The Marks and Methods of Spiritual Maturity
In my younger years, I thought that spiritual maturity meant having all the right answers, both to the big questions of faith (Why is there evil in the world if God is good?) and to the daily conundrums (How should I respond to my child’s failing grades?). As a result, I tried to live that way for many years. But having the right answers implies that those answers must be shared with those who have wrong answers or no answers, and that was not always welcome. Indeed, it often did more harm to the kingdom than good. Having all the right answers also promotes intolerance for those who cannot get on board with those answers; we begin to believe that people have brought their troubles on themselves because they are illogical and wrong-thinking. In the end, I was miserable and I was making the people around me miserable.
I asked some friends what qualities come to mind when they think of spiritual maturity. They gave me answers such as faith, wisdom, perseverance, consistency, trust in God’s provision and direction, peace, calm in times of trouble. “Right answers” only made the list in this way: “He or she seems to know what God would probably say about what’s bothering us.” My list as I was brainstorming included many of those same qualities. As I reflected on the spiritually mature people I admire most, one idea seemed foundational to all the others: love. Spiritually mature people are empowered by the love of God to love others.
The interesting thing about that is that no two people experience or express that love in the same ways. In general, the spiritually mature people I know, besides the qualities already listed, seem to be comfortable in their own skin, service-oriented, humble, diplomatic, confident, kingdom-focused, empathetic, grateful, and forgiving, but those qualities come wrapped in different bodies, different personalities, different vocations, different politics, different denominations, different income levels. Understanding how the spiritually mature practice dwelling in God’s love and sharing it with others can help us in our journeys towards spiritual maturity.
Most spiritually mature people take seriously their time with God. They practice “pray without ceasing” and “search the Scriptures daily” with intentionality, regularity, and commitment, and often Scripture and prayer are intricately woven together. This is how they receive God’s love; this is how they learn it, understand it, experience it, enter into it. They understand that God’s love is revealed in Scripture, particularly in the story of his incarnation, so their time reading and meditating on Scripture helps them to hear God’s loving voice. They also hear answers to specific prayer requests, direction, correction, correct thinking, even “right answers,” but those who have been walking with God for a long time hear even these things as God’s love. More importantly, they learn intimacy, apart from which one can no longer be sure of love. Just as a man and a woman who neglect time together begin to doubt their love for each other, so we doubt God’s love when we have not learned to dwell in his presence.
The forms this intimacy with God may take are manifold. Some may practice specific contemplative disciplines such as lectio divina, “reading in the quest for God . . . reading for holiness . . . sacred reading;”[1] the Jesus Prayer (“Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner” or some variation), “a way of focusing attention on God and combating distraction,”[2] including the distraction of words; or modern approaches such as SOAP (“Lectio Divina Light”)—Scripture reading, Observations, Application, Prayer.[3] Others may take a more incarnational or sacramental approach in which “the crying need to experience God as truly manifest and notoriously active in daily life”[4] is addressed. A shining historical example of this is in the life of Brother Lawrence, who practiced turning his inward attention towards God whether he were reciting a Psalm or washing pots and pans “having accustomed himself to do everything there for the love of God”;[5] he could even “take up a straw from the ground for the love of God.”[6] Still others will approach the Bible in a more formal study, through seminary or Bible study programs such as Bible Study Fellowship. Those who “sit under the Bible for sustained periods . . . will be formed by the experience.”[7] In one way or another, those who combine Scripture with prayer hear God’s voice and are able to receive his love. I believe it this daily renewal of the intentional experience of God’s love that enables spiritual maturity.
Then as God’s love permeates the Christian pilgrim, that love can spill over into genuine kingdom service towards others. Spiritually mature Christians serve others out of the abundant resources of God’s love. They may do this in many ways. They may evangelize,[8] seek social justice in any number of ways,[9] provide meals for a sick neighbor, give sacrificially to their churches and other worthy causes, become intercessory prayer warriors, work as teachers, ushers, servers, musicians, pastors, and other roles in their churches, and seek to serve God in whatever occupation they have, in church, government, industry, and so on.
Indeed, one of the marks of a spiritually mature Christian is a sense of vocation—of calling. If we see vocation as the voice of God “calling me to be the person I was born to be, to fulfill the original selfhood given me at birth by God,”[10] a calling which can only be discerned in process, trial and error, prayer, and love, then we can turn our love towards the world more effectively than if we are trying to serve God and others in ways we think we “ought,” but are not actually created and gifted to do. Refusing to understand our God-given limitations arising from our uniqueness (as opposed to the ones imposed by others[11]) makes us “more likely to exceed [our] limits and to do harm to others in the process.”[12] The spiritually mature Christian can serenely say “no” to opportunities that would, because he or she is not fit for that opportunity, damage the reputation of the kingdom of God. But in ways for which he or she is suited, the answer can freely be “yes.”
An important distinction must be made here; not every service-oriented Christian is spiritually mature. Some try to prove their maturity by their service, but this has it backwards; they lack the fuel and motivation of God’s love, and so become frantic when things do not go well, or resentful at the expectations of others, or frustrated at the lack of recognition they receive for their efforts, or “dry,” or “burnt out.” Although even the most mature Christian can become weary and need a focused time of recuperation or renewal, and we all need to create “rhythms of work and rest,”[13] those who lack a regular experience of God’s love tend to serve in their own strength and eventually become unable to handle the natural stress of service.
Those who have learned to spend time regularly at the fountain of God’s love also get to know God in such a way that they become humble. They recognize God’s vastness and greatness and are awed by it. Therefore, their service to others is marked by humility; it does not seek recognition but instead diverts any glory to God. They are also grateful people, grateful for God’s love and his condescension to us, to live among us and redeem us, to be present to us, when he has no obligation to do so other than the “obligation” of his holy and good nature. That gratitude spills over into their lives in others ways; they express gratitude to others easily. Because of their humility and gratitude, they acknowledge the work that God has done in their lives and can therefore have empathy for others who are on different stages of the journey or indeed on different kinds of journeys altogether. Because they have meditated on the freedom of God, they do not insist that others’ experiences mirror their own to have validity.
Spiritually mature people, having invested in intimacy with God through Scripture and prayer, share many of his attributes. They are wise, gentle, perceptive, forgiving people who easily wait upon the Lord for his provision, for his action, for his timing, for his answers, and expect that, although God will do as he pleases, he also has our best interests at heart. Like Antonius, the spiritually mature may pray for miraculous healing but are “neither boastful when healing occurred nor disgruntled when no healing occurred” because they recognize that healing belongs “only to God.”[14]
Love marks the spiritually mature Christian, and it is a love that mimics the love of God in that it is incarnational. The most significant aspect of God’s love for us is not his gifts or benefits or any other way of thinking of what he can do for us, but his presence: Emmanuel—God with us. The mature Christian has spent time in God’s presence and in turn offers his presence to a hurting world. He or she sits beside the bereft in hospital waiting rooms and funeral homes, prays for God’s presence when easy answers are not available, and listens without needing words to bring comfort. As friends of God, the spiritually mature can become friends of anyone in need of God’s love and presence.
My Own Spiritual Growth
Although there are many tools that can be useful on the journey towards spiritual maturity, the essential element of almost all of them is drinking at the fount of God’s love through Scripture and prayer. This year I have made it my nearly daily habit to read and meditate on a portion of Scripture and then use that meditation to pray the Scripture back to God. Intercessory prayer has naturally flowed out of that. I have tried the SOAP method of journaling, something I initially resisted but have found quite useful in concretizing my intentional time in God’s presence. Nothing I write in that journal is particularly profound; I have no expectation that future generations will be so inspired by those scribblings that they will publish and widely distribute them. But the act of writing helps me to stay focused, to remember that I have actually interacted with a portion of Scripture, have actually prayed about a specific thing, have actually had the loving presence of God at my side. Without my expecting it, it has also become a record of answered prayer, which is another way God reminds me of his love. Another benefit is that, when I become frustrated or frantic or distraught or harried, I no longer so often think, “Woe is me! Why doesn’t God DO something!” Instead I think, “I need God. This is not who I want to be.” The rhythms of my life call me back to God’s presence.
My plan for future growth is to continue with these new habits and learn to listen to my life; it (or the Holy Spirit in it) often tells me what I need. I will consider “the way of the heart,”[15] as Nouwen calls it, to be a necessary focus; ironically, it seems that to be truly selfless, I must insist on time alone—alone with God, that is. I will make way for solitude, silence, and prayer. I have already considered entering a formal relationship of spiritual direction, for the purposes of vocational discernment—an immediate need as I consider why God has me in seminary—and for recognizing the voice of God in general. I have prayed often for spiritual discernment and wisdom as I consider my own life choices and as particular circumstances arise. For instance, can the Spirit guide me when I have to make a decision about whether to give this particular homeless person money? In this I have been led by the example of one of my mentor pastors in my internship, and I have adopted it as a specific goal for this year.
I left my job to attend seminary full-time, and I am grateful for a kind of leisure that has come with that choice—a leisure to order my day differently, more openly, more attuned to the Holy Spirit. A different set of struggles comes along with that, but the time I have to spend in intentional communion with God has provided some progress against those struggles. I am learning to be more fully myself, to be comfortable with my particular personality, gifts, limitations, life circumstances, and struggles, to recognize the hand of God in all of that. I want to become the kind of person I admire—a person of peace, wisdom, confidence, humility, joy, gratitude, empathy, forgiveness. I want to become a person overflowing with God’s love. I recognize that I have a part to play in this process, as God enables me to make room in my life for him.
Bibliography
Barton, R. Ruth. Sacred Rhythms : Arranging Our Lives for Spiritual Transformation. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2006.
Foster, Richard J. Streams of Living Water : Celebrating the Great Traditions of Christian Faith. 1st ed. ed. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1998.
Lawrence. The Practice of the Presence of God. Springdale, PA.: Whitaker House, 1982.
Louth, Andrew. The Wilderness of God. London: Darton Longman and Todd, 2003.
Maas, Robin, and Gabriel O'Donnell. Spiritual Traditions for the Contemporary Church. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1990.
Nouwen, Henri J. M. The Way of the Heart. 1st Ballantine trade pbk. ed. ed. New York: Ballantine Books, 2003.
Palmer, Parker J. Let Your Life Speak : Listening for the Voice of Vocation. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2000.
[1] Robin Maas and Gabriel O'Donnell, Spiritual Traditions for the Contemporary Church (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1990), 45.
[2] Andrew Louth, The Wilderness of God (London: Darton Longman and Todd, 2003), 56.
[3] Dr. John Bangs in a lecture on spiritual disciplines, Fuller Northwest, September 2010.
[4] Richard J. Foster, Streams of Living Water : Celebrating the Great Traditions of Christian Faith, 1st ed. ed. (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1998), 237.
[5] Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God (Springdale, PA.: Whitaker House, 1982), 10.
[6] Ibid., 7.
[7] Foster, 232.
[8] Ibid., 185.
[9] Ibid., 137.
[10] Parker J. Palmer, Let Your Life Speak : Listening for the Voice of Vocation (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2000), 10.
[11] Ibid., 42.
[12] Ibid., 43.
[13] R. Ruth Barton, Sacred Rhythms : Arranging Our Lives for Spiritual Transformation (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2006), 130.
[14] Foster, 30.
[15] Henri J. M. Nouwen, The Way of the Heart, 1st Ballantine trade pbk. ed. ed. (New York: Ballantine Books, 2003).
Saturday, November 27, 2010
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Why Does Church Suck?
A young woman who is very dear to me recently asked the question, "Why does church suck?" Later she said, "I don't go to church, really. I've been once in the past eight or nine months. Every church I go to I get so frustrated because it feels so fake and useless and a waste of time. God feels distant, life feels hollow. I don't read the Bible, I don't pray, I don't have a devotional because I hate devotionals, and I have yet to find a person that I can talk to intelligently about the Bible without becoming massively frustrated or massively disappointed." Here, edited for this blog, is my response to her. It's not perfect, but maybe it's a start. Maybe if you are feeling some similar things about church, some of this will help you get a little perspective, too.
Short answer--Church sucks because you're focused on everyone else instead of on God and your relationship with him. Is that harsh? Maybe, but it's in that reality that you will find peace, ironically.
Long answer--So you look around and you see hypocrisy and insincerity. Well, none of us is living as much like Jesus as we should, so basically we all fall short. The church is made up of a bunch of people who know they should be better than they are (in their good moments), who try and fail, and yet who keep coming back for more. Including you. You want to believe that someone is doing it right, if nothing else because you want an example to follow, proof that it's possible, and instead you're surrounded by failures!
Well, guess what? That's exactly right. Being a sincere Christian is admitting daily that you aren't what you want to be. But it's also living in God's grace and therefore recognize that you are being made into God's best version of yourself. It's being content with the progress--in your own life and in everyone else's life, too. Every time you see someone fooling himself with his own holiness, just remind yourself that on another day, you're doing the same thing. Give others the grace you need.
The authentic Christian life is trying, failing, falling, and allowing God to pick you up again and show you a better way--over and over. And the life of a "model" Christian is way more effective when it actually does model what happens when we goof, instead of believing that God's kingdom is somehow irreparably damaged when we goof and so we must hide it. Think of the people you most respect: Are they the kind of people who can say, "I was wrong; please forgive me," or the kind who either never admit they're wrong or who rationalize their bad choices? (The latter category become abusers, and Christian abusers are the hardest to take; but that's a topic for another day.)
But also, we were made for community. We cannot become all that God wants us to be outside of a body of people committed to corporate worship of God. Ironically, when we focus on bringing honor and glory to our maker as a community, we bask in his grace, which makes it possible, sometimes even easy, to grow, to love ourselves, and to love one another. The same people who were just driving you crazy, you now want to hug and invite home for lunch. In other words, honoring God together is good for you.
That's the whole amazing thing about the authentic Christian life; whatever you do that's supposed to be good for God or good for others, somehow becomes even better for you yourself, especially when worship is a part of it. It's an upward spiral.
My advice? Go to church. Look at God. If necessary, spend the whole time begging him to fill you with his presence and love so you can love all those hypocrites sitting in the pews, including yourself. When it becomes a little easier to love those around you without so much judgment, you might be starting to get it.
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Brokenness is Not the End of the Story
Written February 2007 before Darrel and I were engaged.
And I will wait for the Lord who is hiding His face from the house of Jacob; I will even look eagerly for Him (Isaiah 8:17 NASB).
In January of 2007, my older daughter Rachel took me to The Round, a monthly arts gathering in the Fremont Abbey in Seattle. Two or three groups of musicians, some visual artists, and a poet or two gather on the tiny stage in the basement. The artists, mostly young and hip although refreshingly down to earth, each complete a single painting during the evening, while the poets and musicians take turns performing, sometimes jumping in on backup on one another’s songs and poems. For a $5-10 donation, the audience members enjoy a stimulating evening of music, poetry, art, and sometimes spontaneous collaborative new pieces.
I noticed that one of the artists began her work by painting in bright white, unruly letters across the canvas, “Brokenness is not the end of the story.” I was intrigued. Brokenness, it seems, is a major theme of my personal story right now, and I wondered what worldview birthed the artist’s proclamation. This was not a Christian gathering per se, so I had no reason besides her slashes of white paint to think that she was a believer. From time to time throughout the evening, I traveled from my seat at the back of the small auditorium to a better vantage point to observe her progress. Bit by bit, she covered the words completely with her painting—which turned out to be a brooding landscape, mostly black, with bits of Japanese red and teal suggesting a mountainous backdrop, flecks of white and grey forming rocky outcrops or perhaps a waterfall, and a gold foreground hinting at a treeless plain. I couldn’t wait to talk to her. My daughter was an acquaintance and told me the artist’s name was Jen Grabarczyk.
I fought my way through the chatty crowd and waited impatiently for her to finish a conversation with another interested attendee. Finally, I introduced myself, called upon my scrap of journalistic background as excuse to take notes, and asked her, “Why did you write that phrase on your canvas before you began?” Jen told me that earlier that day she had gotten word that a 24-year-old high school classmate, not a close friend but someone she knew, had shot his girlfriend and then committed suicide. News like that, she said, is devastating, even if you aren’t personally involved. You come face to face with the brokenness all around, and you have to believe that there is more to the story than that or you go crazy. Our understanding of the world can’t end with how broken everything and everyone is.
Fishing, as Christians often do when they’re trying to find one another, I asked, “Do you have a particular philosophy or worldview that drives your work?” And she answered in that hesitant way that we do when we’re not sure how we’ll be received, “Well, I’m a Christian.” Of course. So we talked a bit more (and I thought a lot more) about her art, about her studies at Mars Hill Graduate School, about brokenness, about using a simple “abstract landscape” to communicate something small and significant about meaning in the universe, about beauty that covers brokenness, about beautiful brokenness, if there is such a thing.
The next day I bought her painting.
It seems to be part of my journey. After my separation a year ago and subsequent divorce six months later from my husband of 27 years, a step we never thought we would take, brokenness is on my mind—and in my strength and my heart and my soul. The first few months were consumed with survival and transition: moving twice in three months, finding a permanent place to live, experiencing the relief that comes with the absence of conflict, finding comfort in the support of friends and colleagues, working out the custody schedule for my younger daughter, enjoying my work and my students with a new freedom, learning to breathe again. For a while, I felt more whole than I had in years, in spite of the devastation of divorce.
I moved into my condo at the beginning of summer, school ended, and suddenly I had too much time on my hands. Some of it was spent with my younger daughter Emily, but she spent chunks of her time at summer classes and camps and with her father. I had never before in my life lived alone. I’m a project person, so I should have had plenty to do. I took time to settle into my new home, worked a couple of part-time summer jobs, did some decorating, all things I enjoy. I should have enjoyed the time to read and write. But I slogged through books with little joy, and my computer got used more for Solitaire than for writing.
As the pace of my life slowed, I became aware of a haunting hollowness in my chest.
I made a profession of faith when I was six years old. My father was a pastor. I have never strayed from belief in God for any serious length of time. I believe God is sovereign, even through divorce. I trust God for my present and my future. I understand that we live in a fallen world, that bad things happen to good people, that God’s grace should be sufficient for me, and that sanctification is a lifelong process—blah blah blah—so I get that Christians are supposed to be the ones with the peace that passes understanding. But here I was with a wind-sucking hole in my heart. I felt like a failure—not at marriage, but at experiencing the Christian life.
I tried to describe the sensation to a friend in an email: “I think I'm discovering that there will often or always be this sort of hollow spot in my chest that can't quite be talked or cried or reasoned away. It's a kind of loneliness or something, but it doesn't necessarily mean I want to be around people. Maybe it's the shape of abandonment or longings for things I can't have—at least not right now—or knowing that even if I had certain things, I'd never be able to trust them again. . . . It's not just that, though. I think that's the whole point of the hollowness. Nothing fills it—not a great teaching day, not a friendship, not a wonderful moment with my child, not knowing that I'm ‘better off,’ whatever that means. At the end of the day, I have an emptiness I can't explain and can't solve. And I'm thinking this is just how it's going to be, and I'm trying to figure out how to live with that reality.”
I finally paid a visit to my counselor, a godly Christian woman with the gift of telling the truth in a way that makes so much sense that my life actually changes. She told me, “This is going to sound cheesy, but what you’re experiencing is ‘the God-hole.’” The God-hole? How can that be? Wasn’t that supposed to be filled when I “invited Jesus into my life”? Christians aren’t supposed to have a God-hole!
She went on to explain that the emptiness I was experiencing is what most people, including Christians, spend most of their lives trying to deny, trying to run away from. We were created for perfect relationships with each other and with God, even with the cosmos, for that matter, and in this lifetime we can never have that. We can have better relationships, we can create beauty and make others’ lives more bearable, we can live lives that model joy and service and meaning, but something will always be missing. “The longing for Eden,” I said, and my counselor nodded. The longing for shalom—the way things were meant to be. Instead we experience our very real brokenness, even after we begin to know God.
I wasn’t crazy; I was just at a point in my life where I could experience the pain that is common to humankind, the pain at the core of every human desire. Nonbelievers and believers alike try to cover up those longings, deny the brokenness, deaden the pain, with obvious space-fillers such as illicit relationships, alcohol abuse, overeating, materialism, entertainment, workaholism, judgmental attitudes, and so on, and with not so obvious placebos such as community service, hospitality, church work, literature, art, commitment to family, intellectual pursuits, praying, fasting, self-righteousness, and other “good” things. But as Christian psychologist Dr. Larry Crabb suggests in his book Shattered Dreams, any desire, even a legitimate desire, that becomes more important to us than a desire for God himself, becomes idolatry. If saving our marriage, rescuing a drug-addicted child, remaining by a spouse’s side through cancer treatment, or ending world hunger become all-consuming passions, then we have missed the point.
Armed with the new knowledge that I wasn’t an aberration, I began to feel some hope, if not quite the lessening of the hollowness. In some ways, I thought my original impression had been correct, that I was just going to have to live with the sensation of incompleteness for the rest of my life, but at least now the sensation made sense. The brokenness began to feel like a dull headache—uncomfortable but manageable; sometimes I could even ignore it.
But I still felt that the picture of Christian existence on earth was incomplete. Yes, I understand that the shalom of perfect relationships—God, man, cosmos—cannot happen in this lifetime. Yes, I understand that I am called to be a part of restoration on this earth, knowing that perfect restoration is not possible. But is that it? Do I just shut down all that I long for, that I desire? Do I pretend I don’t crave satisfying relationships and for God to make himself known to me? Do I pretend that the events of the past year did not break me? Do I pretend that I am overflowing with joy when some days I am so transparently empty?
Dr. Crabb responds to this notion as follows: “We Christians are often practicing Buddhists. We kill desire in an effort to escape pain, then wonder why we don’t enjoy God.” Jesus is not, he continues, “agreeing with Buddha in prescribing a form of contentment that requires us to cut off the nerve endings of our souls and to report peace when what we feel is a void.” In other words, the unmet desires, the emptiness, the brokenness, the unfulfilled longings—they are real and they serve God’s purposes in our lives. They are not good things, but neither are they to be ignored. They point to something we can experience no other way.
They point to our desire for God Himself.
He is the desire above all desires, the existential longing we try to ignore, the purpose of our suffering. Our desire to know God in a restored, authentic relationship drives every other desire, legitimate or not. Our brokenness strips away all the promise of those secondary desires and allows us to taste our truest longing—to be in genuine, profound, significant communion with God, a communion that cannot begin before we have recognized and embraced the hollowness of our “good” lives, before we have come face to face with the ugly reality of our emptiness and been left wanting more. Then we can begin to want the One who can usher the only true joy into our existence.
On a day when I feel weak, I want financial security, a new husband, well-adjusted children, satisfying relationships with my family, friends, and coworkers, freedom from every kind of pain, and an end to world hunger. On a day when I feel weaker, I want only Jesus. I lie awake at night sometimes praying, “God, make it possible for your grace to be sufficient for me. I want too many things, and I know that the things I want won’t fill up this emptiness. Help me to allow you to do the work in me. I give you myself; please give me your Self.” I believe; Lord, help my unbelief.
A few days after I arranged to purchase Jen’s painting, I returned to the Abbey to pick it up. It was bigger, darker, and less colorful than I remembered, and I had to wonder how I would make it work in my tiny new condo. I took it home, awkwardly carried it in, and propped it on my piano to get it out of the way until I could find a place for it. Much to my surprise, it worked perfectly right there. The colors were perfect, the size was perfect, it had presence, but it did not overwhelm the room; it looked like a decorator had ordered it just for that spot. For a moment, as I pondered the perfection—even the shalom—of this otherwise insignificant moment, I heard the still, small voice of a God who loves me enough to bring me face to face with my own emptiness so I can one day be fuller than I could have hoped or dreamed. Months later, when I enjoy my new painting, I remember my truest desire.
Brokenness is not the end of the story, but it is a necessary, if sometimes ugly, plot point on the road to eternal resolution.
And I will wait for the Lord who is hiding His face from the house of Jacob; I will even look eagerly for Him (Isaiah 8:17 NASB).
In January of 2007, my older daughter Rachel took me to The Round, a monthly arts gathering in the Fremont Abbey in Seattle. Two or three groups of musicians, some visual artists, and a poet or two gather on the tiny stage in the basement. The artists, mostly young and hip although refreshingly down to earth, each complete a single painting during the evening, while the poets and musicians take turns performing, sometimes jumping in on backup on one another’s songs and poems. For a $5-10 donation, the audience members enjoy a stimulating evening of music, poetry, art, and sometimes spontaneous collaborative new pieces.
I noticed that one of the artists began her work by painting in bright white, unruly letters across the canvas, “Brokenness is not the end of the story.” I was intrigued. Brokenness, it seems, is a major theme of my personal story right now, and I wondered what worldview birthed the artist’s proclamation. This was not a Christian gathering per se, so I had no reason besides her slashes of white paint to think that she was a believer. From time to time throughout the evening, I traveled from my seat at the back of the small auditorium to a better vantage point to observe her progress. Bit by bit, she covered the words completely with her painting—which turned out to be a brooding landscape, mostly black, with bits of Japanese red and teal suggesting a mountainous backdrop, flecks of white and grey forming rocky outcrops or perhaps a waterfall, and a gold foreground hinting at a treeless plain. I couldn’t wait to talk to her. My daughter was an acquaintance and told me the artist’s name was Jen Grabarczyk.
I fought my way through the chatty crowd and waited impatiently for her to finish a conversation with another interested attendee. Finally, I introduced myself, called upon my scrap of journalistic background as excuse to take notes, and asked her, “Why did you write that phrase on your canvas before you began?” Jen told me that earlier that day she had gotten word that a 24-year-old high school classmate, not a close friend but someone she knew, had shot his girlfriend and then committed suicide. News like that, she said, is devastating, even if you aren’t personally involved. You come face to face with the brokenness all around, and you have to believe that there is more to the story than that or you go crazy. Our understanding of the world can’t end with how broken everything and everyone is.
Fishing, as Christians often do when they’re trying to find one another, I asked, “Do you have a particular philosophy or worldview that drives your work?” And she answered in that hesitant way that we do when we’re not sure how we’ll be received, “Well, I’m a Christian.” Of course. So we talked a bit more (and I thought a lot more) about her art, about her studies at Mars Hill Graduate School, about brokenness, about using a simple “abstract landscape” to communicate something small and significant about meaning in the universe, about beauty that covers brokenness, about beautiful brokenness, if there is such a thing.
The next day I bought her painting.
It seems to be part of my journey. After my separation a year ago and subsequent divorce six months later from my husband of 27 years, a step we never thought we would take, brokenness is on my mind—and in my strength and my heart and my soul. The first few months were consumed with survival and transition: moving twice in three months, finding a permanent place to live, experiencing the relief that comes with the absence of conflict, finding comfort in the support of friends and colleagues, working out the custody schedule for my younger daughter, enjoying my work and my students with a new freedom, learning to breathe again. For a while, I felt more whole than I had in years, in spite of the devastation of divorce.
I moved into my condo at the beginning of summer, school ended, and suddenly I had too much time on my hands. Some of it was spent with my younger daughter Emily, but she spent chunks of her time at summer classes and camps and with her father. I had never before in my life lived alone. I’m a project person, so I should have had plenty to do. I took time to settle into my new home, worked a couple of part-time summer jobs, did some decorating, all things I enjoy. I should have enjoyed the time to read and write. But I slogged through books with little joy, and my computer got used more for Solitaire than for writing.
As the pace of my life slowed, I became aware of a haunting hollowness in my chest.
I made a profession of faith when I was six years old. My father was a pastor. I have never strayed from belief in God for any serious length of time. I believe God is sovereign, even through divorce. I trust God for my present and my future. I understand that we live in a fallen world, that bad things happen to good people, that God’s grace should be sufficient for me, and that sanctification is a lifelong process—blah blah blah—so I get that Christians are supposed to be the ones with the peace that passes understanding. But here I was with a wind-sucking hole in my heart. I felt like a failure—not at marriage, but at experiencing the Christian life.
I tried to describe the sensation to a friend in an email: “I think I'm discovering that there will often or always be this sort of hollow spot in my chest that can't quite be talked or cried or reasoned away. It's a kind of loneliness or something, but it doesn't necessarily mean I want to be around people. Maybe it's the shape of abandonment or longings for things I can't have—at least not right now—or knowing that even if I had certain things, I'd never be able to trust them again. . . . It's not just that, though. I think that's the whole point of the hollowness. Nothing fills it—not a great teaching day, not a friendship, not a wonderful moment with my child, not knowing that I'm ‘better off,’ whatever that means. At the end of the day, I have an emptiness I can't explain and can't solve. And I'm thinking this is just how it's going to be, and I'm trying to figure out how to live with that reality.”
I finally paid a visit to my counselor, a godly Christian woman with the gift of telling the truth in a way that makes so much sense that my life actually changes. She told me, “This is going to sound cheesy, but what you’re experiencing is ‘the God-hole.’” The God-hole? How can that be? Wasn’t that supposed to be filled when I “invited Jesus into my life”? Christians aren’t supposed to have a God-hole!
She went on to explain that the emptiness I was experiencing is what most people, including Christians, spend most of their lives trying to deny, trying to run away from. We were created for perfect relationships with each other and with God, even with the cosmos, for that matter, and in this lifetime we can never have that. We can have better relationships, we can create beauty and make others’ lives more bearable, we can live lives that model joy and service and meaning, but something will always be missing. “The longing for Eden,” I said, and my counselor nodded. The longing for shalom—the way things were meant to be. Instead we experience our very real brokenness, even after we begin to know God.
I wasn’t crazy; I was just at a point in my life where I could experience the pain that is common to humankind, the pain at the core of every human desire. Nonbelievers and believers alike try to cover up those longings, deny the brokenness, deaden the pain, with obvious space-fillers such as illicit relationships, alcohol abuse, overeating, materialism, entertainment, workaholism, judgmental attitudes, and so on, and with not so obvious placebos such as community service, hospitality, church work, literature, art, commitment to family, intellectual pursuits, praying, fasting, self-righteousness, and other “good” things. But as Christian psychologist Dr. Larry Crabb suggests in his book Shattered Dreams, any desire, even a legitimate desire, that becomes more important to us than a desire for God himself, becomes idolatry. If saving our marriage, rescuing a drug-addicted child, remaining by a spouse’s side through cancer treatment, or ending world hunger become all-consuming passions, then we have missed the point.
Armed with the new knowledge that I wasn’t an aberration, I began to feel some hope, if not quite the lessening of the hollowness. In some ways, I thought my original impression had been correct, that I was just going to have to live with the sensation of incompleteness for the rest of my life, but at least now the sensation made sense. The brokenness began to feel like a dull headache—uncomfortable but manageable; sometimes I could even ignore it.
But I still felt that the picture of Christian existence on earth was incomplete. Yes, I understand that the shalom of perfect relationships—God, man, cosmos—cannot happen in this lifetime. Yes, I understand that I am called to be a part of restoration on this earth, knowing that perfect restoration is not possible. But is that it? Do I just shut down all that I long for, that I desire? Do I pretend I don’t crave satisfying relationships and for God to make himself known to me? Do I pretend that the events of the past year did not break me? Do I pretend that I am overflowing with joy when some days I am so transparently empty?
Dr. Crabb responds to this notion as follows: “We Christians are often practicing Buddhists. We kill desire in an effort to escape pain, then wonder why we don’t enjoy God.” Jesus is not, he continues, “agreeing with Buddha in prescribing a form of contentment that requires us to cut off the nerve endings of our souls and to report peace when what we feel is a void.” In other words, the unmet desires, the emptiness, the brokenness, the unfulfilled longings—they are real and they serve God’s purposes in our lives. They are not good things, but neither are they to be ignored. They point to something we can experience no other way.
They point to our desire for God Himself.
He is the desire above all desires, the existential longing we try to ignore, the purpose of our suffering. Our desire to know God in a restored, authentic relationship drives every other desire, legitimate or not. Our brokenness strips away all the promise of those secondary desires and allows us to taste our truest longing—to be in genuine, profound, significant communion with God, a communion that cannot begin before we have recognized and embraced the hollowness of our “good” lives, before we have come face to face with the ugly reality of our emptiness and been left wanting more. Then we can begin to want the One who can usher the only true joy into our existence.
On a day when I feel weak, I want financial security, a new husband, well-adjusted children, satisfying relationships with my family, friends, and coworkers, freedom from every kind of pain, and an end to world hunger. On a day when I feel weaker, I want only Jesus. I lie awake at night sometimes praying, “God, make it possible for your grace to be sufficient for me. I want too many things, and I know that the things I want won’t fill up this emptiness. Help me to allow you to do the work in me. I give you myself; please give me your Self.” I believe; Lord, help my unbelief.
A few days after I arranged to purchase Jen’s painting, I returned to the Abbey to pick it up. It was bigger, darker, and less colorful than I remembered, and I had to wonder how I would make it work in my tiny new condo. I took it home, awkwardly carried it in, and propped it on my piano to get it out of the way until I could find a place for it. Much to my surprise, it worked perfectly right there. The colors were perfect, the size was perfect, it had presence, but it did not overwhelm the room; it looked like a decorator had ordered it just for that spot. For a moment, as I pondered the perfection—even the shalom—of this otherwise insignificant moment, I heard the still, small voice of a God who loves me enough to bring me face to face with my own emptiness so I can one day be fuller than I could have hoped or dreamed. Months later, when I enjoy my new painting, I remember my truest desire.
Brokenness is not the end of the story, but it is a necessary, if sometimes ugly, plot point on the road to eternal resolution.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Winter Isn't Over Until Easter: Christological Motifs in Lars and the Real Girl
Lars and the Real Girl, written by Nancy Oliver, directed by Craig Gillespie, starring Ryan Gosling, Emily Mortimer, Paul Schneider, and Patricia Clarkson, 2007
Lars and the Real Girl is a quirky, independent movie about a socially awkward young man, made so by the death of his mother at his birth, the parenting of his heart-broken father, and his older brother’s escape from the home as soon as he was of age. Lars find human contact so difficult that touch causes him physical pain, which he compensates for by wearing gloves during handshakes and dressing in layers to resist the discomfort of a hug. He declines frequent invitations to join his brother Gus and Gus’s wife Karin for meals. When his sister-in-law becomes pregnant, Lars’ fears, the result of his own mother’s death, surface. Eventually, to create a “safe” relationship for himself, he orders a life-sized mail order love doll, names her Bianca, and introduces her to his family and friends as a real girl, his new girlfriend. She is a paraplegic (which explains why she can’t walk), shy (which explains why she doesn’t talk), the victim of the theft of her luggage (which explains why she has only the clothes she is wearing). Lars, it seems, has created a quite consistent explanation of Bianca’s quirks before he introduces her to the world.
Religious imagery and values abound throughout the movie. Lars goes to church, even uses it as an excuse to avoid an invitation. Bianca is explained as the Brazilian-Dutch daughter of missionaries who died at her birth, raised by nuns, now doing missionary work herself, but visiting the “real world” for a time. Lars asks Gus and Karin if Bianca can stay with them, since they are young and single and “religious”; he doesn’t think it would be right for them to share his garage apartment during her stay. According to Lars, Bianca has nurse’s training and believes it is her calling to help people. When Lars finds himself increasingly attracted to his coworker Margo, he finally tells Margo that he would never cheat on Bianca.
Further, one of the first places Karin and Gus go for help, after Dr. Dagmar has said that the best way to help Lars is to go along with his delusion and treat Bianca as real, is to the local church, where a small group of elder members agrees to play along after the pastor says, “The question is, as always, what would Jesus do?” And my question is, “Who is Jesus in this movie?” Bianca, the life-sized doll, functions as an unlikely Christ figure in the movie at first; quite soon after Bianca is introduced, the community as a whole picks up the role, deliberately choosing to act as they believe Jesus would.
Bianca is the Christ figure because she shares several important traits with Jesus. First, she becomes “human” to identify with Lars’ condition and help him find healing. And, of course, she loves Lars unconditionally and expects nothing in return except the freedom to be herself. Since Lars is creating all her “dialogue,” he puts whatever words suit him in her mouth. Bianca reveals herself through his words to be modest, gentle, and self-giving. She even declines to defend herself when Lars yells at her for not being available when he wants to spend time with her, much as Jesus declined to defend himself before Pilate. Thirdly, according to Lars, she is not interested in superficial, material things, so she is willing to wear Karin’s cast-off clothes.
More significantly, Bianca enables Lars to become all he was created to be; she is the catalyst for healed relationships with his family and community and even of his ability to tolerate physical human contact. For instance, when Lars gets invited to a party that he would normally not attend, he finally decides to go as long as he can bring his “girlfriend.” At the party, because he must make sure that Bianca is comfortable, he is able to see beyond himself and begin to speak with other people. It is also here that he notices Margo in a new way, when another man at the party is flirting with her, and the seeds for a “real” relationship are planted. Also, because Bianca needs medical treatments for her various tropical illnesses, Dr. Dagmar spends significant time with him while Bianca is “resting” from those treatments. She discovers his extreme fear of being touched (he describes the pain he experiences as a “burning,” similar to when one’s feet freeze and then they begin to thaw out) and begins to treat that; his ability to withstand touching becomes a barometer for how healthy his real human relationships are becoming. The longer he is with Bianca, the more human contact he can handle. This is signified by a couple of glove-free handshakes later in the story, one with Margo herself. Dr. Dagmar also discovers the root of Lars’ fears about Karin’s pregnancy and helps him to put those fears in context. Bianca’s presence helps Dr. Dagmar “cast out fear” in Lars.
Bianca even makes it possible for him and others to admit to and confess their “sins,” and seek forgiveness, especially for self-centeredness. In one remarkable scene, Lars speaks of the rites of passage of Bianca’s culture and asks Gus how he knew when he became a man; he wonders if the sex act was his rite of passage. Gus, clearly uncomfortable with the topic, finally is able to put words to his thoughts; perhaps he is even just then truly forming the thoughts. He says that becoming a man is when you do the right thing even when it hurts, when you think about other people instead of yourself all the time, that you don’t act like a jerk even when that’s what you feel like doing. Then he looks Lars in the eye and apologizes for leaving him with their damaged, “heart-broken” father and thinking only of himself; this is clearly something he has been needing—but unable—to do until now. And Lars forgives Gus, immediately. Significantly, during this scene, Gus is chopping celery and folding towels for his tired, pregnant wife.
The community, out of their love for Lars, accepts Bianca as real and finds ways to include her, and by extension Lars, in their world. Much as Bonhoeffer believed that the church is the post-resurrection Jesus on earth, the community in which Lars lives does the work of Jesus in Lars’ life. When Lars takes Bianca shopping, she is invited by one of Karin’s friends to model at a local clothing store two afternoons a week and “all day Saturdays.” Another of Karin’s friends styles Bianca’s hair. The children in church are gently taught not to stare at Bianca or try to touch her. She is invited to read to the sick children at the hospital, which she does with the aid of an audiobook propped in her lap. These people had tried to be kind to Lars in the past, but he was unable to accept their kindness. Bianca makes it possible for him to begin to have relationships with real people.
Mrs. Gruner, who takes Bianca to a banquet, admonishes Lars not to be so selfish about his time with his girlfriend—she has a life of her own—and Lars learns that relationship means not just that he is free to be himself, but that his significant other must be free to be herself, too. In other words, he learns empathy. His own pain had kept him from that adult skill until now. When he gets angry over Bianca’s absence and complains to Karin that no one cares, she lets him have it, telling him that everything everyone does to welcome Bianca, they do because they care about Lars; they love him. It is a slight reversal of Jesus’ admonition to care for the hungry, naked, and imprisoned, “When you do it for the least of these, you do it for me.” When the community does it for Bianca, they are really doing it for the suffering Lars.
In another scene shortly thereafter, Lars sees that Margo is suffering over a coworker having “hung” her teddy bear in a noose and the end of a casual dating relationship. Sweetly, and with concern for Margo instead of for himself, he listens to her story, loosens the noose, and does CPR on the teddy bear. Margo laughs. Lars is learning the lessons that Mrs. Gruner and Karin have tried to teach him, and the result is the beginning of Lars’ empathy for others.
Later, after Bianca has been elected to the school board, Lars agrees to go bowling with Margo while Bianca is at a school board meeting. As they are leaving, and we see Lars struggling with his growing affection for Margo, they step outside and see snowflakes. Lars says, “I was hoping winter was over.” And Margo replies, “Winter isn’t over until Easter.” This line is the heart of this movie. Lars’ winter will not be over until Bianca dies, as our winter is not over until Jesus dies and rises again, as winter in Narnia is not over until Aslan returns to the land. Bianca develops a fatal illness; the women of the community bring food and sit with him, actually instructing him in how to handle a crisis. When she finally “dies,” the church holds a funeral, and Lars celebrates what Bianca has brought to his life. In the end, as Jesus did, Bianca sacrifices herself so that others—Lars in particular— may live. At the graveside, Margo stands next to Lars, who finally says, “Would you like to go for a walk?” Margo says yes, they turn slightly away from each other, and both of them smile. And as in the story of Jesus, healing replaces brokenness, relationship replaces self-centeredness, and hope replaces mourning.
Lars and the Real Girl is a quirky, independent movie about a socially awkward young man, made so by the death of his mother at his birth, the parenting of his heart-broken father, and his older brother’s escape from the home as soon as he was of age. Lars find human contact so difficult that touch causes him physical pain, which he compensates for by wearing gloves during handshakes and dressing in layers to resist the discomfort of a hug. He declines frequent invitations to join his brother Gus and Gus’s wife Karin for meals. When his sister-in-law becomes pregnant, Lars’ fears, the result of his own mother’s death, surface. Eventually, to create a “safe” relationship for himself, he orders a life-sized mail order love doll, names her Bianca, and introduces her to his family and friends as a real girl, his new girlfriend. She is a paraplegic (which explains why she can’t walk), shy (which explains why she doesn’t talk), the victim of the theft of her luggage (which explains why she has only the clothes she is wearing). Lars, it seems, has created a quite consistent explanation of Bianca’s quirks before he introduces her to the world.
Religious imagery and values abound throughout the movie. Lars goes to church, even uses it as an excuse to avoid an invitation. Bianca is explained as the Brazilian-Dutch daughter of missionaries who died at her birth, raised by nuns, now doing missionary work herself, but visiting the “real world” for a time. Lars asks Gus and Karin if Bianca can stay with them, since they are young and single and “religious”; he doesn’t think it would be right for them to share his garage apartment during her stay. According to Lars, Bianca has nurse’s training and believes it is her calling to help people. When Lars finds himself increasingly attracted to his coworker Margo, he finally tells Margo that he would never cheat on Bianca.
Further, one of the first places Karin and Gus go for help, after Dr. Dagmar has said that the best way to help Lars is to go along with his delusion and treat Bianca as real, is to the local church, where a small group of elder members agrees to play along after the pastor says, “The question is, as always, what would Jesus do?” And my question is, “Who is Jesus in this movie?” Bianca, the life-sized doll, functions as an unlikely Christ figure in the movie at first; quite soon after Bianca is introduced, the community as a whole picks up the role, deliberately choosing to act as they believe Jesus would.
Bianca is the Christ figure because she shares several important traits with Jesus. First, she becomes “human” to identify with Lars’ condition and help him find healing. And, of course, she loves Lars unconditionally and expects nothing in return except the freedom to be herself. Since Lars is creating all her “dialogue,” he puts whatever words suit him in her mouth. Bianca reveals herself through his words to be modest, gentle, and self-giving. She even declines to defend herself when Lars yells at her for not being available when he wants to spend time with her, much as Jesus declined to defend himself before Pilate. Thirdly, according to Lars, she is not interested in superficial, material things, so she is willing to wear Karin’s cast-off clothes.
More significantly, Bianca enables Lars to become all he was created to be; she is the catalyst for healed relationships with his family and community and even of his ability to tolerate physical human contact. For instance, when Lars gets invited to a party that he would normally not attend, he finally decides to go as long as he can bring his “girlfriend.” At the party, because he must make sure that Bianca is comfortable, he is able to see beyond himself and begin to speak with other people. It is also here that he notices Margo in a new way, when another man at the party is flirting with her, and the seeds for a “real” relationship are planted. Also, because Bianca needs medical treatments for her various tropical illnesses, Dr. Dagmar spends significant time with him while Bianca is “resting” from those treatments. She discovers his extreme fear of being touched (he describes the pain he experiences as a “burning,” similar to when one’s feet freeze and then they begin to thaw out) and begins to treat that; his ability to withstand touching becomes a barometer for how healthy his real human relationships are becoming. The longer he is with Bianca, the more human contact he can handle. This is signified by a couple of glove-free handshakes later in the story, one with Margo herself. Dr. Dagmar also discovers the root of Lars’ fears about Karin’s pregnancy and helps him to put those fears in context. Bianca’s presence helps Dr. Dagmar “cast out fear” in Lars.
Bianca even makes it possible for him and others to admit to and confess their “sins,” and seek forgiveness, especially for self-centeredness. In one remarkable scene, Lars speaks of the rites of passage of Bianca’s culture and asks Gus how he knew when he became a man; he wonders if the sex act was his rite of passage. Gus, clearly uncomfortable with the topic, finally is able to put words to his thoughts; perhaps he is even just then truly forming the thoughts. He says that becoming a man is when you do the right thing even when it hurts, when you think about other people instead of yourself all the time, that you don’t act like a jerk even when that’s what you feel like doing. Then he looks Lars in the eye and apologizes for leaving him with their damaged, “heart-broken” father and thinking only of himself; this is clearly something he has been needing—but unable—to do until now. And Lars forgives Gus, immediately. Significantly, during this scene, Gus is chopping celery and folding towels for his tired, pregnant wife.
The community, out of their love for Lars, accepts Bianca as real and finds ways to include her, and by extension Lars, in their world. Much as Bonhoeffer believed that the church is the post-resurrection Jesus on earth, the community in which Lars lives does the work of Jesus in Lars’ life. When Lars takes Bianca shopping, she is invited by one of Karin’s friends to model at a local clothing store two afternoons a week and “all day Saturdays.” Another of Karin’s friends styles Bianca’s hair. The children in church are gently taught not to stare at Bianca or try to touch her. She is invited to read to the sick children at the hospital, which she does with the aid of an audiobook propped in her lap. These people had tried to be kind to Lars in the past, but he was unable to accept their kindness. Bianca makes it possible for him to begin to have relationships with real people.
Mrs. Gruner, who takes Bianca to a banquet, admonishes Lars not to be so selfish about his time with his girlfriend—she has a life of her own—and Lars learns that relationship means not just that he is free to be himself, but that his significant other must be free to be herself, too. In other words, he learns empathy. His own pain had kept him from that adult skill until now. When he gets angry over Bianca’s absence and complains to Karin that no one cares, she lets him have it, telling him that everything everyone does to welcome Bianca, they do because they care about Lars; they love him. It is a slight reversal of Jesus’ admonition to care for the hungry, naked, and imprisoned, “When you do it for the least of these, you do it for me.” When the community does it for Bianca, they are really doing it for the suffering Lars.
In another scene shortly thereafter, Lars sees that Margo is suffering over a coworker having “hung” her teddy bear in a noose and the end of a casual dating relationship. Sweetly, and with concern for Margo instead of for himself, he listens to her story, loosens the noose, and does CPR on the teddy bear. Margo laughs. Lars is learning the lessons that Mrs. Gruner and Karin have tried to teach him, and the result is the beginning of Lars’ empathy for others.
Later, after Bianca has been elected to the school board, Lars agrees to go bowling with Margo while Bianca is at a school board meeting. As they are leaving, and we see Lars struggling with his growing affection for Margo, they step outside and see snowflakes. Lars says, “I was hoping winter was over.” And Margo replies, “Winter isn’t over until Easter.” This line is the heart of this movie. Lars’ winter will not be over until Bianca dies, as our winter is not over until Jesus dies and rises again, as winter in Narnia is not over until Aslan returns to the land. Bianca develops a fatal illness; the women of the community bring food and sit with him, actually instructing him in how to handle a crisis. When she finally “dies,” the church holds a funeral, and Lars celebrates what Bianca has brought to his life. In the end, as Jesus did, Bianca sacrifices herself so that others—Lars in particular— may live. At the graveside, Margo stands next to Lars, who finally says, “Would you like to go for a walk?” Margo says yes, they turn slightly away from each other, and both of them smile. And as in the story of Jesus, healing replaces brokenness, relationship replaces self-centeredness, and hope replaces mourning.
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