BitterSweetLife

In Response To Bleeding—GOD

It’s been a little while since a Post of Substance has appeared here, and to be honest, I’ve been putting it off. Dread isn’t the right word. Maybe it’s a fear of seeming overly morbid, although that’s not quite it either. For whatever reason, I’ve been reluctant to write this. I knew that I would, just “not now.” Posts of Substance, like brave assertions, can’t be tossed off flippantly. But apparently all the cylinders on my “writer’s lock” are finally aligned; the small safe that held this post is swinging open.

Ever noticed how, in the throes of pain, what we want most is not often deep philosophy? As Job would have told you, Beware of offering theology to a wounded man. In my own struggles, when the heart seems to pump bile, I find myself reading mystery stories and writing compulsively about basketball.

This is not to say the truth becomes irrelevant. Rather, it is deeply relevant. It is the bones that support the drooping flesh, the timber that props up the sagging roof. Theology, like a sacred memory, is frequently mulled and wept over, but often at a level that defies light conversation.

When theology is all you have to stand on, the pavement you slump on, you may not care to discuss the brand of concrete and its method of reinforcement. Assuming your foundation is strong, grief is not best overcome by a structural assessment. The moment when theology (“God’s will is perfect”) is most valuable may also be the moment when it is most inscrutable. The truth Job needed to plumb was not that “Eventually, in this life or the next, God will reward the righteous,” but rather—GOD IS.

The weight of this fact, simple and heavy, descended on me recently. About three weeks ago, Lindsay and I suffered a loss in the family, and found ourselves immersed in sorrow. As the days went by, I tried to make sense of my own experience. I was willing to talk about our loss, but what was there to talk about? The pain was the central reality, the biggest thing. The value in exhaustively describing the pain was limited. The pain was to be borne.

Later would come the time for theology—later, and, simultaneously, below—below the present pain, and out of sight, not rehearsed like a mantra, but embraced like a man hugs his own bones. Later, perhaps, I would examine it again. Just now I simply needed a distraction. A distraction and God—God, the eternal and penultimate distraction; Christ pulls us away from “truth” that cannot be helped by further dissection, and he gives us Himself instead. This, I now think, has been a secret of Christians throughout the ages. While in agony, they could not, perhaps, read fiction and shoot hoops, but they were nonetheless “distracted.” Profoundly distracted.

At the point where further scrutiny is masochistic and self-defeating, Christ waits. He says, “I know what you feel, but look at me instead.” I do not doubt that he can hold our attention.