We are obsessed with being organized. Everything has to go in its place. There is such a thing as The Container Store.
Our culture has become increasingly un-bothered by our ability to compartmentalize. We act a certain way at church (“dude, you can’t say that four-letter word, we’re at church!”), a certain way with friends, a certain way at home, etc. etc. We don’t just wear a mask, we wear dozens of different ones throughout the day. One of, if not the, greatest challenges in discipleship is convincing a believer that faith is not contextual.
We compartmentalize everything. What God is capable of. Good. And bad. Sin. Emotions. Our activities. Everything has to go where it belongs, where it makes sense to us. Our compartments are an attempt to take control of our lives, to trap things where they make sense so that we can make sense out of who we are and what we are doing.
We try so hard to fit the Kingdom of God into our compartments. We label our containers “right” and “wrong”, “healing” and “suffering”, “acceptable” and “deplorable.” We negotiate our ideas, thoughts, and situations into their nearest container and close the lid. We fight desperately to keep the lid on our compartments shut tight, and break down when something escapes and wanders around uncontained.
I want to propose a challenge for all of us. Let’s dump our containers out onto the floor. Let’s make a mess of things. Let’s stop trying to fix what is wrong, stop trying to understand what we can’t know, stop trying to contain the unfathomable. Instead, let us press in to trusting Jesus, emptying our containers at the foot of the cross, and just worship God as best we can, trusting that all else flows from that Well.
Total dependency on Christ means letting go of what we think we can answer as well as what we know we cannot.
The Kingdom of God is a messy ordeal. How can Jesus pray for one thing, followed by “not my will, but Yours be done”? How can God forsake Jesus while He is on the cross? How can we follow something invisible? What are we supposed to do with a God that is both within our reach and beyond our grasp? How can Heaven be currently available yet not realized? How can God be love but allow terrible things to happen to me? How can a disciple so readily sin or a sinner come to worship? How can Jesus both dwell with sinners and condemn sin? A God of virtue who commands Hosea to marry a prostitute. A God of mercy and love who commands the conquests of Joshua. A Holy God who calls David and Moses into service after their murderous pasts (can you imagine if a convicted murderer applied to be the pastor of your church?!). A jealous God who demands and forgives.
Our compartmentalizing tries to make the Gospel one of these things or the other. It tries to put the indescribable into words. It leans on our own understanding, threatening to ignore that “His ways are not our ways.”
There is so much about God that we will never understand. We all know that. But I think, in reaction to that difficult truth, we try to rush what we DO think we understand into a container and focus on worshiping in that limited, particular context
It is a completely terrifying suggestion. But I hope that my faith is marked by humble praise, centered around admonition for a God beautifully beyond my comprehension, in ALL things. I hope to be broken of the compartments of my own understanding, free from worshiping out of what makes sense to me, free of expectations and the illusion of knowing anything with certainty. If I just start with God, I can worship Him for just being God. If I start with my compartments, there is a lot of work, a lot of uncertainty, a lot of assumption that I have to work through before I can purely encounter my beloved.
Brokenness is what happens when God is bigger than our compartments. When He teaches through hurt. Loves through uncertainty. Calls us to what we are incapable of.
I long to be broken. To encounter the God whose “greatness none can fathom” (Psalm 145:3), able to do “immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine” (Ephesians 3:20), and “works all things together for the good of those who love Him, who are called according to His Purpose” (Romans 8:28).
This is a messy world. He is a messy God. In the middle of it all, we are called not to have things figured out, nor make things manageable. We are, quite simply, called to worship and to love.
