As we continue our discovery of the Forgotten Kingdom, we’re taking a few episodes to look at sometimes hidden qualities of a deep disciple, a kingdom-dweller.
Today, we’re considering what it means to be restful amid inevitable tension. How can we be at peace when God allows something we don’t like? Or when we come up against a Bible passage that makes us uncomfortable? Or when we question His goodness?
For a person longing to become more like Jesus, the answer may not be as simple as quoting a Bible verse or throwing up our hands in recognition that God is so much bigger than us.
TRANSCRIPTION
Restful in the Tension
Listen to the episode here: Kingdom Dwellers – Restful in the Tension
If you go to our website at soilandroots.org and click the Resources page, you’ll find a free PDF called “Heartview.”
If you aren’t able to pull it up, I’ll briefly describe it to you.
It’s a picture of a heart. On the outside of the heart, we find the Eight Indicators that we explored in Season 2. These are the eight signs of what’s going on in our inner life. They are our thoughts, emotions, health, relationships, behaviors, words, and how we use time and money.
These are very powerful tools and guides for our journey into deep discipleship. By exploring these indicators with God and a trusted friend, we can often develop insights into what’s going on in the depths of our hearts, and that often leads to greater intimacy with Jesus.
Inside our hearts sit at least two layers: our beliefs and, underneath those, our ideas and desires. You see those two layers portrayed as concentric circles in the picture: beliefs in the outer circle and ideas and desires in the inner circle.
We often assume that the bottom layer, the inner circle, of our hearts is our beliefs. I believe in God. I believe in Jesus. I believe in the resurrection, in the church. I believe God can be trusted. I believe God loves me. These might be some of our belief statements. We intellectually agree with them.
And often our whole hearts agree with them, too. I think when the Bible talks about “belief,” that’s what it often means – a wholehearted, fully embodied agreement. We believe with our entire humanity – our minds, bodies, and hearts.
However, today, “belief” is generally more oriented toward intellectual consent. And our beliefs don’t always match our underlying ideas and desires.
We’ve talked about the power of “ideas” on Soil & Roots many times, but let’s just remind ourselves of the definition: an idea is an assumption, conclusion, or principle in which our hearts are rooted, but of which we are often unaware. And these ideas are not so much intellectual statements as they are experienced realities.
They’re assumptions from which our hearts operate that are something like the pistons of a car engine. They’re down there working, though we generally don’t pay much attention to them.
We’ve explored all sorts of categories of ideas: ideas of identity, anthropology, value, power, purpose, love, origin, and time. There are an untold number of categories and types of ideas, and some subset of those seeps into the soils of our hearts, primarily when we’re young children. And they govern who we are for the rest of our lives.
Discipleship, at least as we’ve defined it here, is the transformation of dark ideas into light ideas.
Here’s an example. Let’s just take an idea of value. From a Christian standpoint, you and I have inestimable value. We are made in the image of the Creator. We were created to rule and steward the earth – an extraordinary privilege. We are so valuable that we are eternal. We are so valuable that, when we screwed things up, God Himself died for us and rescued us, so that we might be restored to Him, others, ourselves, and our role in creation and culture.
C.S. Lewis wrote:
“There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations – these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit – immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.”[1]
This is many Christians’ belief statement: human beings possess inestimable value. We are worth so much because God instills that worth in us.
But does this belief align with our unconscious ideas, the conclusions and assumptions our hearts operate from? How would we even know?
One of the easiest ways to determine if our ideas of value match up to our belief statements about value is to consider two of our indicators: our thought patterns and our words.
If we stop and assess our thought patterns, do we think of ourselves and others as having extraordinary value? When we talk to ourselves, do we speak to ourselves as someone worth dying for, as an immortal being? Or do we berate, condemn, and inflict shame on ourselves? Or, if we’re more the arrogant type, do we think of berating, condemning, and inflicting shame on others in our thoughts or through our spoken words?
This is tough stuff. Deep stuff. Soil and Roots stuff. To examine the bottom layers of our hearts to see what aligns with our beliefs and what doesn’t is the work of a deep disciple. It’s the work of Jesus.
We’ve given other examples of this type of disconnection over the last few years: the woman who intellectually believes she’s beautiful because she is created by God, and yet her underlying ideas drive her eating disorder.
The man who serves and serves at church for decades, only to wake up one day and quit the faith because “it’s no longer truth to him.” His ideas conflicted with his beliefs, and his ideas won out.
The married couple who love Jesus, believe in eternal life, but can’t seem to save any money because they spend as a way of soothing and pacifying darker, hidden ideas. They say they trust God, and they believe they do, though their money habits reveal they’re operating from some wounds and hurts with which they don’t yet trust God.
To some extent, every one of us operates from some ideas and desires that contradict our intellectual beliefs. A deep disciple explores the reasons for this disintegration. And that exploration involves a deeper understanding of two hearts: God’s and ours.
Tension
We’re working through Season 4, and the Forgotten Kingdom, and we’re in this mini-series on some qualities of a deep disciple, a kingdom dweller.
We’ve explored courageous curiosity, particularity (seeking out, honoring, and focusing on the individual), and the gradual release of control. A deep disciple becomes increasingly comfortable not having to figure everything out or control people, circumstances, or environments. A deep disciple is at peace knowing that most of our lives are outside of our control.
Today we’re exploring how a deep disciple rests even in the middle of tension.
As you might expect, this disconnection between the ideas and desires that truly power us and the beliefs we hold results in some tension. The more we’re aware of the differences between our ideas and our beliefs, the more tension we may feel. That doesn’t sound like fun.
This tension is expressed and explored all over the Bible: Ecclesiastes, Job, the Gospels, and Paul.
When our desires and ideas don’t align with the Kingdom of Light, we often sin, and Paul bemoans this tension in the famous passage in Romans about doing what he doesn’t want to do, and not doing what he should.
This tension doesn’t always involve sin, though. Not every disconnection results in disobedience. Sometimes tension is just tension.
It does result in relational struggle and challenge, however, with God, others, ourselves, and even with creation. When our ideas and desires don’t align with our beliefs, we’re going to feel it. We’re going to sense it. If that is, we’re paying attention. Either way, it impacts us and those around us.
Thorn in the Flesh
Here’s a recent example. I was chatting with a friend, and we were discussing 2 Corinthians 12. It’s the famous “thorn in the flesh” passage.
Paul is dealing with some sort of terrible affliction. He writes,
“To keep me from exalting myself, there was given me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me—to keep me from exalting myself! Concerning this I implored the Lord three times that it might leave me. And He has said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.” Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.
Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong.”[2]
My friend asked me what I thought of this exchange between God and Paul, and I answered frankly, “This isn’t one of my favorite passages. I don’t really care for it.”
He laughed, maybe a bit nervously, and asked why.
I said, “Paul was stoned, beaten, shipwrecked, betrayed, disregarded, and abandoned, all for Jesus. Yet when Paul implored God to help him with whatever was tormenting him, God remained silent the first two times and, on the third request, said, “My grace is sufficient.” In other words, ‘No, I’m not going to remove your affliction.’
God had healed him before. He was healed of blindness after his conversion. There’s the mysterious passage in Acts where Paul is stoned and left for dead, but suddenly gets up and walks into the city. It seems something supernatural happened there.
Part of me just wants to know why God wouldn’t allow Paul to catch a break this time. Paul knows the answer. He tells us in the passage so that he wouldn’t exalt himself. But that seems like a pretty high price to pay for staying humble.”
So what tension am I expressing when I confess I don’t care for the passage? My belief statement says that God is faithful. That all good things come from Him.
Yet my ideas of God – the assumptions from which I truly operate – are sometimes based more on who I think God should be compared to who He actually is. And to be uncomfortably transparent, I sometimes like my ideas more than God’s.
Let me put it this way. My unconscious ideas (my assumptions) about what makes God “good” sometimes conflict with what God has revealed about His goodness. I don’t always like God’s goodness.
Sound strange? C.S. Lewis wrote,
“We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be.”
And:
“What do people mean when they say, ‘I am not afraid of God because I know He is good?’ Have they never been to the dentist?”[3]
My ideas of God’s goodness involve very little pain and suffering. God’s ideas, however, often do. Thus, the source of my tension.
A Bad Evangelism Pitch?
Let’s go back to how Paul was “evangelized.” Jesus brought Paul into the kingdom in a rather dramatic fashion – a blinding light, a disembodied voice. But let’s go to another part of the story that doesn’t get as much press.
Jesus appears to another disciple, Ananias, and instructs him to go meet Paul and heal his sudden blindness.
Remember what Jesus told Ananias about Paul?
“Go, for he is a chosen instrument of Mine, to bear My name before the Gentiles and kings and the sons of Israel; for I will show him how much he must suffer for My name’s sake.” [4]
How much must he suffer? Ok, here’s that tension again.
Lest we think this only applies to Paul, there’s the whole “take up your cross and follow me” passage, along with “whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.”
This sounds like a terrible evangelism pitch. Come follow Jesus and you’ll inherit eternal life. But you’re also going to suffer. You’re going to experience loss, heartache, pain, and sorrow. In other words, to some extent, your life in Christ will follow the actual life of Christ.
I’m not sure, but if we included that in our evangelism scripts, we may find ourselves with far fewer converts. Though perhaps we’d also find far more disciples. Maybe we should think about that.
Maybe part of the reason modern culture is experiencing a large number of people “deconstructing” from the Christian faith is that no one told them the Christian life is hard.
Modern evangelism has sometimes been boiled down to a sales pitch that doesn’t clearly define the terms of the arrangement.
Hey, the Christian life is hard. At times, and I use this word carefully, it’s excruciatingly hard.
We all suffer. I suppose the difference is whether we choose to suffer alone or allow the One who’s suffered the most to join in our suffering.
The Reality of Tension
This type of tension will eventually come to the doorstep of anyone who truly claims to follow Christ and has centered their life around the Kingdom.
For the person who’s been “converted” and then goes about their lives in willful ignorance, quoting isolated Bible verses as they do whatever they want, living above the surface and refusing to wrestle with the difficulties of the faith, it’s a different story.
When we first moved into our house in Texas, I met a guy across the alley who was married with a few little kids. He was young, handsome, high-energy, and easy to talk to, though he was one of those people who didn’t really say anything when he talked.
One day, I walked out to find moving trucks and packing boxes at his house, and I asked him what was going on.
He said, “We’re getting divorced.”
When I expressed my sadness at the news, he replied, “Well, I screwed up and cheated on her. But it’s all grace, man. It’s all grace. Isn’t that what it’s all about? It’s all grace.”
To this day, I have no idea what he meant. Did he read that on a meme somewhere?
But for the person yearning after Jesus, desperate to “put on Christ” as it were, there’s going to be occasional if not somewhat frequent real, authentic tension.
How do we reconcile the problem of evil? How do we deal with broken dreams, unmet good desires, and loss of relationships? When I do the right thing and still experience harm, what do I do with that? When I do the wrong thing and get away with it, what do I do with that?
God’s ideas of justice seem pretty complicated. We see so much injustice, we cry out for justice, we want to be instruments of justice, and yet so often the rich get richer, and the poor get screwed. We know that justice favors the powerful – it’s been that way for as long as humans have walked the earth. Justice continues to peek out from beneath her blindfold and cater to those who pay her.
From Genesis 3 through almost the end of Revelation, we find evidence of tension. It’s written into the grand story and doesn’t seem to find its final resolution until heaven and earth are finally rejoined.
So, the question isn’t about how to satisfy all of this tension in our lives. The questions we’ve raised here and so many more have been raised for millennia and have yet to be resolved. The question for anyone wanting to become a deeper disciple is this: how do we live with the tension?
Responses to Tension
There are at least three options beyond just giving up and walking away.
We’ve talked about total deconstruction already – sometimes the tension is just too much and someone leaves the faith altogether.
For those of us who find ourselves with nowhere else to go, how might we respond to difficult, sometimes heart-wrenching tension?
- The “It’s All Good” approach
- The “It’s like Job” approach
- The “It’s like Jacob” approach
- It’s All Good
When I was a kid, one of the leading women of our church lost her husband to a sudden illness. It was a terrible tragedy. Over the next few days, people in the church marveled at her strength, resolve, and selflessness.
“She came to the funeral and refused to be comforted – instead, she comforted those around her.” “Her faith is so strong – she’s not even grieving.”
Someone had overheard the widow saying, “If this is God’s will, it’s God’s will. I trust in God.”
Even as a teenager, something about the situation made me pause. The woman just lost her husband – should she not allow herself to grieve and be served by the church? Was she a “super-Christian” of sorts, so in touch with Jesus that she accepted the death of her husband without so much as a question or any attention to her own heart?
I appreciated her apparent selflessness – surely she was denying herself to love those around her. Still, does loving others mean we ignore and deny our suffering?
We hear this type of sentiment from Christians pretty regularly. The father who’s miserable in his career but claims that’s where God has Him and so it’s all good. He desires something else, something different, better, but it’s easier to present a sacrificial face than to take the risk of moving away from what’s steady and comfortable.
I once asked a full-time minister whether he enjoyed his work, whether he sensed God’s pleasure and joy in his career.
“What does it matter?” he replied. “This is what God called me to do. It doesn’t matter what I think.”
It’s the missionary on the field who, in truth, hates her life and calling. But it’s all good. She trusts God, His plan, and that she will eventually adapt to what she thought would be a very different life.
“God is good all the time. All the time God is good.” Is it true? Sure, it’s true, though we should take care of how we define the word “good.”
If someone is facing broken dreams, unmet expectations, dashed desires, and disrupted relationships, and is still able to rest in God’s goodness amid their hardship, that’s really good.
But is it real? Is it a fully embodied, whole-hearted trust amid the tension, or are we parroting what we think we’re supposed to say when things don’t go the way we think they should?
When someone is going through a tough time, and it involves tension, I often hear a well-meaning brother or sister say, “Just take it to the foot of the cross. Just give it to Jesus. It’s all good, just give it to Jesus.”
I confess I’ve heard that phrase hundreds of times and don’t know what it means. It’s a Christian euphemism that sounds encouraging but, at least for me, is empty.
I guess it has something to do with surrendering something, but how exactly is someone supposed to do that?
Is it more important that I’m viewed as a mature Christian, or that I truly am an authentic Christian, a person who is at complete liberty to express my sorrow, sadness, doubt, and disappointment amid this tension? To admit we just don’t like the way God handles some things?
- It’s like Job.
Job is an amazing book of the Bible. I don’t know if there is a better treatment of unanswered questions, suffering, the role of man, and the purposes of God in all of literature.
Job is the go-to book for the Christian who asks “why” in the middle of tension and doesn’t get a specific response. Job can provide tremendous insight and comfort. And yet, even Job leaves us with unanswered questions and doesn’t attempt to resolve every curiosity.
After 37 chapters of Job and his friends going back and forth about Job’s terrible trials, it’s God’s turn.
Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind and said, “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Now gird up your loins like a man, and I will ask you, and you instruct Me! Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
Tell Me, if you have understanding, Who set its measurements? Since you know.
Or who stretched the line on it? On what were its bases sunk?
Or who laid its cornerstone, When the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?”[5]
God spends the next few chapters taking Job and his friends on a tour around the universe, asking them if they understand how creation, nature, and the cosmos work. In the end, Job relents and surrenders to the majesty and largeness of God.
God never revealed to Job why He allowed such terrible suffering.
Is it good and right and helpful to dwell on the character, grandeur, and glory of God when we experience inevitable tension? Absolutely. Is it good and right to remind ourselves that we are not God, that His ways are so much higher than ours, and to ask God to resolve some of our tension may not be, in His grand scheme of things, good for us?
Yes, it is.
But should Job’s conclusion be our default position? Meaning, when we encounter tension in our theology, in our lives, in our relationships, in our broken good desires, and even in our bodies, do we immediately throw up our hands and say, “Well, it’s like Job. We just can’t understand what God is doing”?
Let’s remember that Job and his friends spent 37 chapters discussing, debating, and wrestling with some extraordinarily difficult questions and tension before God reminded them of who He is.
So, before we proclaim, “It’s all good!” or “It’s like Job!”, perhaps there’s a longer, more formative path to take.
Perhaps the path to rest in the middle of all of this tension is not just by proclaiming God’s goodness, though that’s true. Perhaps the path to resting in the middle of all of this tension is not to quickly conclude God is just too big for us to grasp, though that’s true.
- It’s like Jacob.
Perhaps the path to resting in the middle of the inevitable tension is to take Jacob’s approach – to wrestle with God, and perhaps others and ourselves.
Talk about tension. Jacob, not exactly the poster child for healthy morals, is returning home to see his brother, Esau, years after tricking him out of his birthright and blessing. The last time he saw Esau, Esau wanted to kill him.
The evening before the reunion, Jacob wrestles with God all night long, and that struggle changes him: his character, his perspective, and even his name.
Though God doesn’t answer all of Jacob’s requests for information, God does bless Him, even as He injures Him.
There seems to be something very important in our journey into deep discipleship concerning wrestling, negotiating, debating, and authentically appearing before God as we really are – not with all of the platitudes, niceties, and formalities, but in the condition we find ourselves, good, bad, indifferent, frustrated, confused, joyful, thankful, angry.
Before we jump to claiming, “It’s all good,” or “It’s like Job,” perhaps there are some deeper wells to experience first.
God didn’t answer all of Job’s complaints and questions, but God certainly spoke. And throughout the Bible, God did answer specific questions, complaints, and requests for explanation.
We are curious beings who desire to find meaning, truth, and satisfaction by exploring, discovering, seeking, asking, and, at times, complaining. God made us this way. So, before we simply dismiss our tensions by either proclaiming God’s goodness or proclaiming God’s greatness, both of which are true, perhaps we should spend some time wrestling.
Wrestling in the Present
Just this week, I was reading Albert Haase. He lists characteristics of what he calls “the true self,” which is pretty much the same as what we refer to as a “deep disciple.”
One of the qualities he lists is “focused on the here and now.”
“The vast majority of us suffer from amnesia of the present. We think that the real action is somewhere else. Some of us have lost touch with the present moment because we prefer to live in the past. We are forever mulling over yesterday – regretting it, analyzing it or glorifying it with nostalgia. Sentimentality, regret, and guilt are the prices we pay when we live yesterday today.
Others of us are always jumping ahead to the future: anxious about next weekend, planning next month, wondering about next year. With antacids in our pockets and ulcers in our stomachs, we race toward tomorrow. Anxiety and worry are the prices we pay when we leave the home of the present moment and try to live tomorrow today.
Those who have returned to where God has placed them, who live at home, are focused on the here and now…They recognize that the past and the future are mental constructs that refer to the nonexistent.”[6]
I re-read the passage three or four times, suddenly wondering just how much of my life I spend in the past or the future instead of the present. The tension began to rise as I concluded that, although I spend more time worrying about the future than regretting the past, I don’t spend a whole lot of time in the present.
So now I have a choice. I can rightfully claim that “It’s all good,” and trust that God is working this all out, and He is. Maybe I take it “to the foot of the cross,” whatever that means.
Or I can rightfully claim that “It’s like Job,” and that I may never understand the reasons I spend too much time concerned with the past or future, and I might be right.
Or…I can choose to do the hard work of wrestling. Perhaps with God and certainly myself. Perhaps it’s time to ask some of those pesky “why” questions. Why do I spend so much time worrying about the future? Attempting to control it? Attempted to determine its outcome?
If a deep disciple’s life is characterized by resting amid the inevitable tensions, be they theological stumbling blocks, the problem of evil, a preponderance of suffering, or perhaps general confusion, perhaps the best path, the best journey to that place of rest isn’t just through declaring God’s goodness or chalking it up to His majesty and wonder.
It may come best through doing the much harder work of wrestling, confronting, debating, negotiating, perhaps complaining, questioning, and lamenting.
Perhaps this deep, peaceful rest in the middle of tension is so restful because we’ve become exhausted through the wrestling and we finally, truly surrender, body, mind, and spirit.
It’s not the surrender at the first sign of struggle – anyone can do that.
It’s the surrender that comes after we’ve battled with our very best, we’ve argued with everything we have, we’ve cajoled and cried and argued and reminded and contested until, like Jacob, we’re just spent. Yet we demand a blessing.
And, perhaps, the blessing after such a dark night of toil and pain is a genuine, real freedom. The freedom of rest in the middle of tension, finally knowing, truly knowing, that this rest doesn’t come from pithy belief statements. It comes from the satisfaction that we’ve wrestled with God, and it’s good. And perhaps we finally realize that wrestling was the point.
[1] Lewis, C.S. (1949). The Weight of Glory (pp 45-46). HarperOne.
[2] New American Standard Bible: 1995 update (2 Co 12:7–10). (1995). The Lockman Foundation.
[3] Martindale, W. & Root, J. (1990). The Quotable Lewis, (various). Tyndale.
[4] New American Standard Bible: 1995 update (Ac 9:15–16). (1995). The Lockman Foundation.
[5] New American Standard Bible: 1995 update (Job 38:1–7). (1995). The Lockman Foundation.
[6]Haase, A. (2008) Coming Home to Your True Self: Leaving the Emptiness of False Attractions, (pp. 27-28). Formatio.
