11

A Contrite Spirit

During my growing-up years in Olney, Illinois, I went with other kids from our church to summer camp near Martinsville, Indiana. It was the typical rustic environment of trees and trails and bugs and practical jokes. You could join the “Sweat Hog Club” by getting up at 6:30 a.m. and running around the lake several times. Or you could join the “Polar Bear Club” by getting up in the same early chill and rolling off the edge into the swimming pool.

I had tons of fun doing skits and kayaking and even acquiring a boyfriend or two, as I recall. But there was time as well to think about important life issues.

One day during the morning session when we all gathered in the small chapel, the speaker talked about having “a contrite spirit.” Although I’d heard that term once or twice in Bible readings, I didn’t have a clue what it meant.

The man held up a saltine cracker. “See this cracker?” he said. “Okay—let’s smash it a few times.” With that, he laid it down on a table and pounded it repeatedly with his fist.

“We now have a contrite cracker,” he explained. “It’s all in pieces; it’s not together anymore. Its form, its stiffness has been broken. Broken—that’s another word the Bible uses alongside contrite. The Lord wants us to be broken about our sin.

“The opposite of all this is to be proud. When I started here this morning, you could say I had a proud cracker. Now it’s a broken and contrite one.”

He then read some Scriptures:

The LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit (Psalm 34:18).

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise (Psalm 51:17).

For thus saith the high and lofty One . . . I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones (Isaiah 57:15).

For all those things hath mine hand made, and all those things have been, saith the LORD: but to this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at my word (Isaiah 66:2, all verses from KJV).

Apparently, being contrite is a good thing as far as God is concerned. He welcomes the attitude of humility and brokenness. People who are rigid and self-composed do not gain his approval nearly as quickly as those who are pliable and receptive.

When God lets the circumstances of life make us contrite, we no longer “have it all together.” Instead, the pieces of our lives are apart, open, vulnerable. This condition scares us to some degree; we sense the loss of composure. But from these pieces God can make what he wills.

When I was in the jungle, I thought more than once about Naomi, who with her family moved to a distant land (Moab) and then watched everything fall apart: her husband died and then both her sons. She summarized it to her daughters-in-law this way: “The LORD’s hand has gone out against me!” (Ruth 1:13, NIV).

In my mind’s eye, I could still see that camp speaker’s hand coming down on that table years before. That’s how I felt in captivity: like a cracker being crushed.

In reality, however, it was the Abu Sayyaf doing the beating, and God was simply allowing their efforts as part of a process to soften me toward him. I could do nothing to resist. I could only yield.

When things are not going well, we are humbled. We know we need outside help. It is in such conditions that “the LORD is nigh,” as Psalm 34 (KJV) puts it. This is good for our spiritual well-being. We are reminded, as the saying goes, that God is God and we are not.

During the years we lived in Malaybalay, we had a Filipino friend whose husband was an alcoholic. For a while he would straighten up, and things would be fine. But then he would fall back into drinking, and the whole family would be in shambles.

This woman went to a friend of ours for counsel. “I’m at my wits’ end,” she cried. “I don’t know what else to do with him. I give up.”

The friend replied, “Praise the Lord!”

The woman looked up in shock. What an inappropriate remark to someone whose home life was awful.

“God has been waiting for you to do just that—to give up,” the counselor explained. “He’s been hoping you would stop worrying, stop badgering your husband, stop trying to fix this, and all the rest. He just wants you to acknowledge you can’t handle this after all. Now is the time that God can work.”

And as far as I know, the husband is doing fine today. When we moved away, the whole family was back in church, and the situation had stabilized. Both the marriage and the parenting had been rescued by surrender to a divine solution.

*   *

One of Martin’s favorite books was entitled Christ Esteem by a Lutheran pastor and radio host named Don Matzat. Matzat talks at length about the current chase after self-esteem as the answer to our many difficulties and how just feeling better about ourselves doesn’t solve the deep issues. He writes:

The devil doesn’t care how religious we are as long as we live for ourselves, remain consciously wrapped up in ourselves, try to feel good about ourselves, and cover up the nakedness of empty, meaningless lives through a spiritual charade. Martin Luther wrote concerning self-indulgence and human pride: “Against this secret villain we must pray God daily to suppress our self-esteem.”

I’m sure the pop psychologists of our day would be horrified by such a statement. But then, Martin Luther wouldn’t especially care.

Next in Matzat’s book comes a section entitled “How Badly Do You Hurt?”

There are many hurting, unhappy, discouraged people in our world today. They struggle with their little problems and failures, chasing after every flimsy hope that is held out to them whereby they might overcome and find relief from their personal fears, broken hearts, worries, guilt, and feelings of inadequacy. They buy self-help books, undergo counseling, and seek to discover some gimmick, some way of thinking or acting that will provide relief.

If you are one of these hurting people, the question is: Are you hurting enough to give up on yourself? Are you unhappy enough and miserable enough to turn away from yourself with all your problems and failures and seek relief in a relationship with the person of Jesus Christ? Many claim to be hurting but are really not hurting enough. . . . Jesus is the answer and does provide help, relief, comfort, peace, and joy, but surrendering and giving up on self is a prerequisite. . . .

Are you willing to stop kicking? Are you willing to see all your little problems and unresolved conflicts, discouragements and disappointments, bad habits, negative attitudes, faults, and failures as being means whereby God is at work bringing you to the end of yourself? Are you willing to be nailed to the cross of Christ and buried in the waters of your baptism?[10]

When I got back to the States, I bought a stack of these books and gave them out as Christmas gifts that first year in honor of Martin, and also because I too believed the point being made. Only in Jesus do we find equilibrium and wholeness. Only he can make us competent. Without him, we can do nothing, as he reminded the disciples at the Last Supper. A broken and contrite spirit is what he sees as the starting point.

When we are weak, Christ has the opportunity to be strong. When we are shattered, he can then go to work reassembling us. When we are defeated, he lends us his victory. When we are dispirited, he infuses us with his joy.

*   *

Of course, we push mightily against the idea of being broken. We keep telling ourselves we are “okay” and even good. Politicians instinctively drone about “the goodness of the American people,” even while asking for more funds to fight crime on our streets. The badness is always in somebody else, not us.

The Muslims with whom we lived for a year had a big problem with the Genesis story about Lot, the nephew of Abraham, committing incest with his two daughters. In their view of history, Lot is a “prophet” right alongside Noah, Moses, David, Isaiah, and the rest. (And it’s true that Lot gets at least a partial compliment in the New Testament; see 2 Peter 2:7.)

“How could your Holy Book say such a horrible thing about a holy man?” they raved. They were sure that the tale of him fathering his own grandsons (Genesis 19:30-38) was invented by some Jew or Christian with abominable motives.

Martin’s reply to our captors was, “You know, I guess that’s a reminder of humanity’s incredible sinfulness. We all make choices, even as Lot and his daughters did. And we’re 100 percent responsible for what we choose. The amazing thing is that God has mercy on us; he’s willing to make things right after we’ve really messed up.”

The Bible says, “If we say we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and refusing to accept the truth. But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from every wrong” (1 John 1:8-9). This is yet another part of having a contrite spirit before God. It means we admit our faults and ask him to pardon us.

The same is true of our abilities and strengths. Even those need to be laid down before the only One who can purify our motives. Our career plans are bound to derail somewhere along the line unless they are submitted to the Lord, who holds all wisdom in his hand. He is in charge, and we must be his humble servants.

Paul said the whole treasure of the gospel had been placed “in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us” (2 Corinthians 4:7, NIV). His metaphor was a reference to his very human self and those of his colleagues in the ministry. Clay pots are usually cheap. They break easily—perhaps not as easily as a cracker, but they are certainly not strong, as you will find out if you ever drop one on the ground. That is meant to be a picture of us, as it was of Paul. We are no big deal. We are vulnerable and replaceable. If others see God’s powerful truth inside of us, they know right away where the value lies and where it doesn’t.

When asked the frequent question, “How did you survive that whole year in captivity?” I find it hard to give a short answer. A part of it, I do know, is that Martin and I had made a life habit of saying, in response to whatever challenge, “Yes, Lord.” Whenever the work of the mission posed a request to us, we tried to nod our heads affirmatively. That is what servants are supposed to do, correct? This helped us when the really dreadful ordeal began on May 27, 2001.

This certainly does not mean that this was our natural response or that we always liked what we had said yes to. Many times it was far from fun.

But in the end, the Master knows what he is doing. In my life and yours, he is pursuing a good plan. What he needs from us is willingness to follow.