Transformation: Deconstruction and Reconstruction

Transformation is about deconstruction and reconstruction.  To transform a plot of land, you tear down what was there before (deconstruction); then you build something new (reconstruction).  This is the consistent pattern, and the same pattern that works within us.  You must unlearn before you learn, which is why spirituality feels more like a falling than an ascent.  It’s the way of unlearning, since the way of learning can only get you so far.  Indeed, most of us have to unlearn what we thought life was about: looking good, appearing competent, getting everything right, realizing in the process that we only come to God through our weakness. 

Biblical faith is trusting God in the midst of not having all the answers, which is often the most consistent vehicle for experiencing our own weakness.  It is Abram journeying to a land he doesn’t know, holding onto promises given by God but having no idea how any of them will pan out.  Faith, it turns out, is trusting The Answer even when our comprehension is blinded, in full or in part, to all the little answers we so crave.  As C.S. Lewis wrote, “I know now, Lord, why you utter no answer. You are yourself the answer.”[1]  This idea can startle us, because in many modern contexts, faith has been replaced wholesale with certainty.  The more certain or dogmatic someone is, the more “faith” they are said to have.  The irony is that such faith is not faith at all!  Oftentimes such certainty is simply a bid to avoid any sort of unpleasant tension or deconstruction which might make us feel powerless and which, therefore, we hate. 

Faith, by definition, demands some level of tension and even unknowing, and it always demands deconstruction.  After all, we are called by Jesus to “lose our lives.”[2] You can’t be courageous if you aren’t afraid, and you can’t have faith if you’ve got everything sorted out.  Once a faith that is based on reducing tension and disorientation becomes ascendant, as it has in so many of our churches, we are no longer trusting in God at all, but simply all the propositions we have built up surrounding God. 

The invitation to Biblical faith and faith in Jesus, on the other hand, is not to avoid deconstruction but instead to journey through the inevitable deconstructions that life brings us, trusting that reconstruction comes not through our own power or competency but from the grace and love of God.  No wonder the rich are often far from the kingdom of heaven: they’ve got so many levers to try before they give up and fall into the Arms of Mercy![3]  Jesus’ invitation, on the other hand, is to be poor in spirit, fully aware of our weakness, and also confident: We are meant to know that we can trust and follow him because he, too, has walked the path of deconstruction and experienced resurrection.  May we, with him, be such a people!

[1] C.S. Lewis, Til We Have Faces, on the novel’s final page
[2] Matthew 10:39
[3] Matthew 19:24

Transformation: It's Easier to Resist than to Name

It’s more natural for us to judge and to hate than to simply name and label.  We human beings are born resisting the things we don’t like, starting with the birth process itself.  Get me back to where it’s warm and cozy, and why are you patting my butt so hard?  Unfortunately, we tend continue spending our lives hating, judging, and resisting, and that’s especially true of what we most dislike in ourselves. 

It’s just easier for us to resist than to be neutral, and yet it’s in practicing neutrality that we discover that God is with us.  By “practicing neutrality,” I simply mean refusing to judge and hate.  It sounds conceptual, but it plays out in real life, in real time.  For example…

My last few weeks have been up and down.  It’s a cliché that fits: it has been a roller-coaster.  I consider myself pretty emotionally-steady (or at least, I’m pretty good at keeping a straight face).  But my emotions have yo-yoed this way and that, and it’s been harder to hide.  Today, even as I write, I’m feeling down, out of control, insecure.  My mind is blowing everything up into a worst-case scenario and barraging me with “what ifs?”

What if everything falls apart? 
What if all this time and energy and effort I’m investing as a pastor is mis-spent? 
What if I’m doomed to feel lonely? 

I literally woke up this morning comparing myself to other leaders and our church to other churches.  What a total waste of time, and yet when I’m in this space, I can’t seem to find the ‘OFF’ switch.  I am aware of my humanity (my insecurity, my frailty, my jealousy), and hating it.

I shouldn’t be here, not again, a voice says.  Am I really still this immature?

Not only is the insecurity unpleasant, but I judge myself for feeling it.  And that’s the important thing, because judging my weakness and my humanity, including all those unpleasant thoughts and feelings, is the very thing that cuts me off from transformation.  The more I resist, the deeper into the black hole of self I go, rather than into God.  Ironically, the more we judge and hate ourselves, the more significant we make ourselves and the less significant we make God!  The answer then, is neutrality, which means refusing to hate or judge my humanity.

I was always told as a child on family beach trips: if you get caught in an undertow (a sudden and strong under current that can drag swimmers out to sea), don’t fight it.  Resisting it can wear you and out drown you.  We heard the mantra a thousand times: “swim to the side, not against.”

Naming and labeling instead of resisting and hating is the spiritual version of “swimming to the side.”  When we simply name and acknowledge, we make ourselves way smaller and make space for God to be way bigger.  God is only allowed into the space that we create.  This doesn’t limit God; it just shows how much he respects us our choices. 

In a posture of neutrality, refusing to judge or hate our humanity, we discover how much God loves us.  In being tender with our frail places, we discover that we are echoing back Jesus’ posture to us!  A smoldering wick he will not extinguish (Matthew 12:20).  Our weakness, then, when we refuse to judge or hate it, is actually the touch-point for experiencing the love of God.  We can’t experience it anywhere else!  If we come to understand this, it changes everything.  No wonder Paul “rejoiced in his weaknesses.”  On the other hand, if we go on judging and hating ourselves, our resistance is like a wall that blinds us to God’s love, mercy, and provision. 

Would that it were easy to learn this, but it takes real effort.  But what feels foreign at first can become native.  What feel unnatural can become normative.

So this morning, instead of judging and hating my weakness, I am (yet again), practicing simply naming and labeling it. 

Oh, yeah, there’s that feeling again.  There’s jealousy again. There’s insecurity. Well…that’s interesting.

This is a way more resourceful posture than “Oh, no, what’s wrong with me!”  By simply acknowledging that negative thoughts and emotions are a part of my humanity, I open myself to God.  When I’m finally done judging, I can simply hold reality in my hands: my envy and jealousy are not part of my identity as an adopted child of God.  They are part of humanity, yes, but they are not my true self, adopted in God.  Why then, am I going to take them all that seriously by spending energy hating and judging them?  Moreover, practically speaking, they are probably never going away, so I better get pretty good at not letting them dominate my thoughts or emotions. 

Most of us don’t come to God because we simply aren’t humble enough and can’t believe he desires communion with us when we are still so unsorted.  It’s a scandal, but of course, the Gospel—the Good News of new life in Christ should be a provocative, disconcerting, even confusing new way of living, until it becomes our new reference point for reality.  We can enter into the good news by practicing humility, by refusing to judge and hate.

I invite you then, in your everyday life, to begin noticing when and where you can simply name and label your weakness, rather than judging it.  Don’t even try to resist it, because resisting it actually feeds and strengthens it!  By naming and labeling, you will find yourself in a place of awe and wonder that God is so good to love and hold you even when you are so aware of how unworthy you are.  You will discover that you're falling into grace!

Transformation: Naming and Labeling

I want to do what is good, but I don’t. I don’t want to do what is wrong, but I do
it anyway!
…Oh, what a miserable person I am!  Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin and death? Thank God! The answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord.
-The Apostle Paul

Think of all the times Jesus gets his dander up.  It’s never at sinners!  It’s always at religious people who posture and pretend that they are complete on their own, refusing to confess that they are poor and broken.  Hypocrisy and pride—that’s what got Jesus’ goat, because Jesus knows they cut people off from true life in the love of God.  This is why Jesus says that “the poor in spirit,” fully aware of their weakness, are blessed. 

Just think about that: We are blessed when we are fully aware of and honest about our weakness and suffering.  Huh?  To human hearts always inclined towards looking good and feeling powerful, this is foolishness.  But what is upside-down to us is right-side up to Jesus.[1]

Flying upside-down is what religion, which is all about power through earning and performance (yes, even under the banner of “grace”), just doesn’t get.  And for this reason, the church often pedals grace even while training people to hide and push away their weaknesses.  In fact, church culture often trains us into hypocrisy--into putting on a good Sunday face--rather than rejoicing in our weakness.  Transformation then eludes us, as we judge and blame ourselves for not being able to climb up into grace, when all along, all we are asked to do is have the humility to fall down and be caught by it!

That’s because Jesus asks us to do something that is counter-intuitive to our power-hungry hearts: be honest about your weakness.  The only way to fall into grace and transformation is to name and label, at the leading of God’s Spirit, your weaknesses.  And further, to be honest about all the ways you'd love to hide those weaknesses from God and from every one else.  This naming and labeling means being honest while refusing to judge or hate ourselves, which turns out to be difficult spiritual work. 

Paul’s struggle recorded in Romans 7, quoted above, most beautifully captures someone moving from self-judgment into finally saying, after a long internal battle, “Yes” to God and then falling into grace.  After naming and labeling the nature of his struggle, Paul finally looks up and says, “Thank God, thank Jesus!  I was never able to get it all right on my own anyway!” 

Both the wrestling and the naming cannot be rushed through or short-cut.  Paradoxically, we have to be intimate enough with our struggle that we can name and label it, and only then can we move away from it.  We have to become convinced that we can't "handle it" or "figure it out" on our own.  Falling into grace only happens once we have no energy left for trying to climb into it.  Practically speaking, this means a lot of struggle and a whole lot of honest self-reckoning.  But when we come to the end of our efforts to destroy our weakness on our own terms, we can receive the grace of Jesus which frees us from having to eradicate it.  This makes the journey about Jesus and his goodness, and not about how great or powerful we are.  And in this reality, we finally find liberty. 

Transformation always looks like this.  Paul clearly has specific failures and sins—ways that he tries to be powerful on his own terms—in mind.  Then, rather than continuing to judge himself, he gives thanks to God for grace and love.  Turning to God rather than to self-judgment and self-hatred is the catalyst of transformation. 

In Corinthians, Paul says it succinctly: “I don’t judge myself.”  (I Corinthians 4:3)  Judgment, of others and of self, is a waste of time, and it’s way better to get your eyes off of yourself and refuse to waste mental energy in self-focus and self-hatred.  We can interrupt this persistent self-focus by turning to God and saying, “Whoa, how can you be so good, Jesus, that you receive me when I’m still unsorted!?”  Yet many of us crave the sense of power that comes from judging and even hating ourselves, rather than the vulnerability and humility of simply naming our weakness and then shaking our heads in awe and wonder that God still adopts us in, despite of it.

Yes, we turn into the grace of God by naming and labeling weakness, not by judging, hating, and resisting it.  I am reminded of this truth even this morning, as for some reason I woke up feeling especially insecure.  I woke up with worries about my leadership and whether I have “what it takes," (whatever that means).  I find myself comparing myself to other leaders.  It’s basically a garbage conversation, but the irony is, the more I judge myself for having these thoughts, the stronger they become! 

When instead, I simply say, as Paul does, "Yup, that's there.  I don’t want to feel or act out this self-focus...but I do," and I stop hating or judging my weakness, the weakness ceases to be some big bogey man I have to wrestle to the ground.  Simply naming it as insecurity and self-focus creates space for transformation, because naming our weakness allows us to separate it from our true self, adopted by God, rather than as something which defines us (which is in fact how most people relate to it).  It's like putting it on a shelf; it's still there, but I'm no longer holding it or preoccupied with it.

If you spend your life judging your weakness, you will never receive and awaken to your true identity as an adopted child of God, which is the heart of the New Testament story of New Creation and new identity given to us in God by Jesus.  But if you will name and label the parts of you that you are tempted to judge and hate, you will soon discover that you are being held by the love of God.  And that, indeed…He’s been holding you all along.

A Reflection

What thoughts, emotions, and weaknesses are you tempted to judge and even hate?  Practice naming and labeling them as part of you, but not your true (adopted in God, risen with Christ) self. 

Now close your eyes and give thanks to Jesus for accepting you, even when you are unsorted.  What does it feel like to make this move?  How do you see Jesus responding to you?

* * *

[1] As Dallas Willard points out in The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God.