Wednesday, July 14, 2010

How is Christ my deliverer and the solution to my problems?

To say that to see "Christ as the deliverer" is the solution leaves a lot of things out. It makes things seem simple as 1-2-3 now you're ok, it's not.

If you had a lot of bones broken and had gone to the hospital for the "solution"/healing and then had some limbs put in traction and other ones had casts, that doesn't make you ok. It wouldn't be right for people to assume that you were now all better. Let's go a little farther on your path to healing. You're now able to be moved and now the legs that were in traction are in casts. Are you healed yet? Let's keep moving in time. Now all the casts are off and you look fine on the outside. Are you? No. You may or not be able to walk, you certainly aren't anywhere near back to your full strength. The problem now is that you look ok. You can easily be hurt at this time. So now you look healed but you're still going to physical therapy. Do you have to post your schedule to make sure everyone knows you are still working on healing? Of course you have options: wear a sign warning people not to be too rough on you because you are still healing; be prickly to keep people at bay so no one gets close enough to hurt you; just be standoffish enough to keep people away; of course my favorite is to act like it doesn't hurt, all the while you feel like you're dying.

Yes, Christ is the solution, but it's not that simple. Not really. How is he the solution? Those are just words. What does that truly mean in my life? Sometimes it's all I can do to mentally acknowledge that God is sovereign in all. I can't think past that to what those ramifications are. With God being sovereign over all that also makes him, on some level, the problem too. He's God. He doesn't have to use the baseball bat approach to alter events and peoples lives. For whatever reason, he chooses to.

Some days I can see past all this, other times I can barely ignore it, and sometimes I feel like I just get slammed up against all of life and there's no point to it but pain. I really hate being asked "How was your day/week?" I always answer truthfully, but rarely fully. I leave the core of it out if I'm having a hard time. On some level I'm always fine and always busy with something or other; but the part of me that just wants to say how I really am, can't. I can't because I look ok and have to pretend to be ok. I have to keep up appearances.

So am I really truthful? People get tired of hearing the truth. Who wants to hear that you are struggling again and still? They've already told you how to get to the hospital, so check out already! Be healed! or "be ye warmed and filled". If you tell someone that your leg is really bothering you today and then he kicks it to somehow show you that it doesn't really hurt; eventually you keep your pain to yourself. It doesn't hurt so bad that way, but it's also slower to heal.

"I do think that it is true that similar suffering of people can help with similar comfort for one another. But this should not mean that one person has to have the exact same suffering (or the exact same burden and/ or weight of burden) in order to help another carry that burden."
I agree with the above statement, but I've never seen it, let alone experienced it. What I've seen is that those who don't have a similar suffering get tired of other people who continue to suffer instead of healing on some timeline that the one comforting has in mind. That comfort turns to a kick on a healing broken leg. If you get kicked often enough by enough people, you hide the fact that you aren't what you appear to be; you hide your need for healing. Who really wants to try again to see if maybe this time, this person won't kick me, like so many others have?

On the other hand I've seen those with similar sufferings be so patient and gentle with one another taking turns holding one another up.

I believe in transparency with one another. I can't go very far with it these days, but I am tired of having 2 answers dashing around my mind to the question "How was your day?"
I'd like to be able to say what it really was like. "I barely got out of bed, I got nothing done because I couldn't focus my attention, I just curled up and cried and told the kids I was sick, my day was really lousy because I found out x about my non-case, or it's just been crappy" I'm tired of always having a good/fine day, but busy!

This is a good-sized dose of truth about me. I don't communicate well with spoken words. I go mute and my brain generally freezes up. I just want to not have to always be ok with everyone I see face to face on a regular basis. So maybe now my answer to how my day was, can be closer to what it really is and not just a sanitized part of it. I've felt like I've been making small talk with a friend of a friend, because I've hidden my broken leg. As long as it's acknowledged I don't have to dance around things that remind me of it and make sure I avoid it when I'm just talking.

"The only one who can really and completely carry another person’s burden is Christ Himself. But that is also where the members of Body of Christ (1 Cor. 12) come in—we assist in the carrying because we too have and live the solution—forgiven and comforted in our union with Christ!"

I know that Christ is the only one who can completely carry the burdens. But is it conditional? If I don't come and take his yoke and learn will I never have rest? I have a hard time distinguishing between his yoke and what I'm already bearing.

Matthew 11:28-30
Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."

1 Corinthians 10:13
There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.

God promises that he will never give us more than we can bear; then again believing that this verse is really saying that is a IFB holdover. I doubt everything I was ever taught, maybe this is wrong too. Maybe I was lied to again and temptation here doesn't mean trial, maybe it just means temptation. Maybe this refers to sin, not suffering. So maybe then God never really promised that he wouldn't give us more than we can bear. That would explain a lot of things.

II Corinthians 1:9
Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again.

If I fell off a mountain and lived I wouldn't think I had been delivered. I would think I survived. Just because I landed and the fall finally ended doesn't mean active deliverance. It means I lived through it.

I have been delivered from a literal end in hell, but that is the deliverance that I received of God. Other than that, I view it as the fall off the mountain finally ended and I survived. That's not deliverance. I have huge problems with attributing God's deliverance to the natural fact that eventually everything ends, even falling off a mountain. I fell off a mountain. I was falling for the entire school year. The year ended and I hit the ground. I wasn't delivered from anything. It was a natural end, like gravity.

Now that I've written all this I can talk off of it. If I hadn't written about all this I wouldn't be able to say a thing. It's like it has been unlocked and now I can take it out and look at it and figure out what it is.

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