Before
Before I shaped you in the womb,
I knew all about you.
Before you saw the light of day,
I had holy plans for you:
A prophet to the nations—
that’s what I had in mind for you.
Jeremiah 1:5
What science will ever be able to reveal to man the origin, nature and character of that conscious power to will and to love which constitutes his life? It is certainly not our effort, nor the effort of anyone around us, which set that current in motion. And it is certainly not our solicitude, nor that of any friend, which prevents its ebb or controls its turbulence. We can, of course, trace back through generations some of the antecedents of the torrent which bears us along; and we can, by means of certain moral and physical disciplines and stimulations, regularise or enlarge the aperture through which the torrent is released into us. But neither that geography nor those artifices help us in theory or in practice to harness the sources of life. My self is given to me far more than it is formed by me. Man, Scripture says, cannot add a cubit to his stature. Still less can he add a unit to the potential of his love, or accelerate by another unit the fundamental rhythm which regulates the ripening of his mind and heart. In the last resort the profound life, the fontal life, the new-born life, escape our grasp entirely.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin[1]
I was sitting at the counter of a delicatessen in Brooklyn eating a pastrami sandwich on Jewish rye and making small talk with the owner. After fifteen minutes or so of desultory conversation, neither of us saying much of interest to the other, he planted himself in front of me, assumed a pose of intense concentration and said, “Don’t tell me, you are from . . . let’s see . . . you come frommmm . . . Nebraska.”
“No,” I said, “I come from Montana.”
He was disappointed. “I usually don’t miss it by that far.”
The tempo of the conversation picked up. I learned that he took great pride in his ability to distinguish regional accents. Persons from all over the country, from all over the world, came into his store. He had a good ear. He developed fine skills in locating people’s origins by listening to dialectical variations in their speech.
I was flattered to be the object of his curiosity. The only previous interest that I can recall shopkeepers having in me was getting my order straight and making sure I got the price right.
“Whaddal ya’ have?”
“Hot pastrami on rye. How much?”
“Buck seventy-five.”
The language was informational and utilitarian. When it had done its work it either stopped or digressed into gossip. But for those few moments in that Brooklyn setting, someone listened to my words for something more than information; the man was after knowledge. He wanted to know where I came from and what I had experienced that resulted in my pronouncing words just the way I did that day.
I was not reduced to a customer with hunger pangs that could be turned into a profit. I had geographic particularity, linguistic idiosyncrasy. There was more to me than my biological needs and economic potential; and he was interested in it, or at least part of it.
In a journalistic age in which the only things that qualify as attention-getting are the immediate and the extraordinary, I am not used to being approached that way. In a commercial age in which each person is evaluated as an economic unit and time is money, I am not used to such leisurely attentiveness. But only this kind of attention allows me to express the many layers of humanness and the complex significance they have for who I am. Apart from the before, the now has little meaning. The now is only a thin slice of who I am; isolated from the rich deposits of before, it cannot be understood.
So biographers search through family archives. So psychiatrists recover repressed memories and ask about childhood impressions. So lovers rummage through the photograph albums for everything and anything about one another, knowing that every detail deepens comprehension and therefore deepens love. The before is the root system of the visible now. Our lives cannot be read as newspaper reports on current events; they are unabridged novels with character and plot development, each paragraph essential for mature appreciation.
Knowing that the fully developed, passionate humanity of Jeremiah necessarily had a complex and intricate background, we prepare to examine it. But we are brought up short. We are told next to nothing: three bare, unadorned background items—his father’s name, Hilkiah; his father’s vocation, priest; his place of birth, Anathoth. We want to know more. Without more information how can we gain an adequate understanding of the humanity of Jeremiah? We need to know the social and economic conditions of Anathoth so that we can trace the early influences on Jeremiah’s passion for justice. We need to know whether the father was passive or assertive in order to evaluate the son’s complex emotional life. We need to know if the mother was overly protective and when she weaned her son if we are to account for the incredible tenacity in the adult prophet. We need to know the teaching methods used by local wise men to distinguish between the original and conventional in Jeremiah’s preaching and teaching. The questions pile up. Lack of evidence frustrates us. What we need is a breakthrough manuscript discovery in seventh century B.C. Anathoth, manuscripts containing anecdotes, statistics and letters—raw material for a reconstruction of the world into which Jeremiah was born.
We fantasize an archaeological scoop. Meanwhile what we have right before us turns out to be far more useful—a theological probe. Instead of being told what Jeremiah’s parents were doing, we are told what his God was doing: “Before I shaped you in the womb, I knew all about you. Before you saw the light of day, I had holy plans for you: A prophet to the nations—that’s what I had in mind for you” (Jer 1:5).
Before Jeremiah knew God, God knew Jeremiah: “Before I shaped you in the womb, I knew all about you.” This turns everything we ever thought about God around. We think that God is an object about which we have questions. We are curious about God. We make inquiries about God. We read books about God. We get into late-night bull sessions about God. We drop into church from time to time to see what is going on with God. We indulge in an occasional sunset or symphony to cultivate a feeling of reverence for God.
But that is not the reality of our lives with God. Long before we ever got around to asking questions about God, God had been questioning us. Long before we got interested in the subject of God, God subjected us to the most intensive and searching knowledge. Before it ever crossed our minds that God might be important, God singled us out as important. Before we were formed in the womb, God knew us. We are known before we know.
This realization has a practical result: no longer do we run here and there, panicked and anxious, searching for the answers to life. Our lives are not puzzles to be figured out. Rather, we come to God, who knows us and reveals to us the truth of our lives. The fundamental mistake is to begin with ourselves and not God. God is the center from which all life develops. If we use our ego as the center from which to plot the geometry of our lives, we will live eccentrically.
All wise reflection corroborates Scripture here. We enter a world we didn’t create. We grow into a life already provided for us. We arrive in a complex of relationships with other wills and destinies that are already in full operation before we are introduced. If we are going to live appropriately, we must be aware that we are living in the middle of a story that was begun and will be concluded by another. And this other is God.
My identity does not begin when I begin to understand myself. There is something previous to what I think about myself, and it is what God thinks of me. That means that everything I think and feel is by nature a response, and the one to whom I respond is God. I never speak the first word. I never make the first move.
Jeremiah’s life didn’t start with Jeremiah. Jeremiah’s salvation didn’t start with Jeremiah. Jeremiah’s truth didn’t start with Jeremiah. He entered the world in which the essential parts of his existence were already ancient history. So do we.
Sometimes when we are in close and involved conversation with three or four other people, another person joins the group and abruptly begins saying things, arguing positions and asking questions in complete ignorance of what has been said for the past two hours, oblivious to the delicate conversational balances that have been achieved. When that happens I always want to say, “Just shut up for a while, won’t you? Just sit and listen until you get caught up on what is going on here. Get in tune with what is taking place; then we will welcome you into our conversation.”
God is more patient. He puts up with our interruptions; he backtracks and fills us in on the old stories; he repeats the vital information. But how much better it is if we take the time to get the drift of things, to find out where we fit. The story into which life fits is already well on its way when we walk into the room. It is an exciting, brilliant, multivoiced conversation. The smart thing is to find out the identity behind the voices and become familiar with the context in which the words are being used. Then, gradually, we venture a statement, make a reflection, ask a question or two, even dare to register an objection. It is not long before we are regular participants in the conversation in which, as it unfolds, we get to know ourselves even as we are known.
The second item of background information provided on Jeremiah is this: “Before you saw the light of day I had holy plans for you.” Consecrated (or holy plans) means set apart for God’s side. It means that the human is not a cogwheel. It means that a person is not the keyboard of a piano on which circumstances play hit-parade tunes.[2] It means we are chosen out of the feckless stream of circumstantiality for something important that God is doing.
What is God doing? He is saving; he is rescuing; he is blessing; he is providing; he is judging; he is healing; he is enlightening. There is a spiritual war in progress, an all-out moral battle. There is evil and cruelty, unhappiness and illness. There is superstition and ignorance, brutality and pain. God is in continuous and energetic battle against all of it. God is for life and against death. God is for love and against hate. God is for hope and against despair. God is for heaven and against hell. There is no neutral ground in the universe. Every square foot of space is contested.
Jeremiah, before he was born, was enlisted on God’s side in this war. He wasn’t given a few years in which to look around and make up his mind which side he would be on, or even whether he would join a side at all. He was already chosen as a combatant on God’s side. And so are we all. No one enters existence as a spectator. We either take up the life to which we have been consecrated or we traitorously defect from it. We cannot say, “Hold it! I am not quite ready. Wait until I have sorted things out.”[3]
For a long time all Christians called each other “saints.” They were all saints regardless of how well or badly they lived, of how experienced or inexperienced they were. The word saint did not refer to the quality or virtue of their acts, but to the kind of life to which they had been chosen, life on a battlefield. It was not a title given after a spectacular performance, but a mark of whose side they were on. The word saint is the noun form of the verb consecrated that gave spiritual shape to Jeremiah even before he had biological shape.
In the neighborhood where I lived when I was in the first grade, all the children were older than I. When we had neighborhood games and chose up sides, I was always the last one chosen. One time—it probably happened more than once, but this once sticks in my memory—after everyone else had been chosen, I was left standing in the middle between the two teams. The captains argued over who was going to have to choose me. Having me, I suddenly realized, was a liability. As the argument raged between them I went from being a zero to a minus.
But not with God. Not a zero. Not a minus. I have a set-apart place that only I can fill. No one can substitute for me. No one can replace me. Before I was good for anything, God decided that I was good for what he was doing. My place in life doesn’t depend on how well I do in the entrance examination. My place in life is not determined by what market there is for my type of personality.
God is out to win the world in love and each person has been selected in the same way that Jeremiah was, to be set apart to do it with him. He doesn’t wait to see how we turn out to decide to choose or not to choose us. Before we were born he chose us for his side—consecrated us.
The third thing that God did to Jeremiah before Jeremiah did anything on his own was this: “A prophet to the nations—that’s what I had in mind for you.” A divine appointment. The words “had in mind” are, literally, “gave” (nathan)—I gave you as a prophet to the nations. God gives. He is generous. He is lavishly generous. Before Jeremiah ever got it together he was given away.
That is God’s way. He did it with his own son, Jesus. He gave him away. He gave him to the nations. He did not keep him on display. He did not preserve him in a museum. He did not show him off as a trophy. “This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life” (Jn 3:16).
And he gave Jeremiah away. I can hear Jeremiah objecting, “Wait a minute. Don’t be so quick to give me away. I’ve got something to say about this. I’ve got my inalienable rights. I have a few decisions about life that I am going to make myself.” Imagine God’s response: “Sorry, but I did it before you were even born. It’s already done; you are given away.”
Some things we have a choice in, some we don’t. In this we don’t. It is the kind of world into which we were born. God created it. God sustains it. Giving is the style of the universe. Giving is woven into the fabric of existence. If we try to live by getting instead of giving, we are going against the grain. It is like trying to go against the law of gravity—the consequence is bruises and broken bones. In fact, we do see a lot of distorted, misshapen, crippled lives among those who defy the reality that all life is given and must continue to be given to be true to its nature.
There is a rocky cliff on the shoreline of the Montana lake where I live part of each summer. There are breaks in the rockface in which tree swallows make their nests. For several weeks one summer, I watched the swallows in swift flight collect insects barely above the surface of the water then dive into the cavities in the cliff, feeding first their mates and then their newly hatched chicks. Near one of the cracks in the cliff face, a dead branch stretched about four feet over the water. One day I was delighted to see three new swallows sitting side by side on this branch. The parents made wide, sweeping, insect-gathering circuits over the water and then returned to the enormous cavities that those little birds became as they opened their beaks for a feeding.
This went on for a couple of hours until the parents decided they had had enough of it. One adult swallow got alongside the chicks and started shoving them out toward the end of the branch—pushing, pushing, pushing. The end one fell off. Somewhere between the branch and the water four feet below, the wings started working, and the fledgling was off on his own. Then the second one. The third was not to be bullied. At the last possible moment his grip on the branch loosened just enough so that he swung downward, then tightened again, bulldog tenacious. The parent was without sentiment. He pecked at the desperately clinging talons until it was more painful for the poor chick to hang on than risk the insecurities of flying. The grip was released and the inexperienced wings began pumping. The mature swallow knew what the chick did not—that it would fly—that there was no danger in making it do what it was perfectly designed to do.
Birds have feet and can walk. Birds have talons and can grasp a branch securely. They can walk; they can cling. But flying is their characteristic action, and not until they fly are they living at their best, gracefully and beautifully.
Giving is what we do best. It is the air into which we were born. It is the action that was designed into us before our birth. Giving is the way the world is. God gives himself. He also gives away everything that is. He makes no exceptions for any of us. We are given away to our families, to our neighbors, to our friends, to our enemies—to the nations. Our life is for others. That is the way creation works. Some of us try desperately to hold on to ourselves, to live for ourselves. We look so bedraggled and pathetic doing it, hanging on to the dead branch of a bank account for dear life, afraid to risk ourselves on the untried wings of giving. We don’t think we can live generously because we have never tried. But the sooner we start the better, for we are going to have to give up our lives finally, and the longer we wait the less time we have for the soaring and swooping life of grace.
Jeremiah could have hung on to the dead-end street where he was born in Anathoth. He could have huddled in the security of his father’s priesthood. He could have conformed to the dull habits of his culture. He didn’t. He believed what had been told him about his background, that God long before gave him away, and he participated in the giving, throwing himself into his appointment.
Many critical things happen before I am conceived and born that predetermine the reality that I experience: biological things that make me a biped that walks and not a fish that swims, geographic things that provide me a temperate zone instead of an ice age, scientific things that produce physicians to visit when I am sick and not witch doctors, political things that make me a citizen in a democracy and not a serf on a feudal estate. But the most important things are what God did before I was conceived, before I was born. He knew me, therefore I am no accident; he chose me, therefore I cannot be a zero; he gave me, therefore I must not be a consumer.
There are frenzied efforts in our culture to salvage ruined self-esteem by bolstering people with reassurance and affirmation, by telling them that they are terrific, that they are number one, and that they had better treat themselves to a good time. The result is not larger persons but smaller ones—pygmy egos. But how do we acquire a sense of significance without puffing up the ego? How do we become important without becoming self-important, confident without being arrogant, dignified without looking ridiculous?
Jeremiah sets the pattern. Has anyone lived so well out of such deep reservoirs of dignity and design—no hollow piece of strutting straw!—as Jeremiah? He did it from a base of meditation on the awesome before of his life, and he lived out of this background and not against it. This, not Anathoth, was where he came from, and the accent in his speech betrays his origins to anyone with a sensitive ear.
It is difficult to cultivate this kind of depth-memory awareness. We get no help from our contemporaries who rarely go back further than the minutes of the previous meeting in an attempt to understand the agenda of their humanity. We are so used to considering everything through the prism of our current feelings and our most recent acquisitions that it is a radical change to consider the vast before. But if we would live well, it is necessary. Otherwise we live feebly and gropingly, blind to the glory that we are known, chosen and given away by God.