Asia has been hard. While I do mean “Asia” in reference to the culture because having to learn how to use a squatty potty and eat food that puts Buffalo Wild Wings “wild sauce” to shame is a lot of new experiences very fast, I mean it mostly in regard to what has been happening during my time here in Asia.
I had learned a deep distrust towards God. The things I’ve seen in just the last 7 months have brought me to the point of asking whether God is truly “good”.
Cliche answers and Bible verse saying “His thoughts and ways are greater than my thoughts and ways” held little, if any, of the consolation they used to have when my world was small and everything in it was safe and good.
My distrust was compounded into fearful anger as God led me into the Old Testament where I saw His nature portrayed through the stories of David, Abraham, Sampson, and Samuel and Eli. Not only did I not see a God of love, I saw a God characterized by using His creation to accomplish His own ends regardless of who it hurt in the process.
The emotion I felt was a combination of fear, betrayal, distrust, and wary avoidance. I felt like someone I loved suddenly did something that was totally outside of their character, showing me their true nature. I had no point of reference as I didn’t know how to relate to God, nor did I have any desire to relate.
During a conversation with a teammate, I described my life as “having God in boxes”.
“God is love, so I take down the ‘love’ box and set it on the table. It’s pretty. The ‘love’ box is formed by everything that I think ‘love’ is, was, or ought to be. I even had a Bible passage to define what Love was.
Then I put the ‘love’ box away and pull out the ‘judge’ box. It’s scary, but it’s safe because the box is made up of what I think judgement is, was, or how it ought to be.
I have all these boxes of God’s attributes in my mind. They are all separate, they are all confined, and they are all safe. Each box is a safe 1 foot by 1 foot cube which each side being how I perceive each attribute to be.”
In the course of the month, I thought about that analogy I had given my friend.
It was true, my love, judgement, peace, joy, etc. boxes all were containing that little bit of God and kept in check by my understanding of what they were and looked like.
The things I’ve seen and experienced challenged the very essence of this.
“God cannot be love because love looks like this”
“God cannot be ______ because ______ looks like this”
My boxes were falling apart. The love box was slowly disappearing from my mind. In its place there simply remained this small ball of light that stayed in the place of the box.
I prayed for wisdom and the Spirit explained it to me.
Just because the things I’m living contradict “love” or “peace” or whatever, does not mean that God is not those things, it means that my definition for those things is too small.
While I try to fumble with words and definitions frantically trying to build my boxes bigger and stronger to hold this “new” Jesus, each bit of light is bleeding out and connecting with other broken boxes and growing bigger and brighter.
Bear with my Avengers analogy, but picture Tony Stark frantically running around his laboratory frantically trying to hold Ultron within a cardboard box. It sounds foolish as I write it but that is the folly of our hearts that is exposed as we grow in wisdom.
By now the “Ultron” is expanding and exploding previously secure boxes as the “love” box connects with the “judgement” box and the “peace” box and the “_____” box.
Now, in the laboratory of my mind, I’m standing back looking at this huge ball of light. What is going to happen? I cant even imagine what is going to happen next as the laws of physics don’t apply to this! Is it dangerous? Is it love? Should I step into it or run from it?
Unfortunately, there’s no escaping from the laboratory of my mind. I’m stuck with it. I can’t retreat, there’s no escape, and I’ve opened Pandora’s box. This “Ultron” fills the room of my mind and I’m now engulfed by it.
What does it feel like?
Pain and anguish beyond what I’ve ever experienced? Yes
Love and peace beyond what I can comprehend? Yes
Burning passion for justice and righteousness that is held in perfect tension with grace and mercy by the realization that others are trapped in the same things I am? Definitely.
I asked myself “great, now how do I relate to God?” That question in and of itself is simply my desire to fit God into a bigger box.
I’ve learned that I cannot “understand” God. I cannot “relate” to Him.
But, If I cannot understand Him or relate to him because He is so far outside of my scope of understanding, how can I grow in my relationship with Him?
A faulty question based upon another faulty question based upon a flawed view of God.
“I want relate to or understand God.” He is personal (relational) yet holy (set apart) at the same time. It is a paradox and this desire’s root is:
“I want to grow in my relationship with God.” A good desire that stems from a flawed understanding of the nature of God.
God is not a transaction-based experience, it is a “freely you have received” experience. I cannot work on growing my relationship with God because “God is in us and we are in God”. There’s no work to be done!
My entire mindset of “pursuing God” has been based out of this fear that “God is out there and I must restore communion!” No, God is IN me and I am IN God.
This entire mindset of “not being right with God” has kept me chasing this elusive “pie in the sky” communion and diverting me from God’s heart for me.
I am right with God. I will always be. My job is not to work on this, but to accept this and get on with God’s work.
Back to Tony Stark. This “good” Ultron has expanded to fill and overflow the laboratory of my mind. I have no choice, I am “in” this ball of light.
I have a couple options:
1. I can do nothing. Live life as it nothing has happened and be frustrated with my life.
2. I can deny that I am, and continue to analyze and draw patterns and seek to understand how perfect love and perfect judgement can exist at the same time and become utterly obsessed with discovering this.
3. I can embrace it. I can come to terms with the knowledge that this “Ultron” God is something I will never understand. I can choose to be fully integrated into this despite my uncertainty. I can take my desires and dreams and realize that these are God given for the purpose of integration with His being to accomplish things I can’t even begin to fathom because they are part of an unfathomable God.
I choose 3.
P.S. God is definitely not Ultron and If you do in fact, encounter Ultron, do not choose number 3. Spoiler alert, JARVIS tried it and it was super sketchy there for a while.
