The Divine Dialogue: Part 3 (Originally posted October 2007)

Preface: Time magazine article, “Her Agony”
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1655720,00.html

I. To Feed on God

“Jesus said to them, ‘I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him. Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your forefathers ate manna and died, but he who feeds on this bread will live forever.’” (John 6:53-58)

One thing is clear from this passage: we have no true life outside of Christ. Jesus’ comparison between the sustenance which comes by feeding our bodies on earthly bread and the sustenance which comes by feeding our souls on the bread of heaven (Christ Himself), is central to this passage. Jesus uses this comparison not only to emphasize the superiority of divine fulfillment versus natural fulfillment, but also to make the point that, in light of His design for us, anything short of life in Him is not to be considered life at all. Life for man, who was created in the very image of God, is inseparable from the soul-level nourishment we receive in intimate relationship with Him. In other words, you cannot call yourself living in God’s eyes simply because you have a pulse, breath in your lungs, and food in your belly. We come alive by feeding ourselves on Christ.

God commands His people in scripture to offer a sacrifice of praise to Him (Heb. 13:15). Psalm 33:1 reads, “Sing joyfully to the Lord, you righteous; it is fitting for the upright to praise Him.” And again in Psalm 147:1, “Praise the Lord. How good it is to sing praises to our God, how pleasant and fitting to praise Him!” Many people seem stupefied by this command and respond by offering among their highest praises, “Thank you, Lord, that I have a beating heart and breath in my lungs.” They might even go so far as to add, “If I receive nothing else from you, this is enough.”

Is there not something awry about this tendency of ours, first of all, to grasp at the most elemental scraps of our existence as God’s highest gifts and, secondly, to place such importance on the sustenance of our bodily existence? “Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes?” (Matt. 6:25) This question must have sounded awfully strange when Jesus posed it to the crowds gathered round Him on the mount. I would bet that at least a handful of them thought to themselves, “Wait a second, what could be more important to life than food?” But Jesus was so absorbed in the reality of His teachings (that is, that true life is the life found in Him) that the question poured out without the slightest hesitation.

John Piper writes in his book, Desiring God, “If [God] withholds himself from our contemplation and companionship, no matter what else he gives us, he is not loving (Desiring God, pg. 48).” Life, then, if we can consider it within its appropriate context, should not even be considered a blessing at all if we are otherwise withheld from enjoying God directly. To assert that the “blessings” of a beating heart and breath in our lungs were sufficient provisions from our Savior is to inadvertently advocate Hell itself as a suitable existence for God’s redeemed: for what is Hell but an eternal existence separated from God? Consider Queen Orual’s experience in Lewis’ Till We Have Faces:

“I did and I did and I did - and what does it matter what I did? I cared for all these things only as a man cares for a hunt or a game, which fills the mind and seems of some moment while it lasts, but then the beast’s killed or the king’s mated, and now who cares? It was so with me almost every evening of my life; one little stairway led me from feast or council, all the bustle and skill and glory of queenship, to my own chamber to be alone with myself - that is, with a nothingness. Going to bed and waking in the morning (I woke, most often, too early) were bad times - so many hundreds of evenings and mornings. Sometimes I wondered who or what sends us this senseless repetition of days and nights and seasons and years; is it not like hearing a stupid boy whistle the same tune over and over, till you wonder how he can bear it himself?” (Till We Have Faces, pg. 236)

Know then that life, in the mere sense of our sustained mortality, is no gift in itself. It is as the fictional devil, Screwtape puts it, “…simply an occasion which we and the Enemy [God] are both trying to exploit. Like most other things which humans are excited about, such as health and sickness, age and youth, or war and peace, it is, from the point of view of the spiritual life, mainly raw material (The Screwtape Letters, pg. 102-103).” So, if the sustenance of our bodily existence is not in itself praiseworthy, what is? What above our bodily health is the most important quality of life? In pointing us away from the physical, Jesus naturally directs our thoughts toward the nourishment of our souls. According to His assessment, true life begins when we are satisfied, not merely bodily, but within our very souls. And we recall from the opening passage that our souls are nourished by feeding on Christ Himself.

“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.” (Is. 55:2)

It might be pertinent at this time to clarify what is meant by life in the salvific sense versus life in the mortal sense. Christ says “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you.” But we have already determined that this does not mean that our mortal existence will cease if we do not feed on Him. So what part of us does die? I think in the general sense, it is our spirits that die (and I’m not sure in what way the spirit is separate from the soul). In the practical, or applicatory, sense, it is our faith that dies when we are no longer nourished in communion with God. It is absurd to think that the branch can survive when separated from the vine (John 15), or that our faith of which God is the author and perfector (Heb. 12:2) can be sustained apart from His abiding presence. As we have already established, our position before God must always be patient to agent. He is the source.

II. The Contradiction

As a preamble to this post, I asked everyone to read the Time magazine article featuring Mother Teresa’s “crisis if faith”. It occurred to me that not everyone who read that article may have been able to extract the significant points of her experiences as it relates to this discussion. Therefore, let me cite, side by side, the two sets of “data” from which my “problem” arises:

1. Our faith is sustained by being nourished on Christ - As John Piper writes, ““If [God] withholds himself from our contemplation and companionship, no matter what else he gives us, he is not loving.” (Desiring God, pg. 48)

2. Christ, at times, seems to withhold Himself from us - Hear Mother Teresa’s complaint upon receiving an important prize in the Philippines: “This means nothing to me, because I don’t have Him.”

According to the article in Time magazine, Mother Teresa endured a half-century feeling as though God were absent from her life. It was reported that “with her confessors, she developed a kind of shorthand of pain, referring almost casually to ’my darkness’ and to Jesus as ’the Absent One.’ In a transcribed prayer she writes, “When I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven - there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives and hurt my very soul.- I am told God loves me - and yet the reality of darkness and coldness and emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul.” She wrote elsewhere in a letter to Archbishop Ferdinand Perier, “Please pray specifically for me that I may not spoil His work and that Our Lord may show Himself - for there is such terrible darkness in me, as if everything was dead. It has been like this more or less from the time I started ‘the work.’”

Again, Piper writes, “God’s quest to be glorified and our quest to be satisfied reach their goal in this one experience: our delight in God which overflows in praise.” (Desiring God, pg. 53) Might God have other purposes which necessitate His withdrawal from our lives? The life of Mother Teresa, and testimonies like hers, portray a picture of faith in which that single necessary element is denied it (Luke 10:41-42). As tempted as I am to dismiss the implicit doctrine of the second “datum” by a fundamental adherence to the first, I just can’t. The plaintiffs are too many, and frankly, too credible. I believe that C.S. Lewis used the fictional Orual to vicariously carry his own complaints before God. You can hardly read his book without getting that impression. The clarity with which he describes the suffering at the hands of the gods, and the specificity of the language he uses are too incriminating. Then I have myself to reference, and I certainly can’t renounce my own testimony.

Piper quotes George Mueller: “…now, since God has taught me this point, it is as plain to me as anything, that the first thing the child has to do morning by morning is to obtain food for his inner man…food for my own soul is the object of my meditation.” (Desiring God, pg. 134 and 133) Again, the centrality of being nourished on God is emphasized. One might reasonably ask, how does one’s soul “feed” on God? How does one recognize that they are living in nurturing communion with God? C.S. Lewis’ contemplations on prayer give us a starting point in answering this question:

“…for our spiritual life as a whole, the ‘being taken into account,’ or ‘considered,’ matters more than [our petitions] being granted…We can bear to be refused but not to be ignored. In other words, our faith can survive many refusals if they really are refusals and not mere disregards. The apparent stone will be bread to us if we believe that a Father’s hand put it into ours, in mercy or in justice or even in rebuke. It is hard and bitter, yet it can be chewed and swallowed. But if, having prayed for our heart’s desire and got it, we then became convinced that this was a mere accident - that providential designs which had only some quite different end just couldn’t help throwing out this satisfaction for us as a by-product - then the apparent bread would become a stone. A pretty stone, perhaps, or even a precious stone. But not edible to the soul.” (Letters to Malcolm, pg. 52-53)

A soul fed on God feels alive and there are fruits in accordance with that life. “Out of the overflow of the heart…” is a common phrase in scripture (Luke 6:45). If we are filled on the heart level with God, we should expect such fruit as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (Gal. 5:22-23) to result. Note that this list speaks of internal conditions rather than external acts. Keep this in mind when you read the following passage from Till We Have Faces.

“It was as if I were dead already, but not as the god, or Socrates, bade me die. Yet all the time I was able to go about my work, doing and saying whatever was needful, and no one knew that there was anything amiss. Indeed, the dooms I gave, sitting on my judgment seat, about this time, were though to be even wiser and more just than before; it was work on which I spent much pains and I know I did it well. But the prisoners and plaintiffs and witnesses and the rest seemed now to me more like shadows than real men. I did not care a straw (though I still labored to discern) who had a right to the little field or who had stolen the cheese.” (Till We Have Faces, pg. 236, 285)

When we cease to receive the soul-level nourishment of communion with God, we experience a spiritual death while our physical existences continue almost uninterrupted. Often this change, as Orual noted, goes completely unnoticed by those around us. We begin to feel hollow, more like ghosts than living beings, moving through this existence as if we were still part of it, when in reality, we have no real participation in it. As Orual recounts, the plaintiffs and witnesses no longer seemed like men to her, but mere shadows. Everything that moves around us remains external, and we no longer receive nourishment into our souls.

All these descriptions are echoed almost exactly by Mother Teresa in the biography, Come Be My Light. And these also were the words I found being laid down in my journal night after night as I began to focus my attention directly on Him. I can’t help but wonder if it is in fact the natural result of attending so directly to God’s presence. I asked before if intimacy with God was something you could only allude to, or if His presence can only be experienced through some peripheral approach. The doctrine I’ve discussed here - that of being nourished by our direct communion with God - is yet another route through which this question naturally arises. The Bible teaches that this communion is essential to the life He’s called us, and yet not everyone who seeks Him finds nourishment in Him. Often it is quite the contrary, and our intense longing for His immediacy in our lives becomes nothing but a source of death, keeping our souls starved even of worldly pleasures.

To first seek communion with God is to leave the shore of everything the world offers (Heb 11:15-16, 24-27)…we brave the vast and featureless ocean in pure hope that the land which awaits us will be infinitely better (ibid., Rom. 8:18). Every decision against the world in hope of God’s promise makes our trust in Him that much more severe, that much more costly if we are wrong. But as we float here alone, seeing neither the land we left behind nor that which we are striving to reach, a depth of sobriety which we may have never before experienced inevitably sets in. This is the moment you cease to be satisfied with mere allusions to the prospective reality. All peripheral things drop away, become utterly insufficient, and your soul cries out for the reality itself. And within Christianity we are taught that access to the reality is not only readily available but principal to our faith experience. If this is so, why the apparent contradiction?

The Divine Dialogue: Part 2 (Originally posted June 2008)

I. Sight and Knowledge

In our discussion on faith, we talked about the intellect as a faculty used in discerning spiritual truths. Plato likens this particular application of our intellect (which he calls knowledge) to another of our faculties, sight. He writes that the philosopher “will often turn their eyes upward and downward…they will first look at absolute justice and beauty and temperance, and again at the human copy; and will mingle and temper the various elements of life into the image of a man; and this they will conceive in according to that other image, which, when existing among men, Homer calls the form and likeness of God (The Republic, pg. 210).” This faculty of knowledge, or “vision” of the absolute, is what men apply both in acts of subjection to God as well as discernment of His movements. In other words, the same faculty of vision can be directed both at those objects on which the light shines as well as source itself - the one to perceive what God has made known of His movements (his emanations), the other to scrutinize His Absolute nature. As Plato writes, “…the sun is not sight, but the author of sight who is recognized by sight (The Republic, pg. 218).”

If this allegorical comparison of knowledge and sight can be taken as far and applied as directly as Plato seems to believe, what insight might it offer in regards to our ability to discern God’s movements? For one, in understanding our faculty of knowledge as a sensory organ only - that it only serves us in perceiving the light, not in producing it - then we understand also our proper position before God in the realm of revelation. We recognize that we are not the source of the light, but that the light shines upon that which it pleases; and our capacity to utilize any information that the light might make available goes only so far as the source’s willingness to make it known. To clarify this point, let’s return to the allegory:

“Why, you know…that the eyes, when a person directs them toward objects on which the light of day is no longer shining, but the moon and stars only, see dimly, and are nearly blind; they seem to have no clearness of vision in them…but when they are directed toward objects on which the sun shines, they see clearly and there is sight in them…And the soul is like the eye: when resting upon that on which truth and being shine, the soul perceives and understands, and is radiant with intelligence; but when turned toward the twilight of becoming and perishing, then she has opinion only, and goes blinking about, and is first of one opinion and then of another, and seems to have no intelligence.” (The Republic, pg. 219)

Does that last line not capture perfectly the prevailing condition of Christians today in their attempt to discern God’s movements? I asked at the end of one my previous posts something to the effect of, “Why are Christians continually missing it!?” Why do those who have received the very source of light itself seem like all others to be “sheep without a shepherd” (Matt. 9:36) or “blind leading the blind (Matt. 15:14)”? If this allegory is trustworthy, we might suspect that our position before God might have something to do with it. Perhaps we appear to be blind to God’s movements because we are not looking where the light is shining. Instead we stare off into the dark, straining our spiritual eyes in vain hope of gleaning knowledge where none can be had. We rightly call this experience futile, though I think we’ve missed the inherent lesson.

When believers experience futility in their pursuit of God’s will, I believe one potential answer is the misapplication of our senses. We assume a role which was never intended for us, and God has rightly made operation from this position futile. Consider God’s warning through the prophet, Isaiah:

“Who among you fears the Lord and obeys the word of his servant? Let him who walks in the dark, who has no light, trust in the name of the Lord and rely on his God. But now, all you who light fires and provide yourselves with flaming torches, go, walk in the light of your fires and of the torches you have set ablaze. This is what you shall receive from my hand: You will lie down in torment.” (Is. 50:10-11)

In this verse, God lays the options before us. He pleads with us to submit and to maintain our hope in God’s revelatory power to guide our paths and to grow our knowledge of Him, and yet concedes that there is another choice: “But now, all you who light fires and provide yourselves with flaming torches, go, walk in the light of your fires and of the torches you have set ablaze.” (see also John 11:1-44) It is the plea and reluctant concession that God has been making since the beginning of time…

Justin tells me that a dominant theme throughout the Pentateuch is the distinction between God’s knowledge of what is “good” (as emphasized throughout the creation story) and man’s personal judgment of what is good. This is exemplified in the following passage from Deuteronomy.

“See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. For I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in His ways, and to keep His commands, decrees and laws; then you will live and increase, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess. But if your heart turns away and you are not obedient, and if you are drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them, I declare to you this day that you will certainly be destroyed. You will not live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess. This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to His voice, and hold fast to Him. For the Lord is your life, and He will give you many years in the land He swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” (Deut. 30:15-20)

John Sailhamer comments on this passage in his book, Pentateuch as Narrative: “The inference of God's commands in vv. 16-17 is that God alone knows what is good (tov) for man and that God alone knows what is not good (ra`) for him. To enjoy the ‘good’ man must trust God and obey him. If man disobeys, he will have to decide for himself what is good (tov) and what is not good (ra`). While to modern man such a prospect may seem desirable, to the author of Genesis it is the worst fate that could have befallen him. Only God knows what is good (tov) for man. Only God can know what is good.”

Though much of the effect of this comparison may have been lost to modernity, we’ve invested enough time reviving the concept that we should have no problem recognizing the implications (if it is less than obvious here, consult back to Isaiah 50:11). The above commentary calls attention to that often subtle shift between operation within God’s will and operation by man’s will, and places it back into its proper context - that context which was all too obvious to the author of Genesis (it is the “worst fate that could have befallen him”) but which seems almost favorable to us today. Are our principles that allow us to live largely independent of God not even considered by today’s standards advantageous to our condition? We rejoice in those proactive solutions and give our praise to those who discover them. The more tools we have at our disposal, the more little triangles floating around in our “Magic 8 ball” God, the better off we consider ourselves. But even though we might often find this to be the path of least resistance, living by the light of our own lamps is not God’s design for us, and consequently, can never achieve for us true fulfillment.

Though this first section of text claims for ourselves a large part of the responsibility for experiencing futility in our pursuit of God, I am not suggesting that this is the only explanation for it. Sometimes, as in the case we just discussed, God uses our experiences in relationship with Him to act as an iconoclast, replacing false beliefs concerning Him with realities of His nature; however, there are other times that we must hold on to our conviction of God’s nature despite our experiences with Him (see Matt. 15:22-28). I tend to believe that in such instances as this, God has taken the extra precaution of making His prior intentions known to us, most often by communicating those aspects of His nature which the particular trial might call into question explicit in His word. But then, after He has once prepared us for it, he allows the trials to come and we are tested.

II. Night of the Soul

“Jesus answered, ‘Are there not twelve hours of daylight? A man who walks by day will not stumble, for he sees by this world's light. It is when he walks by night that he stumbles, for he has no light.’” (John 11:9-10)

To be walking and suddenly find ourselves surrounded by darkness, in the literal sense, comes as no surprise to us. We properly understand this existence to be comprised of both night and day, periods of darkness as well as light. But needless to say, we are much more poorly-adapted to discerning the days and nights of the soul. Consequently, when we suddenly find ourselves surrounded by what appears to us endless spiritual darkness we become utterly disoriented, stumbling and “blinking about”, until it seems that the darkness has swallowed the very source of light itself. We begin to ponder things reminiscent of Lewis’ ponderings, “There are no lights in the windows. It might be an empty house. Was it ever inhabited? It seemed so once…” (A Grief Observed, pg. 6) This sentiment is echoed also by the psalmist: “Will the Lord reject forever? Will He never show His favor again? Has His unfailing love vanished forever? Has His promise failed for all time (Ps. 77:7-8)?”

The severity of such an experience can range from slightly troubling to nearly unbearable when it happens to coincide with a period of unique desperation for God’s presence. When the two situations do happen to coincide, I believe there is a great potential for spiritual and emotional wounds to develop if they are not ever understood in their proper context. And coming to such an understanding is no small task, as we are sure to find out. But first, let me touch on one more instance in which man might rightly bear the responsibility for experiencing such a feeling of God’s absence.

More than likely, the majority of our experiences with feelings of God’s absence are a result of our own misapplied reliance upon created things. Again, we have disrupted the delicate positioning of man before God, this time placing an idol in God’s position and investing in it the same depth of trust and expectation that is appropriate for Him alone. As Hebrews 12:26-29 indicates, when God leads us through a trial and our foundation is tested for what it is, the feeling comes to us like the world crumbling beneath our feet or, curiously, like abandonment.

“At that time His voice shook the earth, but now He has promised, ‘Once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens.’ The words ‘once more’ indicate the removing of what can be shaken - that is, created things - so that what cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our ‘God is a consuming fire.’”

The loss of our hopes and dreams and the pain of having our expectations fail us is hurtful in whatever form it comes (Prov. 13:12). The advantage to losing our hopes to such an experience as I have just described, however, is that the reality that replaces them is infinitely more faithful. We replace that which crumbles under pressure for something “unshakeable”. We trade a fantasy for a “sure hope” (Heb. 6:11). But what hope is left for us if, once having traded all the “fantasies” for the only reality, that reality comes also to fail us?

In the poem, Footprints, we are told of a man who, in a vision, walks along a beach with the Lord as images of his life are projected across the sky. For each scene of his life he sees two sets of footprints in the sand: one belonging to him and the other to the Lord. As those lowest and saddest moments of his life project across the sky, the man notices that there remains only one set of footprints in the sand where there were previously two. It unsettled him that God might have abandoned him during those moments in which he was most desperate for His presence, and proceeds to question the Lord about what He sees. The Lord is said to have responded, “My son, my precious child, I love you and I would never leave you. During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I carried you.” (http://www.llerrah.com/footprints.htm).

It is a comforting notion that during all those most desperate times in our lives God does not allow us to walk alone, but rather carries us through them in His arms. It is comforting, I said, but is it true? In certain rare instance, perhaps it is (see Is. 63:9). But the thought that God might carry us through life’s trials seems awfully contradictory to the purpose He explicitly assigns to them in scripture: “Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the desert these forty years, to humble you and to test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna…to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord…Know then in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, so the Lord your God disciplines you.” (Deut. 8:2-3, 5)

God may have many reasons for leading us into trials - to discipline us, perhaps, or develop our character - but to lead us into a tribulation only to bear it Himself is to suggest that God might preserve us from the very thing He intended for our good (Heb. 12:5-6). The poem, Footprints, portrays a very comforting, but very narrow, view of suffering. It suggests frivolity in God’s work, lack of resolve to accomplish His purpose in us, and all around shortsightedness. These scriptures provide a more accurate portrait of God’s work in trials:

“God is mighty, but does not despise men; He is mighty, and firm in His purpose.” (Job 36:5)

“Though He brings grief, He will show compassion, so great is His unfailing love. For He does not willingly bring affliction or grief to the children of men.” (Lam. 3:32-33)

“Although the Lord gives you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, your teachers will be hidden no more; with your own eyes you will see them. Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, ‘This is the way; walk in it.’” (Is. 30:20-21)

God certainly allows man to suffer, and certainly we can trust Him not to make light of our pain. Instead, He promises to let the trial complete its work in us (James 1:4; Phil. 1:6), that once we have suffered, we might rightly claim for ourselves an incomparable salvation (1 Peter 1:3-9; Rom. 8:18). It is in this context that man finds Jesus, “a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering” (Is. 53:3), to be a truly sufficient Savior. “In bringing many sons to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the author of their salvation perfect through suffering. Both the one who makes men holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers.” (Heb. 2:10-11)

This, then, is the Biblical stance on suffering and no other may be admitted. It is real, it is hard, and it is worth it. So, with these eyes I want to look determinedly upon that experience that in its more dilute form we simply call a “night”, but when served pure is nearly unbearable. I’m going to present this latter class of experiences in the more familiar context of the problem of pain, because for me, the two are inseparable. As C.S. Lewis reminds us in his book on the subject, “…pain would be no problem unless, side by side with our daily experience of this painful world, we had received what we think a good assurance that ultimate reality is righteous and loving.” (The Problem of Pain, pg. 14)

[Other recommended readings include Plato’s Republic, Books 5-7; Peter Kreeft, Heaven: Our Heart‘s Deepest Longing; Is. 54; Is. 57:10-11, 16-19; Is. 50; Jer. 31:15-22; Lam. 3; Is. 45; Ps. 143; Ps. 13; Ps. 73; Ps. 77; Ps. 25:4-5; Ps. 30:5; Ps. 27:13-14; Job 19:25-27; John 11:1-44]