smooth righteousness," what I mean is the idea that God's holy purposes (be they for the world-as-a-whole, the church, or even in my individual life) could be effected through relatively painless processes, that required no particular suffering, failure, or repentance, if only people (myself included) would "do the right thing." That's a very attractive idea. It even sounds quite spiritual...just a restoration of the Edenic beginning. But perhaps that's the problem. It's delusional to think we can un-eat the apple (so to speak). Neither the life of an individual, nor the life of God's Creation can be lived in reverse order. The good...the just...the perfect...no longer exists for us in a "what might have been," but rather in a "what may/will be." And that, may well be a future that inevitably leads through suffering, abuse, sin, etc.
It's easy enough to see this in certain aspects of the Gospel story (e.g., Jesus' salvific death on Calvary), but I wonder if we don't have a tendency to view the necessity of suffering as a one-time event restricted to the Crucifixion--nowadays, it's purely optional. I was struck by the violent imagery in Mark's account of the beginning of Jesus' ministry in his baptism by John. Mark 1:10 notes that, "as Jesus was coming up out of the water, He saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on Him like a dove." Similarly, Mark 15:38 records a scene of tearing at the moment of the Christ's death when, "the curtain of the Temple was torn in two from top to bottom." I've heard various interpretations (particularly of the latter passage) that debate whether the emphasis is upon tearing of the veil so that we can now enter God's presence, or whether it is upon tearing the veil, so that God is now coming out of the Holy of Holies and into the world, etc. What I can't recall, however, is any emphasis upon this consistent language of "tearing." Why not simply the idea of the door opening? of the heavens being unzipped? of the Temple veil being "raised"? I suspect because God wants us to understand that there is really no way for any sort of relationship between God and humanity (and perhaps not even one between humans) to be effected without some degree of suffering...of loss. It is the state of the world under Sin. It is the reality with which we must live. The question is not: Must I suffer injustice to grow into what God has called me to be? Rather it is, how will I respond to the injustice that I must endure if I am to become what I have said I wish to be?
By the term "smooth righteousness," what I mean is the idea that God's holy purposes (be they for the world-as-a-whole, the church, or even in my individual life) could be effected through relatively painless processes, that required no particular suffering, failure, or repentance, if only people (myself included) would "do the right thing." That's a very attractive idea. It even sounds quite spiritual...just a restoration of the Edenic beginning. But perhaps that's the problem. It's delusional to think we can un-eat the apple (so to speak). Neither the life of an individual, nor the life of God's Creation can be lived in reverse order. The good...the just...the perfect...no longer exists for us in a "what might have been," but rather in a "what may/will be." And that, may well be a future that inevitably leads through suffering, abuse, sin, etc.
It's easy enough to see this in certain aspects of the Gospel story (e.g., Jesus' salvific death on Calvary), but I wonder if we don't have a tendency to view the necessity of suffering as a one-time event restricted to the Crucifixion--nowadays, it's purely optional. I was struck by the violent imagery in Mark's account of the beginning of Jesus' ministry in his baptism by John. Mark 1:10 notes that, "as Jesus was coming up out of the water, He saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on Him like a dove." Similarly, Mark 15:38 records a scene of tearing at the moment of the Christ's death when, "the curtain of the Temple was torn in two from top to bottom." I've heard various interpretations (particularly of the latter passage) that debate whether the emphasis is upon tearing of the veil so that we can now enter God's presence, or whether it is upon tearing the veil, so that God is now coming out of the Holy of Holies and into the world, etc. What I can't recall, however, is any emphasis upon this consistent language of "tearing." Why not simply the idea of the door opening? of the heavens being unzipped? of the Temple veil being "raised"? I suspect because God wants us to understand that there is really no way for any sort of relationship between God and humanity (and perhaps not even one between humans) to be effected without some degree of suffering...of loss. It is the state of the world under Sin. It is the reality with which we must live. The question is not: Must I suffer injustice to grow into what God has called me to be? Rather it is, how will I respond to the injustice that I must endure if I am to become what I have said I wish to be?
Though He was a son, He learned obedience from what He suffered and, once made perfect, He became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey Him... -- Hebrews 5:8-9
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