I. Subjection
“O you who hear prayer, to you all men will come.” (Ps. 65:2)
This verse sets the stage for the whole drama surrounding our participation in the divine dialogue. The first part of the verse introduces the reality being offered: Here we have a God who hears our prayers!; the second part, the natural result: “to you all men will come.” The expectation that was built up in our hearts when God first revealed Himself as “Immanuel” (God with us) was no accident. And neither are the countless expectations that have since arisen upon having His nature revealed to us in Christ and through the scriptures. Far from being accidents, The Bible teaches that we were subjected to what we now call the “natural order” of creation by “the will of Him who subjected it”. We are, as Zec. 9:12 puts it, “prisoners of hope.”
“For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.” (Rom. 8:20-25)
If you’re familiar at all with Lewis’ writing, you’ll notice he sometimes complains that he was not consulted before being brought into existence (see Surprised By Joy, pg. 96 and 166). He felt that this presumption on the part of God was a great injustice. Though this is not a sentiment I have ever shared, I am coming to understand in what way he might count it as such. In the below quote, Lewis refers to this phenomenon called consciousness, which we were “awoken into” quite separate from any choice of our own. It goes farther than existing physically; our awakening into consciousness was the precise moment in our natural history at which we became subjected to the fullness of reality - that is, to both the material as well as the immaterial. And now that we are here, the only worthwhile question is, what are we to make of it? (The box has been opened, the cat is dead.)
“Come, what do we gain by evasions? We are under the harrow and can’t escape. Reality, looked at steadily is unbearable. And how or why did such a reality blossom (or fester) here and there into the terrible phenomenon called consciousness? Why did it produce things like us who can see it and, seeing it, recoil in loathing? Who (stranger still) want to see it and take pains to find it out, even when no need compels them and even though the sight of it makes an incurable ulcer in their hearts?” (A Grief Observed, pg. 28)
The tragedy of our subjection is echoed in Ecclesiastes:
“I have seen the burden God has laid on men. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.” (Ecc. 3:10-11)
But in what way, and to what degree is being awoken into consciousness a tragedy? In the same way as if we were to put a man to sleep while happy in his home only to wake him in a stage set contrived to only look like his real home, while in fact being nothing more than moveable props, manufactured recordings of familiar sights and sounds, and actors walking around in face masks. In this world, we are offered every physical object by which to satisfy our corresponding desire (food for hunger, sex for reproduction, etc.), but still we are discontent. That is because we are dual creatures, being of both body and soul, so that even while possessing every worldly pleasure we can experience a simultaneous destitution of the soul. As John Mayer sings,
I'm not alone, I wish I was
Cause then I'd know, I was down because
I couldn't find, a friend around
To love me like, they do right now
I'm dizzy from the shopping malls
I searched for joy, but I bought it all
It doesn't help the hunger pains
and a thirst I'd have to drown first to ever satiate
Something's missing
And I don't know how to fix it
I can't be sure that this state of mind, is not of my own design
I wish there was an over the counter test, for loneliness
For loneliness like this
Something's missing
And I don't know how to fix it
(abbrev. from John Mayer, “Something’s Missing”)
Later in the song, he actually goes so far as to take an inventory of his desires, checking them off as he goes along as if searching for that essential thing that is still missing from his life. “Friends, check; Money, check; Opposite sex, check…” If we are sensible enough, it is at this point that most of us turn to God. (I mean, in the general sense, not necessarily Christianity). And certainly we believe that this was God’s intention to keep man so desperate for Him that he eventually calls on Him for salvation. And we do so in hope, because we accept with God the notion that this deeper fulfillment might now have become attainable in Him. Is that not the primary implication of Isaiah 55:1-2:
“Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost. Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare.”
This is the context under which we first come to God: in desperation. We are motivated by appetite and encouraged by such advertisements as, “Taste and see that the Lord is good (Ps. 34:8).” So now, in the same way as we were previously subjected to our lack through the impartation of consciousness, we have also become in Christ “prisoners of hope.” We are set in a position before God as needy creatures, those who live by every word that proceeds from His mouth (Deut. 8:3). We are told to abide in Him (John 15:4) who is the very source of goodness (James 1:17). We are ushered in to a sort of bi-focal existence, walking around in this dead and deficient world and yet in constant communion with the One who is able to breath life into dry bones (Ezek. 37:1-14). He is the “living resurrection” (John 11:25), who brings to life everything He touches. And what man, who spends any significant period of his life in communion with this God, can help but be swept up into utter expectation?
“Through these He has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them [we] may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.” (2 Peter 1:4)
If this is true, if God were as intentional in subjecting His children to this “living hope” (1 Peter 1:3) as I suspect He was, there are great and weighty consequences that follow. I’m going to make a lot of appeals to common sensibility here, because I think we have become too well accustomed to - and alarmingly effective at - defending God against the disparities that arise between the principles we believe about Him and the reality of our experience with Him. The entire book of Job is a testament to this fact. Thank God for Job’s unique perceptiveness, because when his friends began defending God on the basis of their established principles about Him, Job lashed back: “Will you speak wickedly on God‘s behalf? Will you speak deceitfully for Him? Will you show Him partiality? Will you argue the case for God (Job 13:7-8)?”
II. Avoidance Tactics
“Who can straighten what God has made crooked? When times are good, be happy; but when times are bad, consider: God has made the one as well as the other. Therefore a man cannot discover anything about his future.” (Ecc. 7:13-14)
Is the attempt on our behalf to “come to God’s defense” really an effort to preserve His good name or more an effort to preserve ourselves from the prospect of being found vulnerable before Him. I suspect, for many reasons, that this behavior is not for God’s sake but for our own. We have somehow become proactive creatures, anticipating God’s movements before He makes them so that we are never caught off our guard. How do we do this? By relying on principles and precedent rather than engaging in real relationship with the “great iconoclast” (Lewis, A Grief Observed, pg. 66). We have yielded every frontier of true relationship with God with something safer, more predictable, and easier to swallow. We were invited to dance with Him and then presumed to take the lead.
The book of Job is a testament to how easily and subtly man can begin to replace the reality of God with a mere image of Him. This is the result of removing yourself, however so slightly, from the position we were given before God. “For we are only creatures; our role must always be that of patient to agent, female to male, mirror to light, echo to voice. Our highest activity must be response, not initiative. To experience the love of God in a true, and not an illusory form, is therefore to experience it as our surrender to His demand, our conformity to His desire.” (The Problem of Pain, pg. 44)
This conclusion might sound overly Calvinistic to some of you, but I can see no way around it. As creatures before our Creator, we cannot ignore the role of providence in our new existence (that is, as new creatures - 2 Cor. 5:17). We are clay in the Potter’s hands (Is. 29:16, 45:9, 64:8), gold refined by the Goldsmith (Mal. 3:2; Prov. 25:4), God’s workmanship (Eph. 2:10) and agents of His purpose (Is. 46:11; 10:5-7; Is. 41:2-4, 25-29; 44:28; 45:1, 13). And all the benefit of these things comes in our yielding to the external influence, giving way when our present form conflicts with the intent of the artist. Surely, we would gain nothing if we maintained our rigid composure. So why do so many of our theological principles insist on proactive solutions and premature defense tactics?
Something in us rebels against our position. Fear, perhaps. Distrust. Maybe even exasperation within our current situation. In later discussions, I want to explore the question of whether subjection to God can really be anything but pain, if we must always die first before we experience any of His resurrective power…But for now, suffice it to say that this existence into which we’ve been inaugurated is not always pleasant. Exasperating is often a more apt description. What emphatic silences we’d have to endure if we had not the option of consulting our principles! Lewis, amidst pondering his grief over the loss of his wife, considers:
“Meanwhile, where is God? This is one of the most disquieting symptoms [of grief]. When you are happy, so happy that you have no sense of needing Him, so happy that you are tempted to feel His claims upon you as an interruption, if you remember yourself and turn to Him with gratitude and praise, you will be - or so it feels - welcomed with open arms. But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence. You may as well turn away. The longer you wait, the more emphatic the silence will become.” (A Grief Observed, pg. 6)
As painful an experience as this is, as hopeless a situation as it seems, should we not continue to wait on God if in fact our hope was ever truly established in Him? We cannot continue to bounce back and forth between a foundation of hope in Christ and a dependence on the hope this world offers (see John 11:9-10; Is. 50:10-11). Like the opening verse read, “Who can straighten what God has made crooked?” Therefore, should we not feel tension when He suspends His activity, endure the emphatic silence when it comes, and embrace our full capacity for emotional experience as we are acted upon by the author of our salvation (Heb. 2:10)? Isn’t that, at least, the appeal our faith makes of us? Doesn’t it beg that we face reality head on and subject ourselves fully to the Absolute. Only in this position and only within this context can we hope to understand anything God does in our lives. If we abandon our lesson before we achieve the result for which we were subjected to it, then we have abandoned the only path to resolution as well. Our lives begin to feel like one long sustained note, creating an intolerable tension until it is resolved. That, anyway, is my theory as to the origin of futility in our religion. If this is true, which I hope it is, our dialogue with God becomes intelligible again and we may answer those who profess futility in their experience with God one of two things…these I will also discuss in a later discussion.
“O you who hear prayer, to you all men will come.” (Ps. 65:2)
This verse sets the stage for the whole drama surrounding our participation in the divine dialogue. The first part of the verse introduces the reality being offered: Here we have a God who hears our prayers!; the second part, the natural result: “to you all men will come.” The expectation that was built up in our hearts when God first revealed Himself as “Immanuel” (God with us) was no accident. And neither are the countless expectations that have since arisen upon having His nature revealed to us in Christ and through the scriptures. Far from being accidents, The Bible teaches that we were subjected to what we now call the “natural order” of creation by “the will of Him who subjected it”. We are, as Zec. 9:12 puts it, “prisoners of hope.”
“For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.” (Rom. 8:20-25)
If you’re familiar at all with Lewis’ writing, you’ll notice he sometimes complains that he was not consulted before being brought into existence (see Surprised By Joy, pg. 96 and 166). He felt that this presumption on the part of God was a great injustice. Though this is not a sentiment I have ever shared, I am coming to understand in what way he might count it as such. In the below quote, Lewis refers to this phenomenon called consciousness, which we were “awoken into” quite separate from any choice of our own. It goes farther than existing physically; our awakening into consciousness was the precise moment in our natural history at which we became subjected to the fullness of reality - that is, to both the material as well as the immaterial. And now that we are here, the only worthwhile question is, what are we to make of it? (The box has been opened, the cat is dead.)
“Come, what do we gain by evasions? We are under the harrow and can’t escape. Reality, looked at steadily is unbearable. And how or why did such a reality blossom (or fester) here and there into the terrible phenomenon called consciousness? Why did it produce things like us who can see it and, seeing it, recoil in loathing? Who (stranger still) want to see it and take pains to find it out, even when no need compels them and even though the sight of it makes an incurable ulcer in their hearts?” (A Grief Observed, pg. 28)
The tragedy of our subjection is echoed in Ecclesiastes:
“I have seen the burden God has laid on men. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.” (Ecc. 3:10-11)
But in what way, and to what degree is being awoken into consciousness a tragedy? In the same way as if we were to put a man to sleep while happy in his home only to wake him in a stage set contrived to only look like his real home, while in fact being nothing more than moveable props, manufactured recordings of familiar sights and sounds, and actors walking around in face masks. In this world, we are offered every physical object by which to satisfy our corresponding desire (food for hunger, sex for reproduction, etc.), but still we are discontent. That is because we are dual creatures, being of both body and soul, so that even while possessing every worldly pleasure we can experience a simultaneous destitution of the soul. As John Mayer sings,
I'm not alone, I wish I was
Cause then I'd know, I was down because
I couldn't find, a friend around
To love me like, they do right now
I'm dizzy from the shopping malls
I searched for joy, but I bought it all
It doesn't help the hunger pains
and a thirst I'd have to drown first to ever satiate
Something's missing
And I don't know how to fix it
I can't be sure that this state of mind, is not of my own design
I wish there was an over the counter test, for loneliness
For loneliness like this
Something's missing
And I don't know how to fix it
(abbrev. from John Mayer, “Something’s Missing”)
Later in the song, he actually goes so far as to take an inventory of his desires, checking them off as he goes along as if searching for that essential thing that is still missing from his life. “Friends, check; Money, check; Opposite sex, check…” If we are sensible enough, it is at this point that most of us turn to God. (I mean, in the general sense, not necessarily Christianity). And certainly we believe that this was God’s intention to keep man so desperate for Him that he eventually calls on Him for salvation. And we do so in hope, because we accept with God the notion that this deeper fulfillment might now have become attainable in Him. Is that not the primary implication of Isaiah 55:1-2:
“Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost. Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare.”
This is the context under which we first come to God: in desperation. We are motivated by appetite and encouraged by such advertisements as, “Taste and see that the Lord is good (Ps. 34:8).” So now, in the same way as we were previously subjected to our lack through the impartation of consciousness, we have also become in Christ “prisoners of hope.” We are set in a position before God as needy creatures, those who live by every word that proceeds from His mouth (Deut. 8:3). We are told to abide in Him (John 15:4) who is the very source of goodness (James 1:17). We are ushered in to a sort of bi-focal existence, walking around in this dead and deficient world and yet in constant communion with the One who is able to breath life into dry bones (Ezek. 37:1-14). He is the “living resurrection” (John 11:25), who brings to life everything He touches. And what man, who spends any significant period of his life in communion with this God, can help but be swept up into utter expectation?
“Through these He has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them [we] may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.” (2 Peter 1:4)
If this is true, if God were as intentional in subjecting His children to this “living hope” (1 Peter 1:3) as I suspect He was, there are great and weighty consequences that follow. I’m going to make a lot of appeals to common sensibility here, because I think we have become too well accustomed to - and alarmingly effective at - defending God against the disparities that arise between the principles we believe about Him and the reality of our experience with Him. The entire book of Job is a testament to this fact. Thank God for Job’s unique perceptiveness, because when his friends began defending God on the basis of their established principles about Him, Job lashed back: “Will you speak wickedly on God‘s behalf? Will you speak deceitfully for Him? Will you show Him partiality? Will you argue the case for God (Job 13:7-8)?”
II. Avoidance Tactics
“Who can straighten what God has made crooked? When times are good, be happy; but when times are bad, consider: God has made the one as well as the other. Therefore a man cannot discover anything about his future.” (Ecc. 7:13-14)
Is the attempt on our behalf to “come to God’s defense” really an effort to preserve His good name or more an effort to preserve ourselves from the prospect of being found vulnerable before Him. I suspect, for many reasons, that this behavior is not for God’s sake but for our own. We have somehow become proactive creatures, anticipating God’s movements before He makes them so that we are never caught off our guard. How do we do this? By relying on principles and precedent rather than engaging in real relationship with the “great iconoclast” (Lewis, A Grief Observed, pg. 66). We have yielded every frontier of true relationship with God with something safer, more predictable, and easier to swallow. We were invited to dance with Him and then presumed to take the lead.
The book of Job is a testament to how easily and subtly man can begin to replace the reality of God with a mere image of Him. This is the result of removing yourself, however so slightly, from the position we were given before God. “For we are only creatures; our role must always be that of patient to agent, female to male, mirror to light, echo to voice. Our highest activity must be response, not initiative. To experience the love of God in a true, and not an illusory form, is therefore to experience it as our surrender to His demand, our conformity to His desire.” (The Problem of Pain, pg. 44)
This conclusion might sound overly Calvinistic to some of you, but I can see no way around it. As creatures before our Creator, we cannot ignore the role of providence in our new existence (that is, as new creatures - 2 Cor. 5:17). We are clay in the Potter’s hands (Is. 29:16, 45:9, 64:8), gold refined by the Goldsmith (Mal. 3:2; Prov. 25:4), God’s workmanship (Eph. 2:10) and agents of His purpose (Is. 46:11; 10:5-7; Is. 41:2-4, 25-29; 44:28; 45:1, 13). And all the benefit of these things comes in our yielding to the external influence, giving way when our present form conflicts with the intent of the artist. Surely, we would gain nothing if we maintained our rigid composure. So why do so many of our theological principles insist on proactive solutions and premature defense tactics?
Something in us rebels against our position. Fear, perhaps. Distrust. Maybe even exasperation within our current situation. In later discussions, I want to explore the question of whether subjection to God can really be anything but pain, if we must always die first before we experience any of His resurrective power…But for now, suffice it to say that this existence into which we’ve been inaugurated is not always pleasant. Exasperating is often a more apt description. What emphatic silences we’d have to endure if we had not the option of consulting our principles! Lewis, amidst pondering his grief over the loss of his wife, considers:
“Meanwhile, where is God? This is one of the most disquieting symptoms [of grief]. When you are happy, so happy that you have no sense of needing Him, so happy that you are tempted to feel His claims upon you as an interruption, if you remember yourself and turn to Him with gratitude and praise, you will be - or so it feels - welcomed with open arms. But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence. You may as well turn away. The longer you wait, the more emphatic the silence will become.” (A Grief Observed, pg. 6)
As painful an experience as this is, as hopeless a situation as it seems, should we not continue to wait on God if in fact our hope was ever truly established in Him? We cannot continue to bounce back and forth between a foundation of hope in Christ and a dependence on the hope this world offers (see John 11:9-10; Is. 50:10-11). Like the opening verse read, “Who can straighten what God has made crooked?” Therefore, should we not feel tension when He suspends His activity, endure the emphatic silence when it comes, and embrace our full capacity for emotional experience as we are acted upon by the author of our salvation (Heb. 2:10)? Isn’t that, at least, the appeal our faith makes of us? Doesn’t it beg that we face reality head on and subject ourselves fully to the Absolute. Only in this position and only within this context can we hope to understand anything God does in our lives. If we abandon our lesson before we achieve the result for which we were subjected to it, then we have abandoned the only path to resolution as well. Our lives begin to feel like one long sustained note, creating an intolerable tension until it is resolved. That, anyway, is my theory as to the origin of futility in our religion. If this is true, which I hope it is, our dialogue with God becomes intelligible again and we may answer those who profess futility in their experience with God one of two things…these I will also discuss in a later discussion.
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