Heart Trouble

In terms of just what is wrong with this world, I think the only real answer is that we have a heart problem. And I think we always have.

We've never really been good at training our children to take care of their hearts. We've always sort of left them to figure it out for themselves, and this much is true regardless of what the current teaching of the time is. In the days when we weren't afraid to admit that life sometimes isn't fair and that other persons will sometimes hurt you, we taught our children how to repair or at least pursue relationship, and we told them that forgiveness and love would heal their heart. But we all sort of know that's not really true. Forgiveness doesn't just heal a heart; neither does choosing to love someone else. The pain is still there, and even though we all know it, we still don't know what to do with it.

In modern times, when we tell our children to guard their hearts, when we help them build walls between their hearts and the world, when we teach them that the best way to handle their hearts is with aggressive protective care and, at the same time, tender gloves, we still haven't really told them how to deal with the real pain of having a heart in a fallen world. We all sort of understand this, too. No matter how protective you try to be of your heart, something always breaks through and stabs you right at the very core. Life still hurts. It still sucks. There are still bad things happening that we have to deal with. And though we tend to applaud the idea of heartlessness (living heart-free), that's not really working for anybody. We can't just separate ourselves from our hearts.

Nor should we even want to.

I wish I had better answers for this, something more worthwhile to say, but the truth is that I find myself in the same boat as the rest of humanity: I don't really know what to do with my heart. Sometimes, I feel like I'm loving this world well, but the insecurities I have about love are never far away. Do I really love? Do I even know how to love? This feeling that I feel....is it love or something less? Sometimes, I wonder if love is even what I think it is, or if I'll ever be capable of loving. 

Sometimes, I experience tremendous, deep joy. But is it joy? Pure joy? There's something haunting about the depraved heart. There's something that always feels a little selfish, or a little self-satisfied, about it. Is this joy or is it mere happiness? And if it is happiness, what stands between self and joy but my own twisted heart?

I've often said, and tend to make no secret, that sometimes, I think I was built to be brokenhearted. This doesn't bother me so much anymore, but it used to just eat at me. What is brokenheartedness? What is the purpose of it? What is it about this world that grieves me, and what am I supposed to do about it? 

It's from here that I began to form my response to all this heart stuff, that I began to understand, just a little bit, what it is we're supposed to do with these hearts of ours. But I admit that the answer isn't always what we might hope it would be.

We have to keep taking our hearts to God. 

It sounds so simple, and yet, it's not, and I think that's what so many find so discouraging about it. Even Christians. Because when you take your heart to God, He doesn't simply soothe it. No, I find that when I honestly take my heart before God, He draws me deeper into it. He draws me deeper into the raw places in it - the grief, the ache, the brokenness, the depravity, the worry, the fear, the trouble. When I take my heart to God, I beg Him - please, God. I don't know what to do with...this. And His answer is usually, "Let me show you what this is."

It doesn't always help, at least not in the way that I hope it will. But it does, strangely, make the whole thing feel more holy. From the depth of my heart, I am drawn into the center of His, and there's something absolutely incredible about that. 

And cooler still, this works for the good stuff, too. It works when I take my heart of love and joy and peace and celebration to Him. When I say, "Lord, I...don't know what to make of this good, good thing." Then He says, first, let me show you how good this is. And even my love, joy, peace, celebration go all the deeper.

I don't think most of us know what to do with our hearts. I don't think we ever really have. Nobody ever taught us, likely because they didn't know themselves. But I think it's past time that we start trying to figure it out. 

For me, that means bringing my heart to God a thousand times a day. Not to ask Him to mend it necessarily, but in full confession and surrender, declaring, "God, I don't know what to do with this. Teach me what to do with this." And He does. 

By drawing me so far into my raw, broken, depraved heart that I can't help but find His in the center of it all. 

Caged Animals

We're hearing it again this week: we have a "gun problem" in America. And no matter how many times they say it, it's still not true.

We have a human problem in America.

The problem is that we've stopped teaching persons, encouraging persons, to live in community. What we've taught them instead is to build their own communities, which doesn't quite work. Instead of trying to get two parties to work out their grievances with one another, which was a staple of conflict resolution in the past, we now tell them to just avoid one another. If someone bothers you? Don't be around that person. Just ignore them. 

And so individuals are building a wall between themselves and others. Regardless of how "well" this seems to work, there's a certain pain in it that never goes away. There's a certain feeling of being "trapped." If you're avoiding someone, you think about that person every time you think about doing anything - will you accidentally run into them? Will they be there, too? What if they speak to you? What if they don't know that you're ignoring them? And so on and so on. Pretty soon, you feel even more trapped, and you wonder why they don't seem to be bothered in the same way you are. They seem so free.

Then we tell persons that if someone doesn't agree with them, they can cut that person out, too. There's no point in dialogue, no point in trying to share your point of view. Just cut those who disagree with you out of your life. You don't need them, we say. And so another wall goes up. Because every time you look at someone who disagrees with you, no matter how much you may want to love them, you see only their disagreement. And that's dangerous, so you turn away. 

Then we tell persons that other persons tend to have sinister motives, that you just can never trust who you're dealing with because everyone is just out for himself. Or for some other cause. We tell them that this world is just going to use them up and spit them out and that they'd better be careful about who they associate with and what the ulterior motives might be. So yet another wall goes up, just a little more distance between one person and another, so that nobody ever has to get "hurt."

Meanwhile, everyone's hurting.

All these walls we teach persons to build around themselves, and it's not very long before we start feeling like caged animals. Our world gets smaller and smaller until one day, we realize we're just pacing the length of our cell, our cage, and it doesn't look to us like other persons are in the same imprisonment. (They are. It just never looks that way from inside the cage.) And with each man in his own little cage, that's where we feed him. 

We feed his ego and tell him that he's in the right, that he had to cut himself off from others in this way because they'd just be toxic to him. We feed his ego and tell him that he's better than all of those who are outside his cage. We feed his ego and tell him that he never did have to compromise with any of those other persons, that he was right to demand that they concede to him. We feed his ego and build him up until he's sure that he's the only right individual in all the world. And in his own little world, in his tiny little cage, maybe he is. 

And then, most heinous of all, after we have convinced him to build his cage and we have fed his ego, we bait him to fight. It used to be that we all knew that life simply isn't fair. That's not true any more. Now, when someone complains that life isn't fair, we tell him to go out and make it fair. We tell him to fight for fair, as if fair is anything at all. We tell him that he has every right to every single thing that every single other person in all the world has, and that this is fair. And we tell him that if he wants fair, he has to go after it. Hard. Viciously. Venomously. He has to go out and fight for it. 

For what it's worth, there is no such thing as fair. Equality isn't equal. Each and every one of us is special and unique in our own way, and what is fair for one may not be fair for another. That's just the way it works. We could learn, we could teach other, to rejoice in our differences, to champion those that are different from us. But we don't. We tell them to fight for every little thing they can get, out of the fear that someone may end up with something that you don't have. Regardless, of course, of whether you need it or would even know what to do with it if you had it. 

So we have all these caged animals, all these men that we've taught to build up walls around themselves because teaching them to live in community is just too hard. And we've fed them well. We've kept telling them that they're right about everything, and that this world is just backward and wrong. And then we've baited them to fight, holding out the proverbial carrot of fair and equal, of entitlement to all things. 

And then we're troubled by the bloodshed. Like it's some mysterious thing that we can't possibly understand, like we don't know how it happened. Really? 

There's a reason this is happening more often now than it was fifty years ago. Fifty years ago, we taught persons how to reconcile, how to make up with one another. We made them apologize; we taught them forgiveness. Now, we advise them simply to avoid each other. Fifty years ago, we taught persons how to listen to the other side of the story, how to respectfully disagree, how to have a civil conversation. Now, we tell every man that he's right and that the only voice that matters is his own. Fifty years ago, we weren't afraid to discipline, to correct, to chastise. Now, we comfort, we assuage, we pacify. Fifty years ago, we knew that life wasn't fair. Now, we argue that it has to be, even though we're keenly aware that fair isn't even fair. 

We're caged animals, and humanity is a zoo. Every once in awhile, and more and more these days, someone's going to break his cage and come storming out of it. That's what we're seeing. And that's what's going to continue to happen until we come to our senses and realize that men weren't made for cages. They were made for community.

And that means learning how to live together again.

Echoes of Emptiness

Yesterday, I wrote about the sticky theological problem of there being no mourning in Heaven. But the question goes far beyond even the difficult things I was able to mention in one short post. Most pressingly, it's hard to imagine a Heaven without mourning when it's rather clear that it's been full of mourning since Genesis 3.

God Himself mourns.

God mourns the turning away of His creation. He mourns the loss of His people's hearts. He mourns the brokenness, the destruction, the hate, the poverty in His world. He mourns His tarnished creation. And as heart-breaking, as gut-wrenching, as grief and mourning are, we just don't have a paradigm by which these things ever go away.

We can't imagine that when God restores the creation, when He re-creates the world, that this sting in His heart is just going to go away. That all of a sudden, He's not going to grieve any more about all that His creation has been through, about all we have lost, about all we have given away, about all we have missed, about all we have mistaken. 

It's like when you see someone who's been struggling for so long finally break through. It's like when you see someone finally reach their full potential. It's like when you see someone turn a corner, and for the first time, it feels like things are going to be okay. There's this overwhelming joy, this amazing pride, this awesome sense of peace...but these are only heightened by a deepening sense of grief. In these victorious moments, we feel the pain of struggle all the more. 

Receiving the all-clear from the oncologist only makes us look back on the dozens of rounds of chemo. Hoisting the championship trophy makes us think about all the rebuilding years. Crossing the finish line makes us remember all of the training miles we put in. Landing that steady job makes us reflect on the poverty that's marked the past season. We don't feel "bad" about these things any more, don't feel the immense pain of them. There's almost a certain nostalgia to it. But fullness has a way of emphasizing the emptiness in a way we just can't shake. 

And I think that's the way it's going to be when God looks at His redeemed, restored creation. He's going to be overwhelmed with joy, content with peace, but I don't think He can just shake off all the heartbreak that He's felt over the years at the state of His creation, the condition of His people. I think the fullness of redemption has to be somewhere in the tension between what always was and what finally is.

And I can't imagine that my response will be any different. I can't imagine a world in which I don't look at the recreated, restored, whole people who have been part of my broken journey here, where I finally see them as they were always intended to be...and I'm overcome at once with joy and with the nagging sense of heartbrokenness that this was hiding inside of them the whole time, and they were never able to latch onto it. Mourning is not our primary emotion, but joy is only complete in filling an emptiness. 

Can we ever be whole without feeling our emptiness? I can't imagine that we could. I don't think we ever have.

Yet I'm also aware that we've never lived a Heavenly life. We've never lived in a non-broken world. Maybe things are really that different there. Maybe there's a way. Maybe the way we feel joy in Heaven is so far beyond even the greatest joy that we have here that we can't even imagine what it's going to be like. If that's the case, I can't wait to see it. 

But I'm ready, too, if my heart always stays a little broken, if I always have echoes of this emptiness inside of me. Because at least from what I know here, the emptiness makes the space for the joy to go all the deeper. 

Mourning in Heaven

Not long ago, I heard again the promise that Heaven is going to be a place without mourning, without tears. And for the first time, that idea gave me pause. 

Because it goes against the very idea of Hell.

Yes, you read that right. The idea of a Heaven without mourning is an idea that I find contrary to the idea of Hell. And I'm not really sure what to do with that.

Most of us know at least a few unbelievers. Many of us are related, even closely related, to unbelievers. We have spent countless hours worried over them, praying for their hearts to change, longing for their salvation, but the truth is that some of these people we love dearly will never come to God. They just won't. Most of us find this quite troubling.

Now, if we hold to the idea that those who do not believe in Christ will be condemned to Hell, this means for them not only an eternal separation from God, but an eternal separation from us. And our eternal separation from them. This leaves us in the sticky situation of trying to imagine Heaven as both a place with no mourning and a place without some of the very persons who have meant so much to our earthly existence.

It's a problem not easily resolved.

We could say that when we get to Heaven, we won't remember this life at all, that we'll be so wrapped up in our new, restored life that whatever happened here won't even be a vapor in our faintest memories. But that's not really a Godly perspective. What could we possibly say about a God who gives us eighty-ish years of completely meaningless existence before bringing us to Heaven to live with Him? It's fatalist. It's defeating. It's holding out the idea that this life doesn't matter at all, that it's inconsequential. That's not the kind of life I want to live, and I don't think it's the kind of life God has for me.

Maybe we could say that those of our closest loved ones who don't enter Heaven with us were never that important in the first place, that they weren't as big a part of our lives as we thought they were. Or that they weren't supposed to be such a big part of our lives. Or that their influence on our lives wasn't for our benefit. This, too, is a difficult position to hold. For some of us, that means saying that our mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, neighbors and best friends were not actually a blessing on our lives, but were poison to it somehow. It means that those closest to us were never supposed to mean anything. I don't think that's a Godly perspective, either. God doesn't create us to spend our lives in relationship with persons who don't eternally matter.

Maybe we could say that once we become our full and truest selves and are surrounded by others who are their true and fullest selves and are in the presence of the fullest and truest God, that we simply won't feel the incompleteness of not having our loved ones near. Love will complete us, and there will be no room left for mourning. But this just raises both of the previous problems - a life that was meaningless and empty and people that never ultimately meant anything. This is no good, either.

None of this means, however, that we can just go full bore in the other direction and declare that Hell is not real. We can't just conclude that God will save everyone. That would mean that everything God has told us about...well, everything...is a lie. Jesus' death on the Cross was not necessary, since God's just going to save everyone anyway. Our faithfulness isn't necessary. Our baptism isn't necessary. Church isn't necessary. Righteousness, grace, and mercy aren't necessary. Even justice is an illusion. You cannot hold that God just saves everyone and still have any realistic view of God. It just doesn't work.

So I guess as I throw this question around, I'm ultimately drawn back to an idea that struck me quite awhile ago about the promise of Revelation and maybe how this Heaven thing works. You can read that idea in a piece I wrote entitled "Go to Hell," which sounds a lot more sinister than it is. Hint: it's all about that "new name" God's going to give you one day and how that might just be the answer to this whole mess. 

Just some things I'm thinking about this morning. 

Lying in Wait

Here's the lie that most of us have fallen victim to, the lie that's stealing away this season of Advent for us: If you wait, you're going to miss out.

It's the tyranny of the now. Prices are never going to be this low again. You're never going to get this moment back. There's never going to be a better time. If right now looks like the moment, that's because it is, and if you risk waiting....on anything, for anything....you're going to miss what this moment has to offer. And you'll never have this chance again.

To some extent, even the church has bought into this mentality. There seems to be a growing emphasis in the church about living in the present, about capturing this moment, about seizing this opportunity, about taking this chance, right now, because God is here, right now, in this moment, and if God is in this moment, then you ought to fully be here, too. 

There's some truth, I suppose, to all of this. It's true that there's never going to be another moment like this one. It's true that prices may never again be this low (true, but highly unlikely). It's true that if you risk waiting, you might miss out on something. You will never have exactly this chance again. 

But does that mean we never wait?

Of course not. Despite all our rhetoric, waiting is an essential part of the Christian life. In most of our dialogue, it's called "hope." And hope sustains us.

Hope holds a story together. It's the nagging suspicion that you can't shake that something's about to happen for the good, that something's about to bring some of the pieces together, that something's about to make sense out of all of this.

There's been a bit of a trend lately in some cinematic ventures in Hollywood where movies have taken on this snapshot motif. The entire movie is just scenes from a story, as if just showing the scenes is enough to tell the story. American Sniper did this, and when the end credits rolled, I felt like the whole thing was missing something. There was nothing to tie it together. There was not a moment in the entire movie that I found myself wondering what happened next; there was no way for me to legitimately wonder. In the sequence of scenes, there was no "next." There was just one moment after another after another without anything real to hold them together.

That's what our lives become when we don't know how to wait. Scenes, not stories. That's what God becomes when we don't know how to hope. A scene, not a story. In this moment, God showed up. In that one, not so much. We live our lives never knowing what God is doing or not doing, what He will do or won't do, and it's not much worth our even wondering about. There's nothing holding the story together. It's just one thing after another after another. 

And that's why our seasons of waiting, of hope, are so important. They pull us back out of the scenes and throw us into the story. They remind us of the promise that something is developing here, something is going on, something is about to bring some of the pieces together. Something's about to make sense out of all of this. 

In this season, that something is Jesus. And if you're not actively waiting for Him, there's every chance in this world that you're going to miss it. 

There's every chance that you're going to fall asleep early and wake up to a bunch of excited children at some wee hour of the morning and in this moment, there's nothing to draw your eyes toward the heavens, nothing to make you look up. You'll never see that bright and morning star. There's every chance that you may take a baby in your arms (however old that "baby" might be) and in the tyranny of the now, forget completely about the baby in the manger. There's every chance that you'll give and receive gifts, spend the morning buried in scraps of wrapping paper, and never once smell frankincense or catch a glimpse of gold. 

There's every chance you'll come out of this Christmas with another scene in your own personal movie, having missed entirely the story of Christmas. 

And that's just what the world is hoping you'll do. That's the lie. The lie is that if you wait, if you keep your eyes open to hope, to promise, to the unfolding story of Christmas, you'll miss Christmas altogether. You'll miss all these moments with your family. You'll miss the memories you're going to make this year. 

But the truth is much more sobering. The truth is that if you don't wait, if you live this season just for the moment, if you can't stop thinking about all the memories you're going to make this year, you might just miss Christmas altogether.