I am two people. A dead man and a living one.
I have complete freedom from myself because myself is deserving of nothing–on my own I am as dust.
I have complete freedom in myself because Christ is in me and He is deserving of everything.
These things were revealed while meditating several days ago. I’ve been trying to discern the right path between two unmovable truths:
1. My repeated actions have completely disqualified me from any claim to my marriage to Christina based on my own merits, etc. I made promises and didn’t fulfill them. I habitually broke her trust. I did not honor her as unique and special. As a lifestyle, I sought to control and manipulate my circumstances and therefore her. I ignored her feelings unless they threatened me; then I would approach them as a problem to solve, something to appease so the conflict would go away, rather than someone to love and care for. I demanded authenticity from her life while my own was rife with hypocrisy, demanded she give while I was selfish to such a degree that I couldn’t even see it.
2. I love her, and if I am not pursuing her I am less then who I am. She is God’s embodiment of love to me, and I to her. While I may have warped the way the truth was expressed in our lives and marriage through all the things listed above, that doesn’t change the underlying, certain as the orbit of the stars and the moon, reality that she is my wife, my soulmate, my Beloved. God joined us together in marriage, and we are One.
The confusion comes when deciding what actions to take. How can I act on the second truth when the first is inescapable? These realities both ARE, they exist, yet they have completely opposite velocities. How can their co-existence be reconciled, especially when all I have available is my own limited place in time?
Dana spoke at Mosaic last week. She chose the moment when Moses stepped forward and told God that if He wanted to destroy Israel–who had just blown it with the golden calf–that God was going have to zap Moses first. In fact, he threw more down on the table than just his life–he put his soul at risk.
How does a man do that? I think it’s because Moses knew he was already dead.
I think Moses always remembered that when he had tried his hand at delivering the Israelites from Egypt despite all the learning of a prince all he was able to come up with was violence. Murder. And the Israelites, who were experts in recognizing coercion, called him on it. “Will you strike me dead as you did the Egyptian yesterday?”
I think Moses knew the only reason he was still alive was because of grace. The very law he was delivering to the people said “An eye for an eye, a tooth for tooth.” The punishment for murder was death. Moses had committed this crime. The very fact that he was still breathing at all meant he of all people understood the necessity for love and compassion and mercy rather than judgment.
Does this mean he got off the hook? No. It meant he understood that God had a complete right to do whatever He wanted with Moses life.
Same with me. Ive committed sins that God clearly considers to be capital offenses. It doesn’t matter the sin. What matters is that I’ve blown it. My own life is forfeit. Will I physically die? No. I’ll just keep living this slow death of trying: trying to be loving, trying to be creative, trying to be effective, trying to be a leader, a good son, a good father, a good brother, a good husband.
And I will continue to fail, and to fall. Further and further into a pit of futility. Because all of my trying will be an attempt to deny the truth that will not go away. That I am NOT a good anything. I am not good. I am selfish. I am a thief and a murderer, if not of material goods and lives then of souls and love. On my own, my ultimate contribution is dust and worms, a plague on all people. And the harder I try to deny it, the more I’ll prove it true.
But if I can admit all of these things…
Then I can place this wretched life where it belongs. On a cross. And Christ can come off of His. He hung on his unto death. His work was completed. Now He lives. And unlike me, He lived a life of submission and love. He never sinned against God or man. He created all things and redeemed them. He is worthy of everything. And He lives in me.
When I show someone love, I love Christ. When someone loves me, they love Christ. Therefore, I can reconcile any guilt or feelings of unworthiness I have about receiving anything good in my life because it is really being received through me to Him. True, I don’t deserve it. But deserving and merit and works are appeased by the body hanging on the Hill of the Skull. I live because God lives in me, and whatever good I receive, it comes by mercy, by the understanding that it is right for Him to receive goodness and love and affection and joy through me.
And so I can be free. Both truths are acknowledged. The ways of the universe are appeased. And we may all live in fellowship and joy.
Found this little bit of advice on how to actually put some of this into practice:
“After you find the specific hurt that you’ve been running from, the next step is to do the opposite of fighting it, which is to face it and then embrace it. Allow yourself to feel the hurt of being this way. Cry if you can. Then, while you are feeling this hurt, look over your life and see all the evidence to prove that this is indeed an aspect of you.
Find the evidence to prove that you are worthless, not good enough, not worth loving, a failure or whatever else you’ve been avoiding.
Remember, this isn’t true in reality. This is only true in the realm of thinking and emotion. But in this realm, worthless is very real, and this is the realm where the healing needs to take place. So put yourself in the hurt of feeling this way and look at your life and see all the evidence to prove that you really are this way.
The evidence will be there if you are willing to see it. It has to be. It wouldn’t keep showing up in your life if it wasn’t there. You don’t have to like it. You just have to tell the truth about it. Let it in.
Worthless is part of you. It’s also no big deal. You are also worthy. Worthless and worthy are both aspects of being human. So allow yourself to be human.
Allow yourself to feel all the hurt of being worthless, not good enough, a failure or whatever your issue is. Feel the hurt willingly like a child. Let it come and let it go.
The more you let in the fact that this is an aspect of you, the more impossible it is to run from it. When you can’t run from it, you can’t fight it. When you can’t fight it, the issue loses power and disappears.”
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Now playing: Honey – Force Majeure
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