It hit me
the other day: I am a sinner. I’ve been
searching for specific sins for months, after having brothers and sisters call
me out on less-than-desirable aspects of my character, while the answer I was
looking for was painted all over me with fluorescent colours, being shone on
with big flashing lights. My motives
were so wrong; I was only looking for a way to justify my actions, making
everything I had ever done seem okay, rather than acknowledging my faults. Somehow, I’d always been the exception to the
rule, and all that stuff about judgment of sinners couldnt’ve been for me,
because my sins were justified, and therefore not as significant as the sins of
others. I was horrendously narcissistic,
selfish, entitled, and childish—but all of these things could surely be
justified from something in my past, right? NO.
This one
Sunday…
In the
morning, before church, I asked God to give me something to reflect on in
scripture and felt led to Ezekiel 16.
Every time I’ve read Ezekiel I feel like I’ve misinterpreted it somehow,
or it’s been super weird and hard to understand, so as I read I expected to be
pretty overwhelmed and confused—but I read anyway. This chapter is an allegory of the life of Judah, an
Israelite nation. Judah was born
to Canaanites, who as a nation, were known for their wickedness. When she was born, she was despised; her cord
was left uncut and she wasn’t washed or purified before being left in a field
for dead, writhing in her own blood. God
took compassion on her in this state, and spoke over her that she should
“Live!” and she grew up and became very beautiful, and God gave her the best
food and the finest clothing and jewelry and entered into covenant with
her. She exploited it. She became a prostitute, and gave the fine
things that God had given to her as gifts to the men that she slept with, and sacrificed
her children to idols. Then God goes
into pretty specific details about his wrath against her. He reminds her of her sisters, Sodom and Samaria. Sodom was
fated with fiery destruction from God, due to her sinfulness; Samaria was seen as unclean, and Jews just
generally stayed out of there and did not associate with Samaritans. God tells Judah
that her sins are greater than both of these sisters; she not only followed
their lead before her, but also made a name for herself with her own sins,
becoming more depraved than Sodom and Samaria. The chapter ends with God telling Judah that he
will deal with her as she deserves, for she broke the covenant that he formed
with her in her youth. However, he still
remembers that covenant, and promises to make an everlasting covenant with her,
and makes a separate promise that Sodom and Samaria will be given to
her as daughters, and on the day when he makes atonement for her, she will be
rendered speechless due to her humiliation.
Yeah, maybe
I had been a lying, manipulative, narcissistic idiot, belittling the gifts that
God had given me—but if I repented from those sins and asked for forgiveness,
God was going to give me something awesome, since that atonement thing with
Jesus dying on the cross for my sins already happened, a couple thousand years
ago… That’s how it works, right?
But I had
to be the exception, somehow.
I’d been so
afraid of God, since about January when all this stuff started being pointed
out to me. I felt dirty. When I did go to God, I wanted it to be real. I wanted some kind of sign that whatever I
was saying to him was being acknowledged, and I only ever wanted to hear good
things. When I didn’t, I got anxious and
caught in a spiral of self-hate. God hates
me—that was my way to be the exception—he loves everybody, but hates me. Every time I talked to him I felt like he
wasn’t there (side note: looking back, that was probably just me putting God in
a box of how I wanted him to act, and not looking for him in other ways; I
wanted God to be who I wanted him to be, not necessarily who he really was),
but I heard miraculous stories of how God was acting from my friends; through
dreams and visions, signs and wonders, prophecy and tongues—so God must’ve not
loved me enough to show me himself. I
was jealous, and wanted what other people had, like a child.
Church
happened. It was rad.
I biked
through a forest in the heat of the day and sat by the river, and asked God to
speak to me. Nothing happened. I was getting kind of hungry. I knew I didn’t need to eat, and that I’d
been engaging in a lot of gluttony recently, but—God didn’t speak to me, so he
didn’t care. I pulled an apple out of my
bag (real gluttonous) and ate. I stared
out over the river, marveling at how clear the water was. I could see the bottom (1-2 feet down) with
no trouble, it wasn’t very deep and there was nothing down there; no fish, no
plants, just sand and a few rocks. About
4 bites into this apple, I was staring into space when on the other side of the
river produced a huge splash! I was
startled, and my eyes darted over to the location of the percolating
water. It had been way too loud to have
just been a frog jumping in from the bank.
Then a HUGE fish, about 2 feet long and 6-8 inches across, leapt out of
the water at least twice its height and splashed back down. “WHOA!” was all I could muster. I stared at the spot where the fish had
surfaced as the ripples from the splash radiated to my side of the river. I’d lost my appetite for the apple…but I
finished it anyway. I couldn’t stop
thinking about this fish. “That’s how
obvious it is” I kept hearing in my head.
My first instinct was to label my sins as that obvious. I knew that by now. Everyone could see right through me. Why didn’t I just stay hidden from human
beings forever, sitting here in the dirt among the bugs and squirrels and crazy
psycho fish? It was beginning to hit me
how childish and dramatic I’d been over the last 2 years—maybe like this fish:
jumping out of the water saying “look at me, I have a problem”, and then keeping
the undivided attention of whoever would give it focused on me just because I
could have it and it made me feel important, even though I didn’t need it, and
was diverting it from other people and things who did. I feel like that’s actually something I’ve
recognized for quite some time, but instead of admitting to it and dealing with
it, I tried to justify and explain it away, like I could do no wrong. That didn’t make sense to me, and I traced
back to my childhood to figure out where that sense of entitlement came
from. Why? Why couldn’t I just admit that I wasn’t
perfect (or at least, better than most, given certain circumstances), and stop
trying to make everyone I encountered believe that I was? Why couldn’t I just accept that the way God
made me was good enough, and his love was enough, even if neither of those
things looked exactly how I was wanting or expecting them to appear? Ultimately, was my desire for God in my life
greater than my desire for the things that I wanted?
 |
| the casualtrees #punny |
 |
| roots |
Every time
that last question has come up, I’ve walked away from it—it’s a scary question. This time was no exception. I got up and physically walked away, carrying
my bike over some roots and fallen trees until the trail warranted that I could
sit in the saddle and pedal. I stopped
again at another spot by the river. A
cluster of trees had been totally uprooted, and had fallen so that the tops
reached the other bank of the river. It
was incredible to see. This enormous (
huge: 12 feet long by 6 feet high, but only 2 feet deep) network of roots,
packed with soil in every crack and crevice somehow wasn’t enough to hold these
trees in the ground—it just wasn’t deep enough.
Not just one tree, either, but five or six had all come down
together. I gazed towards their tops and
surmised that they must have fallen recently, because lush, green leaves had
been produced by every tree. These trees
had all appeared healthy from above the surface, but below they were not
anchored, and as a result, couldn’t be sustained (my knowledge of basic biology
dictates that as long as the roots are above ground, they won’t be able to take
up water and the plant can’t photosynthesize, so it dies). The roots on these trees were too shallow and
small to hold them in the ground; there wasn’t enough integrity in their
structure to support the mass above them.
Each time I’d go back into my past to try and explain away my sins,
there was some truth to each of those things: those were the small roots. Small roots might be okay for a baby tree,
but once it grows up the roots will have to grow too, or it’s going to have the
same fate as these trees that had fallen in the middle of the forest (I wonder
if they made a sound). Those millions of
small roots never get deep enough to uncover the real problem. What was that? I AM A
SINNER. There’s the one big root, the one that goes down deep and builds
branches and networks of more roots off of it.
Without that master root, I could have been finding little miniscule
explanations forever, sending down little capillaries of roots, repenting for
things followed with a “but this…”, amounting to about a 10 degree turn on an
egg timer that would slowly creep back to its starting position with nothing to
hold it in its new place. I could have
done all that work, and still
suffered the same fate as that tree.
Those trees. So I thought about
that for a bit as I waded through the river to see what was on the other side,
trying to get as far away from my house as possible so I could get some good
exercise biking back home.
I made it
home, had a nap, made some dinner, and then sat on my bed wondering what to do
next to spend time with God. When I
started taking a weekly Sabbath on Sundays after MarkCentral, one of the rules
I set for myself there was a technology fast: no computer, phone, or tv. I recalled a book I had finished reading a few
weeks ago, which suggested that when you didn’t know what to do, but wanted to
be in the presence of God, it never hurt to say the “Jesus Prayer”: “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a
sinner”. I’m normally not one to
gravitate towards pre-written prayers or liturgy, but I just felt like something
was prompting me, and I should in this instance, especially given all the stuff
around my own sin that I had been sitting in. I prayed the words slowly, like I was trying
to make sure I really meant every word. I sat in silence for a moment afterwards, and
really felt like God was saying “thank you, you are here”… “you are here”... What? Like the little star on the map at the mall
that tells you you’re next to Sears even though it’s been closed for several
months? So, for months, as I’ve been
praying I’ve felt God saying “come to me”, but had no idea what that meant. Wasn’t I coming to God by praying? What more
did I have to do? The answer was so simple:
come as you are. Who was I? A sinner. I remember one of
my friends telling me that “people are simple” 4 years ago when I was down and
depressed in the grade 12 blues, and I fought that so hard… I was too good to
be simple, like everybody else… Except that I’m not. I AM simple like everybody else. I AM a child of God. I AM made in his image. I AM beautiful. I AM loved.
I AM a sinner. I am all of those things, not just some of
them depending on the day, or how I’m feeling, or the circumstance, or any
other excuse I could possibly make. I am
all of those things, all the time. That is the truth.
And that is
what God loves. Plain and simple.
