I began this journal as a ninety-day exposition of coming clean. I see it now, the arc that rises in a crescendo and falls toward resolution. This is the story of moving from doubt to belief, from drunk to sober, from prodigal to unified with the Christ of my youth, the Christ in the mesquite trees. I have heard the still small voice, followed it into the cave of the soul, where my unforgiven accusers lay in wait. In the end, I found that embodying Christ’s forgiveness drives these voices from the cave and brings peace to the interior life.
I suppose it really was a setup after all.
Yes, this started as a journal with no arc, but here we are in the beginning of resolution. I’ll say beginning because I don’t want to jinx it. (I know it won’t be all resolved until death releases us from this present reality.) Is there a message locked inside me? Yes. Scripture teaches that a disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone, when he is fully trained, will be like his teacher (Luke 6:40). How then should we live?
Father, forgive them; they don’t know what they are doing.
We are an odd company, this family we call the church. I don’t suppose I’m special among you, that I’m the only one who confesses the power of a risen Christ on Sunday morning and drinks himself into the icy numbness. I don’t suppose I’m the only one who hoards hurts until well after the accusers have disappeared or passed on. I don’t suppose I’m the only one who has let the perception that God is dormant burn and burn.
You know this pain, yes? For some, perhaps it’s the itinerant preacher, but for others, maybe it’s the runaway father, the dead mother, or the friend who’s disappeared. For some it’s a minor pain that’s allowed to fester—mine was—but for others it’s the unfathomable, unthinkable pain of abuse, rape, prejudice, or murder.
You feel it, don’t you? They are still there, your accusers, and they are hurling accusations, aren’t they? They are still in your caves, in your ears, in your veins, yes? You taste them, smell them.
Has it upended your faith in God, in yourself? Has it driven you to self-soothing, to the icy numbness of sex or materialism or even theology? Has it created in you an agnostic heart, an agoraphobic heart, an alcoholic heart?
Perhaps this is all too mystical for you; perhaps you are uncomfortable with the simplicity of a Jesus who abides with the simplest faith-bearers—with the children and the forgivers. Maybe you’d rather find comfort in the cold adult numbness, the coping mechanisms: the booze, the sex, the chocolate, the systematized theologies that reduce God to a proper but cold equation. Maybe you’d rather build structures around your pain, tuck them behind protected and thorny hedgerows, hold them in a safe place of your making.
But I see through your drinking, your affair, your theological systems. I know all addiction is undergirded with pain, and when you strip the addiction away, all questions, doubts, and accusations are sure to come screaming to the surface.
Be honest: in moments of clarity, of stone-cold sobriety, do you ask how a good God could allow so much pain? Do you wonder whether Jesus is a figment of your imagination, whether God is real? Do you have fond dreams of dying—not of suicide but of dying? Do you see the prospect of death as release? Do you lust after money and power so much that you poor yourself down and skinny yourself up to try to assuage that guilt? Do you have so much money and power that it scares you, that you wonder whether you are the rich man who’ll sooner be screwed than enter the eye of the needle? Perhaps you love your spouse, perhaps you don’t, but do you love yourself and do you forgive yourself the way God loves and forgives you? Do you wonder whether God will ever speak again, and whether he ever spoke in the first place? Do you wonder whether it’s just your noggin talking to you? Do you wonder whether God likes you? Do you hear your accusers casting aspersions, telling you that you’re unloved, unworthy, a thing to be discarded?
I know you ask these questions, that you hear these accusations and feel the pain. How do I know this? You are my brothers and sisters. We’re all human, aren’t we? We’re all more alike than we’d like to admit, we sinner-saints.
Perhaps there are many of us who need to move from a place of addiction (any old addiction) to freedom. The process hurts, there is no doubt, and I know I’m not yet done. There is more guano in the cave to wade through, and sure as shooting, the bats will keep dropping it. There’s more pain to explore and more accusers to forgive. It’s going to hurt, there’s no doubt. But if we are going to practice the forgiveness taught by Jesus, if we are going to find the freedom of reconciliation with our enemies, and in that find reconciliation with God, perhaps it’s time for a serious exploration of our pains and anxieties. Perhaps it’s time to leave those behind in favor of an abiding God, a God who never leaves, never forsakes. Perhaps it’s time for our own coming clean.
I remember the days in the mesquite trees. Those were the good days when I felt the presence of God, before the meddling of men, before their dim theologies stripped me of childlike joy. This morning, I hear God again. He’s here, reminding me that he never left, but it was my cynicism, my unforgiveness, my stubborn will and pious systems that drowned the gentle whisper.
Remember.
I told you this isn’t a clean story. It does not move through conflict to perfect and complete resolution. Instead, it moves to a simpler end: God is mystery. His Spirit speaks to babes and children, and if we let it, it’ll speak to us still. It will speak first, “Forgive,” and then, who knows? The Spirit is like a wind, you know.