He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted.
—Isaiah 61:1
See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God; that no “root of bitterness” springs up and causes trouble, and by it many become defiled.
—Hebrews 12:15 ESV
As I slid into my seat for a language theory class, our language and philosophy professor leaned over the lectern, his face animated. “This week we’ll be looking at Nietzsche’s statement ‘God is dead,’ ” he explained. To us, our professor was an intellectual giant, writing for a living and publishing academic articles on modern language theory and poetry.
I was now in my third year at the university, studying culture, writing, and journalism, and it wasn’t making holding on to Jesus an easy proposition.
Throughout the lecture, our professor read from European philosophers who had come to the same conclusion Nietzsche had. “Michel Foucault argued that ‘the individual, with his identity and characteristics, is the product of a relation of power exercised over bodies, multiplicities, movements, desires, forces,’ ”10 he said, pausing to peer at us over his glasses. “Foucault and Lyotard show us that there is actually no such thing as a grand narrative that can claim to be absolute truth; rather we construct these narratives to control others. There is no such thing as ‘meaning’ without a power relationship involved.”
I absorbed everything he said. While I was now a Christian, I saw that these thinkers weren’t denying the reality of God, just questioning our capacity to know him. They were being intellectually honest. Could I blame them for that? Without the Spirit of Jesus’ revelation and his work to communicate with us, God was dead to us. Sure, the skeptics ended up in a place few would wish to go. But they were following the truth as they saw it, more honestly than many of the Christians I’d met.
This wasn’t the only obstacle I had to overcome since becoming a follower of Christ. Though I didn’t realize it, I also had deep bitterness because of past hurts Christianity had caused me. I could not let go of my activist past, especially when I heard of numerous young gay people committing suicide and of the hate crimes committed against LGBTQI people every week around the world. I seethed with anger, and rightly so. Why aren’t Christians standing up for these precious human beings? I wondered, my heart breaking. Clearly, many people saw homosexuality as something to resist at all costs, even if that cost was a life. People like me were the victims; they were the aggressors. That much seemed obvious.
I struggled to forgive the church for its lack of love and understanding for the LGBTQI community. Many of the characterizations of gender I heard inside church angered me. They constantly talked about what I understood as “gender essentialism,” the idea that a person’s sex is fixed and their gender is in no way constructed. (This book isn’t the place to fully deal with this question. For now, let’s just say it’s complicated.) I saw almost no sensitivity for transgender or intersex people. There was no way to account for many of the complex realities of sin and the created goodness of our humanity. In the Christian mind, it seemed there was no nuance to human gender or sexuality; it was just “a boy with boy parts” or “a girl with girl parts.” How did this understanding answer the question of intersex people and genetic exceptions? How about those who experience gender dysphoria? Eunuchs in the Bible? The story was much more complex, and even one exception to the rule prompted honestly asking why.
I still did not understand the depths of my bitterness, but I was about to take another step in my journey to forgive. The Sunday following my class, I sat next to Aunt Helen. The church was packed, and something seemed different. Since becoming a Christian, I’d frequently heard the word revival, but I didn’t really know what it meant and had never experienced it firsthand. Today I would. I sensed in others around me a hunger for God that I’d never felt in the service before. Helen swept back her long black hair and looked at me sideways. “Get ready,” she said. “God is about to move!”
As the band played, the lead singer suddenly stopped the usual program. The whole church started to sing three simple words: “I exalt thee!”
I cannot claim to explain it, but again it felt like a power from outside filled the room. As it became stronger and stronger, my chest shook from within. I felt as if my heart were being cleansed. The words from Ezekiel 36 came to me: I will sprinkle you with water and give you a heart of flesh for a heart of stone.
As in previous encounters with God’s Spirit, pain quickly resurfaced from my past. As I closed my eyes and lifted my hands and voice, I saw a picture in my mind: what seemed to be a thick root, deep in my core. The memories of hurtful things people had said to me, my own anger toward the church, my past relationships and friendships—all these flitted past. What is this? I asked.
This is the root of bitterness that defiles many. I recognized this from Hebrews 12:15. Deep inside, rejection had rooted itself as bitterness. My sorrow had grown into darkness and morphed into something strangling my soul. It was a legitimate hurt, to be sure. But it was growing into something monstrous. God needed to pull it from me before it became me. All I could do was ask for the strength to surrender.
The worship music crescendoed. A liquid purity seemed to fill me, a spiritual sense of something beyond my understanding. Suddenly I felt as if I were in another dimension yet somehow still present in my body. Perhaps this is what John referred to as being caught up in the Spirit, I thought.
As I looked, I saw the whole earth. It was filled with a sea of people doing all the things we know so well: backbiting, swearing, slandering, jeering at God, setting themselves up as his judges. Their hatred was palpable. They were gripped by pain yet filled with rebellion toward the God who could heal it if only they would let him. It was horrific. I felt my heart break for every person in the crowd.
Then I spotted myself among them.
I heard a voice say, This is what you would have become. I looked up and saw Jesus, lifted above the earth, shining in unapproachable light.
I opened my eyes and was back in the auditorium. The whole church started to sing in adoration, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord.” I had never seen a service where every single person was so focused on Christ. The contrast to the people in my vision stunned me.
As I closed my eyes and raised my hands, it happened again. I saw Jesus and the jeering crowd of people. His whole being radiated with energy. The words of Colossians 1:17 flashed through my mind like an arc of electricity: “He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”
I heard Jesus say, David, my son, you are free. He raised his hand in a gesture of authority, and dazzling light swept the face of the earth. It touched various people in the crowd, transforming them. His voice boomed: My glory will come for them.
This light finally touched me too. I let out a bellow of anger. The music wasn’t enough to mask it, and my aunt looked at me, startled. But I barely noticed. Something was happening inside.
I felt God’s power come upon me. As my chest trembled, this deep root of pain was pulled out of someplace deep within me. Finally, and gloriously, I was free from past injury. My heart had been set free and softened.
Later, as we talked, my aunt saw that I’d been set free from the unforgiveness that kept me from fully following Jesus and trusting the church. Somehow I knew she was right.
The vision had marked me. My bitterness from feeling rejected by Christians and God was removed, replaced with a knowledge of just how deep God’s love for this world and for me went.
Just when the path ahead seemed impossible, Jesus turned my bitterness into life-giving joy. The horizon that had felt so stifling—the authority of Christ—had widened into a vista as broad as the world. I realized that this Jesus is forever the exalted Lord of all.