A Narrow Road Wide with Mercy

Good news is embedded in the hard news.

Photo by JOHN TOWNER on Unsplash

In the last two weeks, I’ve “counted the cost” of the journey to love God with all our being. It’s a bleak picture, no? The world sabotages our efforts, God deliberately makes it hard, and we are hard-hearted and stubborn people addicted to our non-God lifestyles. Loving God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength will demand from us just that—everything. Nothing left on the field. And a fair amount of suffering to boot. Yet there’s another side of this story.

Grace.

What does that look like? Let’s take the challenges in order.

If God is With Us….
We live in an era when the larger culture is not only indifferent but often hostile to the Christian faith and its priorities. So? It isn’t as if this is the first time or the only culture in which this is and has been the case. Remember the Roman Empire? It didn’t just snub and mock Christians for the belief in a crucified savior. It just didn’t prevent Christians from trying to abide by their moral values in the public square. It actually went on periodic jailing and killing sprees simply because Christians believed in a Lord superior to Caesar.

News flash: The early Christians not only survived but thrived under such conditions. And they were the first to acknowledge that it wasn’t their courage or perseverance that made the difference, but the God who infused them with courage and perseverance. If this is an encouragement to Christians who suffer similarly today in other parts of the world, how much more in Europe and America where the stakes are, frankly, so much lower. Enough whining about how hard it is to be a Christian in a secular society. God is with us; who can be against us?

Time to Grow Up
The second challenge is God’s seeming absence from our lives. I noted how most days we have no direct and immediate experience of God’s presence in our lives, and that in many cases, it is God who keeps himself aloof.

But there’s also a flip side here: No matter our experience and feelings, God is always present with us. He’s omnipresent, after all. And I believe that  a lot of the time, God withholds a sense of his presence because he loves us. He wants what earthly parents desire for their children: He wants us to grow up.

A friend told me about the first day his first-grade girls walked to school by themselves. Well, mostly. They thought they did, but dad followed them from a safe distance to watch them, to make sure everything was okay. At the end of the day, they came home proud of their new life achievement, walking to school by themselves. This only bolstered their sense of self-esteem and self-confidence.

Some versions of Christianity would have us believe that God wants us to be utterly dependent on him 24/7, asking him for strength and wisdom in every little thing. Another news flash: God doesn’t care if you wear a red shirt or a blue shirt today. He doesn’t care if you have steak or burritos for dinner. And he doesn’t care if you buy a Chevy or a BMW, and often even whether you work as a flight attendant or lawyer. He wants us to become people capable of making wise decisions without having to scurry to him.  

And he wants this regarding the big things, too. He told Adam and Eve to tend the garden—take care of the earth! Note: He offered no help. It is the paradigm of all the work he asks of us, whether we’re a shoemaker or a homemaker, a businessman or a garbage man, an office secretary or the Secretary of State. He made us in his image, and his image is not that of sniveling, weak, insecure people who constantly beg someone to hold their hand. He wants us to grow in wisdom and stature, and shoulder the responsibilities he’s given us. 

And yes, like that father of those daughters, he’s close behind, watching us to make sure we don’t fall flat on our faces. Certainly, at times, we need special, divine wisdom or extra strength, and at such times, God gives us the gift we need even if we don’t immediately recognize that he’s just given it. It’s like the mother who steadies her daughter who has mounted a bike for the first time. The daughter is so anxious she’s thinking only about the bike, the handles, the pedals, the concrete!—everything but the gentle hand that, for the first few yards, steadies her. After biking a few yards down the sidewalk, the girl shouts, “Mom, I did it!” And she did. But not without a little help.

To be sure, some of our tasks are supernatural, and of course, we’re desperate for God’s help in such matters. But even then, it isn’t as if God simply takes over our human agency, so that we become robots. The paradigm is much like the one we see in the feeding of the 5,000. The disciples only saw the impossibility of feeding thousands with only enough fish and bread to feed a family of four. Jesus’ response? “You feed them” (Mt. 14:13-21). Even when a miracle is needed, he wants us to have the maturity and confidence to do our part.

In short, God leaves us alone—or seemingly leaves us alone—because he wants us to grow up. Yes, to depend on him, but also to depend on ourselves, on our abilities and on the wisdom we’ve gained over the years.

Sin: So What Else is New?
Finally, there’s the business of our sin and rebellion. Sometimes when I talk about how deeply rooted our resistance to God is, listeners/readers balk. They balk because they are understandably afraid of having to look at how tragically flawed they are. They’re afraid that they might discover something in themselves that will sabotage not only their self-esteem but also God’s love for them: “How can God love me if I admit that a part of me hates him?

The answer is: Because he does. He just does. Consider it a divine character flaw. But Christians just call it the gospel.

Here’s the thing we have to keep in mind: God is not only omnipresent but also omniscient. He knows every sin that fills us with guilt and shame. He knows the sins we’ll commit tomorrow and the next day and the day after that. He knows that a part of us loves him, and a part of us hates him.

Here’s a spiritual practice I highly recommend. Do that searing self-examination to discover all the ways in which you ignore, defy, and sabotage God in your life. Ponder the nefarious ways your self wants to manipulate others and stay in control of your life. Admit those times you simply hate God. And when you discover something horrid and unconscionable, remember this: God knew this about you way before you figured it out.

In fact, he knew about it at Calvary. He was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, not counting your sins—even your horrid sins—against you (2 Cor. 5). You may be saying to yourself, “What a horrible person I am!” But God is saying, “Well, yeah; what else is new?”

Our reaction should in part be sorrow for the new layer of sin we’ve discovered, yes, but it also should include a kind of amazement: “So God has known about this for some time, and it hasn’t made a difference in how close he remains to me, how much confidence he has in me to do the work he calls me to, and how much he loves me. Wow!”

As bad as our moral state is—and it is pretty wretched—God does not want a people who wallow in their shame and guilt but instead he wants a people who stand upright, with head and heart held high as forgiven and gifted, living maturely, responsibly, and joyfully by his amazing grace.

The New Logo

It was created in collaboration with Susanna Perry-Ettel, who showed patience and tact with some of my raw ideas and added her creativity to the mix, giving Peripheral Vision a fresh look.

Susanna is a writer/editor/graphic designer living in rural Ontario, Canada. She has written for several major Canadian publications as well as for TVOntario, Canada’s main educational TV network.

Most of her current work is with Bibles for Mideast. The India-based organization has many volunteer ministers and gospel teams evangelizing and establishing (mostly underground) churches in some of the most dangerous and restrictive areas of the Middle East, South Asia and Africa. Most workers and new believers have converted to Christianity from Islam, some from Hinduism, and all have amazing stories to tell. Susanna designed and built a website to share their many astonishing stories “from the field.” You can read her work and some of those stories—many as incredible and miraculous as those in the Book of Acts—at the Bibles for Mideast ministry website.

Needless to say, I’m grateful for her contribution to Peripheral Vision, but especially for her work at Bibles for the Mideast. If you’re interested in contacting her about design work, she can be reached at perryettel@gmail.com

Grace and peace,

Mark