Tag: fear

Thursday: Love and Limits

Thursday: Love and Limits

“But why can’t I come now, Lord?” he asked. “I’m ready to die for you.”

Jesus answered, “Die for me? I tell you the truth, Peter—before the rooster crows tomorrow morning, you will deny three times that you even know me. (John 13:38)

The Scriptures detailing the events and conversations that we now call Holy Week are some of the most rich and beautiful literature in existence. Do you realize how radical this conversation is? Do you realize how detailed, how well-preserved, how human and raw and real this record is! So much of our recorded history is glossy and air-brushed, altered to make our heroes look just a little more divine. What makes the Scriptures such an anomaly is this conversation exactly, the open acknowledgment that humans are weak of heart and riddled with chemical floods of emotion that make us act on instinct over principle. That Peter, who loved his Lord with all his being, who walked on water, who saw Jesus standing on a mountain with Moses and Elijah, who could hardly bear to have his feet washed, who in a peaceful moment meant to die in his place, would instead panic and self-preserve when the actual choice to die smashed through the wall of the theoretical and became reality. Peter. Even Peter.

Whatever boasts we are tempted to make about our own faith or abilities ought to fall to the side at Jesus’ answer to Peter’s boast. If we believe ourselves more capable of love than we are, then we will never understand how much greater he really is. Sometimes we say so often that Jesus died for our sins, that he rose again, that we are trying to live like Jesus, that we diminish in our own minds the enormity of what that means! We start to fool ourselves into thinking we are imitating him well, when in fact like Peter our actions are a far cry from what we imagine them to be. We start to think it’s not so hard to love like Jesus did. And when we overestimate our own goodness, we undervalue his.

Seeing Jesus clearly begins by seeing ourselves clearly. So the Scriptures do not airbrush anyone. Peter does not die for the friend who loves him perfectly; he swears he does not even know him. Judas robs him dry and sells him. John just sits by, frozen, and watches the bullies tear him apart. One unnamed young disciple flees naked in terror, wiggling himself out of his clothes rather than forfeit his life. They act and react like panicking humans. And after it all, Jesus says,

“Let these others go.” (John 18:8)

There is no other hero in ancient literature who trades himself for traitors, thieves, bullies, and cowards. When men write stories, they show heroes trampling such villains under their feet, triumphing over those who have wronged them and emerging, vindicated and victorious, to live in peace. Do you realize how radical this one and only story is? There is nothing else like this in our entire canon. There is no other such hero. Mercy exists in the tales of God alone.

Drop your boasts and look at your real reflection. Now read the events of Maundy Thursday, and let yourself stand in silence; look at him. Just look at him. Be overcome with awe and ache with yearning. This is where worship begins.

The stone the builders rejected
    has become the cornerstone;
the Lord has done this,
    and it is marvelous in our eyes.
The Lord has done it this very day;
    let us rejoice today and be glad. (Psalm 118:22-24)

The Lord has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes.

Talk About Trouble: Chapter 3

What I always feared has happened to me.
    What I dreaded has come true.
I have no peace, no quietness.
    I have no rest; only trouble comes. (Job 3:25-26)

For a whole week, Job’s friends did really, really well. They tore their own clothes, threw dust on their heads, and sat with him in the dirt. For seven days and seven nights, they said nothing. They waited for him to speak before they opened their mouths; for a whole week, they did really, really well.

But when Job started talking, he didn’t say what they thought he would.

Here is what Job didn’t say: “I deserved this.” Here is what Job didn’t say: “My own actions caused my suffering.” Here is what Job didn’t say: “Things will get better when I do better.” Here is what Job didn’t say: “You’re safe from this fate if you do what you should.” Here is even what Job didn’t say: “God was wrong to do this to me.”

Here is what Job said: “I would be better off dead.”

And that scared them. Because what if it was true? It couldn’t be true; they could not let it be true. An urgency filled them to talk him out of believing it. Job was scaring them. I have felt that urgency. I have heard people I love say things that scared me the same. I feel, more painfully than I can say, how desperately they wanted him to think differently.

But Job had been searching for the source of his misery, searching for something to curse, and rather than wishing God harm, who he still believes has every right to do what he has done, he instead traces his misery back to its beginning: the day of his own birth. His own existence, he determines, is the problem.

And here we trip again, like his friends did.

I believe this is one of the big things that makes Job a scary book to read. His will to live is broken. People who are so miserable they want to die can be scary to us, can’t they? Especially if we love them, especially if their existence is one of the things that has made our own richer. If ever we have experienced this sentiment ourselves, that can be scary to us and scary to those who love us, too. A lot of people turn away from the book of Job here. We are too scared to know the ending, like Sam says to Frodo – “because how could the end be happy?” Job is everything we are afraid of; he is living all his worst fears (and ours!), and it has broken him.

Maybe that is why I so desperately cling to this book. Fear has overshadowed me for as long as I can remember; I was a fearful child, a fearful teen, and I am a fearful woman. Some days I feel I am not much more than my bundle of fears. More days than I care to admit, they wrap me up and suffocate me, and my faith has been one of desperation, one I cling to that alone can save me from the terrors my own mind can conjure. If you see me and think, “She doesn’t seem afraid to me,” know that is God’s victory alone in me.

Several years ago now, I encountered one of my own worst fears. Four and a half years before, I lived a trauma I did not even know to fear: my firstborn was born with an undetected heart defect and lived her first months in heart failure, unbeknownst to us. As she failed to grow and gain weight, everyone in my life looked in accusation at me; I was feeding her wrong, caring for her wrong, doing it all wrong. Here I had this fragile, tiny human under my protection and in my care – she depended on me wholly – and I was failing her. I thought I knew what to do, but clearly I didn’t. I did everything the doctors told me to, everything the consultants told me to, everything I could scour and find in books and on the internet – and nothing worked the way they said it would. The day we found out it was a heart defect and not my failings, I felt a rush of relief – followed by sheer and complete terror. If it wasn’t what I was doing wrong, then it wasn’t something I could fix, either. The months that followed, the anxiety, the terror, the open heart surgery on that tiny little heart were some of the worst of my life.

But the moment I am talking about came four and a half years later, when her sister was born with exactly the same defect – and the second time, I’d had over four years to dread it happening again every day. I don’t often relate to how Job handled his tragedies. But this part I feel straight through my bones and beyond:

What I always feared has happened to me.
    What I dreaded has come true. (Job 3:25)

I had been lured to that moment by the belief that it wouldn’t happen again. Science said it was almost certainly not genetic; their cardiologist had never met a pair of siblings with the exact same defect in her 30 year career. Friends said see? it’ll be fine next time. People that I loved comforted me that the scary days were behind me; we were through it, and the future certainly would be brighter. My faith in a good God said my earnest prayers would be answered, that his perfect love casts out fear, that all I had to do was ask for good things, and God would give good things. Isn’t that what the book said?

“Keep on asking, and you will receive what you ask for. Keep on seeking, and you will find. Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened to you.  For everyone who asks, receives. Everyone who seeks, finds. And to everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.

 “You parents—if your children ask for a loaf of bread, do you give them a stone instead?  Or if they ask for a fish, do you give them a snake? Of course not! So if you sinful people know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good gifts to those who ask him. (Matthew 7:7-11)

And then my life asked the question: what if?

Now, I’ve already told you, I’m no Job. Most of what I’ve suffered in my life has been well deserved. The testing I have endured is juvenile, politely put, compared to his, and I fully expect that’s a reflection of what God knows my faith to be. But there are times Job’s cries are relatable to all of us I think, and this is one of them. Maybe I haven’t cursed the day I was born. Maybe I haven’t come to the very end of all my will to live as he did, though I weary of the world enough to look forward to something better sometimes too. But Job 3:25 sure resounds in me.

What I always feared has happened to me.
    What I dreaded has come true. (Job 3:25)

And this question Job asks is one that has been asked a billion and more times, before and since:

Why is life given to those with no future,
    those God has surrounded with difficulties? (Job 3:23)

Or, the way we always say it – If God is good, why do bad things happen to good people? And further – Why live at all if that is so?

It is our habit to hush this question. It is our habit to skirt around it, to avoid it, to cast our eyes around wildly in terror making sure it was not overheard. But God did not hush it. He did not skirt around and avoid it. He is not afraid of it like we are. He dedicated an entire book of the Bible to this discussion. And then, at the end, he answered Job.

Before we get there, though, Job’s friends are going to meddle out of their depth. I told you I find them relatable!