Transformation: Seeing Also God the All-Vulnerable

Why is it so important to think in Both-Ands?

There is a billboard for St. Jude’s, an organization that fights childhood cancer, around the corner from my office.  I hate it, just as I hate all of St. Jude’s commercials.  I shudder when I see them.

I don’t hate St. Jude’s, far from it; they are doing God’s work in the world.  I just hate and loathe the reality of children suffering.  It disturbs me.  It sends my brain to dark places.

There is a famous scene in The Brothers Karamazov in which Ivan uses the suffering of children to question his brother Alyosha’s faith in God.  I can relate to the doubt and the questioning that such suffering, if we are honest, can’t but make us feel.  Who among us has not, at some point, found themselves shaking their head or their fist at God, The Universe, Life, over our pain or the pain of another.  Why do the stars seem to give no answer?  And where is God in the midst of it? 

This has often been my perspective on life.  Part of my problem—and our problem, no doubt--is that we have been trained in an Either-Or world and are thus accustomed only to look for God the All-Powerful.  But this perspective can also greatly skew our senses so that nothing about life makes sense, because how can God the All-Powerful look upon all this heart-rending mess of suffering and do nothing?

But there is a different perspective, too.  And perhaps a different reality.    

If I hate this suffering--if I cannot stand to see children suffering--how much more does God, who is all Love and Goodness, hate it?  Far more than me, no doubt.  Can you imagine what God the All-Feeling endures?  No doubt Jesus is still crucified by the pain and suffering and death of our world, despite our confident hope that both already and ultimately, he has and will overcome it.  Rather than shaking my first at God, I can begin to see, from this new perspective, that God is not only the All-Powerful but also the All-Vulnerable, suffering with those in pain.  That, what’s more, He is suffering far more than me.  And further, that I am instance and picture of His suffering, though only in part.  God ever suffers with us and with the broken, the poor, and the marginalized.  No doubt this is why the poor in spirit are not far from the Kingdom of God.[1]

What difference does this make?  Well, quite a bit, actually.  The deepest human need is communion, with others and with God, and just as we cannot have much affection with someone who does not care for us in our pain, so it will be very difficult to rely on a real connection with God if we do not know that He suffers with us.  In times of suffering, this hope must be a concrete knowing and not a theoretical hope. 

Further, from this perspective, I can realize that God is with me in an intimate way with a goal far greater than just giving me a comfortable life.  That is not God’s agenda in the world and, indeed, by the ways He has limited Himself in order to sustain a real universe, He cannot do this.  A Being of infinite Love must have one aim in mind—what is well and truly good for me and you, eternally speaking.  And the path towards eternal communion becomes lost if God is content to let me settle for the ephemeral comfort of youth or wealth or merely human power which do nothing for my ultimate good.

When I can see not only God the All-Powerful but also God the All-Vulnerable, the God who suffers still, then I can find real comfort and solace in the midst of pain, even if the pain is not immediately ending.  I can trust that there are eternal ends being worked into the deepest fabric of my soul, which will shine resplendent far after the suffering has passed.  This is, in fact, exactly what Paul the Apostle says: that God, in essence, is suffering with the world and that “the sufferings of this present age are not worthy to be compared to the glory that will be revealed” in those who trust Him.[2]

None of this means that God causes suffering.  And yes, for our sakes, He hates it.  But God has, strange as it sounds, agreed to “play by a certain set of rules.”  He has truly made Himself the All-Vulnerable.  Of course, if Jesus is the picture of God, then this should never have been in doubt, as the scripture goes to great lengths to get us clear on God’s posture in the world.[3]

Let us look then, not only for God the All-Powerful but also for God the All Vulnerable, and worship this reality of His character and Being as much as we worship Him for His power.  This is yet another Both-And for us to hold, and perhaps the most important.  Let us, further, be bold to enter into his work in the world.  Of joining with the suffering of the world, knowing that “if we suffer with him, we will also reign with him.”[4]

[1] Matthew 5:3

[2] See Romans 8, and especially v 18.

[3] E.g., Philippians 2:7-8.

[4] 2 Timothy 2:12.

Transformation: Living in Both-Ands to See God Anew

How can God love me when I’m so unsorted and such a mass of contradictions and petty feelings?  This question constantly dwells in me, not far beneath the surface of my brain.  I wake up aware of the frustrations of life and the frustrations I have with my own self.  I generally don’t have a problem seeing how God could love someone else, no matter how screwed up they think they are, but something happens when I turn that thought of love towards myself.  The power of my doubt never seems to fully go away, no matter how deeply the Spirit of God works to convince me of God’s great love.  It’s not easy for us to understand the Both-And of being unworthy and yet adopted by God.  Our brain’s “factory setting” seems to be Either-Or thinking, and that’s the mindset we are often trained into.  Either I feel worthy, or I’m not worthy.  Either I can prove my worth, or I’m out of luck.  This is how must people have learned to think, even within the church, which is why we are often so unfamiliar with (and perhaps even offended by) a real encounter with grace.  There’s usually a trap in the middle of Either-Or thinking, and we are easily ensnared. 

I visited the stunning Getty Villa recently, which is a spectacular museum in Malibu, CA.  Sitting in the expansive garden, overlooking the Pacific, I found myself thinking about all the resource it took to create such a beautiful space.  And then I started thinking about how all that resource could have been used in entirely different ways.  From that perspective, the setting seemed extravagant, an opulent and perhaps unnecessary use of wealth.  And yet sitting there, I was also so grateful that someone had the vision and resource to create such a sublime place.  My brain couldn’t land on which point of view was the “right” view.  It is hard for our brains to hold two seemingly opposite truths at once!

I am reminded of the woman who poured expensive perfume over Jesus’ feet.[1]  Judas, eager to claim the moral high ground, pointed out how many poor people the expensive commodity might have fed had it been sold.  But Jesus said, in essence, “Stop it.  She’s done a beautiful thing.”  Jesus, who focused so much on the poor and marginalized (and who went to great lengths to feed them) also recognized that the beauty of extravagant sacrifice, even at a great cost, is a noble end.  He knew that life was about more than about mere food and physical survival, but also the needs of the mind and spirit and soul.  He could see the Both-And of using resource both for the needs of the body and the soul, precisely because he himself experienced the same paradox. 

Jesus could hold tension because he himself was in the tension.  Jesus is truly the image of God, then, now, and for all time!  It’s always a great mind, like Jesus (the greatest of minds) who can hold the tensions inherent in Both-And thinking.  And it’s crucial for us to learn to live in Both-Ands if we are to live in our identity as children of God.  After all, how can we know that we are unworthy, full of contradictions, and yet be called “the righteousness of God in Christ?”[2]  Only a mind that has learned to hold Both-And over Either-Or can live into the story God’s writes for us!

But Both-And thinking takes us even further, to the very face of God.  Faith is all about holding tension until we start to see how great and merciful God is, Who both allows, holds, and experiences all these tensions Himself.  This, again, is precisely what Jesus demonstrates.  God makes Himself vulnerable, suffering within the tensions of life with us, so that a universe with real relationship, not to mention love, is possible.  God is not so much “out there” as “right here.”  And as Paul says, God allowed himself to be “emptied,” so as to have communion with us.[3]  This, of course, is what the incarnation of Jesus was all about, but God was suffering with the world long before Jesus hung on a cross.[4]  And he suffers still.  The only path for us, for our part, to enjoy this communion is to stop looking for God-the-All-Powerful alone, so that we can also encounter God-the-All-Vulnerable, who remains afflicted with us as we are afflicted.[5]   

And so the journey of faith confronts us with yet another Both-And: we begin to experience God not only in the greatness of his power but also in the greatness of His humble vulnerability.  When we begin to see, understand, and more importantly, experience this reality, everything changes.  When we experience that God truly is Emmanuel, God with us, even at a great and extravagant cost to Himself, faith becomes a “knowing” of an entirely different sort.  It ceases to be about trying to screw up our will power to “believe more” and becomes a confident inward knowing which, while impossible to prove is nevertheless an all-encompassing reality. 

What a gift then, is paradox and the ability to live into the Both-Ands of life.  Ultimately, it allows us to see God who holds all the tensions of the world and in turn, to be held by Him in an entirely new way.

[1] See John 12.
[2] 2 Corinthians 5:21
[3] See the great hymn of Philippians 2:5-11
[4] See Romans 8
[5] Isaiah 63:9

Transformation: Living in Both-Ands

Think of all the tensions followers of Jesus are asked to hold.  The scripture asks us to believe that:

·      God is three and One
·      Jesus is completely human and completely divine
·     God is sovereign and we have free will
·     There is great suffering in the world and God is good

The list goes on and on, but already you get the inevitability of living in tension and paradox from the moment we accept and follow Jesus.  Apparently, we are meant to embrace tension sooner rather than later! 

Reading each proposition above is like looking at an Escher figure-ground drawing.  Perspective jumps and leaps.  Which perspective is true?  Both are true.  Both are contained in the reality of the statement, and in reality itself, even if our merely human minds struggle to keep up.  And this is the point: we aren’t meant to perfectly resolve all the contradictions of life.  Otherwise we would not need faith.  It’s only in a posture of trust in the face of contradictions that we can become truly open to God.  (We finally discover, in this posture, that God is not only the All-Powerful but also the All-Vulnerable, but that’s a topic for another post.)

The problem is, we live in an either-or world, which is all about taking sides to relieve tension through being right.  The more certain or dogmatic people are, the louder they we yell and perhaps the more “faith” they are said to have.  Followers of Jesus are called to be radically counter-cultural: we are asked to thoughtfully hold tension and more, to be in tension without freaking out.  This posture lives in the heart of faith and is the only posture in which we can see, hear, and know God.  Yet most people, because we live in an either-or world, struggle to live into the Both-Ands that God calls us to inhabit, and thus experience their mind being at war.

This either-or thinking usually dominates our thinking about ourselves, too.  Indeed, this is where the war really wages, and a battle is how Paul describes the mind untouched by the Spirit, unable to grasp God’s love and mercy.[1]  How can we be accepted by God when we are still so  unsorted?  This is exactly how we think if can’t think in Both-Ands!  We live in the Either-Or of “I’ve got to be good enough, smart enough, or competent enough, or God can’t choose me/love me/bless me.”

I remember years ago writing down my faults (all the ones I was aware of, anyway) on a yellow legal pad.  I wanted to get down everything about myself that needed to change.

Stop wanting so many material things
Start reading my Bible more
Stop watching porn

I filled the whole page up, because I believed the only way God could love me was by fixing all these faults.  It was a losing game from the get-go, not because I was wrong in my assessment—indeed, all of the things I listed were good things to start or stop--but rather because the only way into real transformation is not by will power alone but by understanding the heart of God that claims us before all these things are sorted out.  This is the starting point for lasting character change and transformation.  It is, in fact, the only way to actually get ourselves sorted out, and it only comes in a confession of complete need and dependence, which of course is the only place we can finally, fully receive the love that transforms.  Once again, we don’t come to God by our strength but by our weakness.

Only if your mind has learned to hold tension can you also hold the great reality of your adoption in God, even while you were (and are) unsorted.  A mind that can’t hold paradox can’t hold this ultimate paradox.  They’ll be too busy trying to figure out how they can be worthy enough, which is always a losing proposition.  Ultimately, Jesus is training us to live in Both-Ands so that we can live into the great Both-And of our adoption in God.  We are completely unworthy, and we are completely beloved and absolutely accepted.  When you can say “yes” to this, you begin to transcend the limitations of a world stuck in Either-Or.  You can live in the awe and wonder necessary to abide in the grace of God.  We have to learn to hold all the Both-Ands of scripture until we can hold a Both-And about who we are.  God’s training ground through scripture proves to be the perfect primer for receiving the good news of new life in God! 

[1] See Romans 7.